Where IS the URL for a JavaScript Linked-to Video?

[Nehmo]

When a page has a JavaScript "link" to a video, like
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10478942/ . How do you get the URL of the
actual video? Isn't it in the source somewhere?

 

[McKirahan]

When a page has a JavaScript "link" to a video, like
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10478942/ . How do you get the URL of the
actual video? Isn't it in the source somewhere?

That page has three hyperlinks that invoke a JavaScript function:

oMvsLink('00','b42c8497-f0ae-4d59-808d-e00e035df600','','','','','',false,fa
lse,'Source_Nightly News')

which is declared within the include file:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/js/std.js

function oMvsLink(gPV,sGuid,bDck,sMenu,sSubM,sURL,sPL,bRP,bStatic,sList) {
var sLink="http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm";
if(sPL) {
sGuid=sGuid+","+sPL;
}
sLink+="?f="+gPV+"&g="+sGuid+"&t=m5";
if(sList){
sLink+="&p="+escape(sList);
}
if(!bDck){
var
ovp=window.open(sLink,"ovp","width=788,height=598,status=1,scrollbars=yes,re
sizable=yes");
if(sURL) {
location.href=sURL;
}
}else{
location.href=sLink;
}
}

Thus, the URL is:

URL:http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=b42c8497-f0ae-4d59-808d-e00e0
35df600&t=m5&p=Source_Nightly%20News

I think...

But then this gets "resolved" on the server to deliver an actual file.

 

[cwdjrxyz]

Thus, the URL is:

URL:http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=b42c8497-f0ae-4d59-808d-e00e0
35df600&t=m5&p=Source_Nightly%20News

I think...

But then this gets "resolved" on the server to deliver an actual file.

Since this is a major news site with a huge number of hits, they most
likely are using a special streaming media server to manage traffic to
the video much better than on a regular html server. So the main site
likely links to the streaming server with special code used for this
sort of thing. On a streaming server, it often is not possible to get a
conventional URL for a video file. They also are likely using some
server side script, such as php, also which you do not see on the page
code.

The video link would not let me in on Firefox. They say you have to
"upgrade" to IE, etc. If you look at a bit of the site code, it is easy
to see why. They use all sorts of non-standard Microsoftese, VB
scripts, etc. This site has very poor code with apparently no effort
made to work well on anything other than IE. I think this site is a
very good example of how not to write code.

However, even with a site with good code that links to a streaming
server for media, you often can not capture the code for the actual
video or audio.

 

[Evertjan.]

Thus, the URL is:

URL:http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=b42c8497-f0ae-4d59-808d
-e00e0 35df600&t=m5&p=Source_Nightly%20News

[..]


However, even with a site with good code that links to a streaming
server for media, you often can not capture the code for the actual
video or audio.

Don't believe this. What is downloaded can be captured:

mms://msnbc.wmod.llnwd.net/a275/e1/video/100/nn_thomp_baby_051215.asf

 

[cwdjrxyz]

Thus, the URL is:

URL:http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=b42c8497-f0ae-4d59-808d
-e00e0 35df600&t=m5&p=Source_Nightly%20News

[..]


However, even with a site with good code that links to a streaming
server for media, you often can not capture the code for the actual
video or audio.

Don't believe this. What is downloaded can be captured:

mms://msnbc.wmod.llnwd.net/a275/e1/video/100/nn_thomp_baby_051215.asf

What you found is the mms:// redirector file which typically is a link
to a Microsoft streaming server(I think that mms means Microsoft Media
Server). To make certain, I went to the Opera browser, deleted the
cache, and played the mms file link you gave using the WMP 10. The
video played well(it is only 200 kbps which is easy on DSL). However,
as is typical of true streaming video, nothing is downloaded to the
Opera cache. Of course when I link to one of my video files with an
http url on my normal html server, the video is cached, and you can
save it from the cache if you wish. Or if you have the address of the
actual wmv, in addition to the wax redirector file, you can directly
download the wmv file stored on the HD where you wish.

There is a way to capture the video as it is playing, although this is
not capture of the actual digital file on the streaming server, and, at
lest in theory, will result in lower video quality. You can use the
free Microsoft media encoder to do a screen capture of the video as a
wmv file as the video is playing, if your computer is fast enough for
the extreme computing demands required. If the computer is too slow,
you can get extreme distortions of the video, or no capture at all.
Also you could feed the audio-video output of the computer, as the
video is playing, to a video capture dervice to capture in mpeg format
just as is done when you capture a VCR tape as mpeg and store it on the
HD.

 

[Evertjan.]

What you found is the mms:// redirector file which typically is a link
to a Microsoft streaming server(I think that mms means Microsoft Media
Server).

"the code for(!) the actual video or audio"
in my book is not the same as
"the content of(!) the actual video or audio".

An .ASX file is a redirector file,
an .ASF is the stream itself, I presume.

Not tried, but what about this, if you really want to download huge files:

<http://www.thefab.net/topics/computing_video/cv07_asf_recorder.htm>

 

[cwdjrxyz]

Not tried, but what about this, if you really want to download huge files:

<http://www.thefab.net/topics/computing_video/cv07_asf_recorder.htm>

Thanks for the link. I downloaded the recorder - it is a fairly small
zip file. However I have not been able to record the video we have been
discussing. It may just be that I do not know enough about how to use
the recorder yet, or this may be one of those many streams that can not
be recorded with this recorder, as mentioned in the text file that
comes with the recorder. Perhaps I will play with the recorder on other
video streams when I have time. The recorder is supposed to work even
if you have a slow connection. However the video stream we were
discussing was only about 200 kbps and just a few minutes long. Since I
have an about 2.5 Mbps download connection, downlown time would be
short if the net is not congested, and the resulting file would be
small by video standards. When you are doing DVD format file work, you
often have files that run from 4 to 8 GB for a normal movie, so a
little, slow-speed streaming video is trivial on comparison

The same considerations apply to streaming audio on net radio stations,
etc. There are several recorders that will let you record streaming
audio including Real formats. In fact one of my media programs came
with one, but I have never used it. However for either streaming video
or audio, it appears that various tricks can be used to prevent
recording on some recorders. The hackers overcome the tricks, the media
providers find new tricks, and the cat and mouse game continues on and
on. Of course you can always connect the audio and video outputs of
your computer to an external CD or DVD recorder and get the media -
unless it is protected by analog Macrovision or something of the sort.
And, most likely, the hackers have a way around that sort of protection.

 

[cwdjrxyz]

It's a marketing tool...
It's possibly an illegal abuse of a monopoly position

You could be right that the way the code is written is a marketing
tool. This is a web page from MSNBC. MSNBC is a US television cable
channel that is put up by two giants, one being Microsoft, hence the
MS, and the other being NBC, a very old company, which has changed
hands a few times, that carried national radio and then TV in the US.
The people who write the web pages could be from Microsoft or could
have been trained at Microsoft. I am not trained in corporate law, so I
have no comments on that issue. Opera had an issue with the way that
Microsoft wrote some of their web pages, claiming that they appeared to
be designed to look bad on the Opera browser. Of course Microsoft
claimed that was not their aim. There was a long story about this a few
years ago on the Opera site, and it may still be there. Anyway, this
issue may be a major reason why Opera developed code to allow their
browser to spoof other browsers, including IE6.

Although this thread is drifting a bit from script, the awful script,
at least by current international standards, is one of the main
problems with the page.