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How can I figure out the source for an audio\video embedded file on a webpage? Where do I start?
When you create a website and you embed images, videos, audio, javascript or other external sources, you specify their location by an own URL too.
For example you have this directory structure on your server, which resolves to the following accessible URLs (asuming your website is www.example.com):
|-- /index.html -> www.example.com/index.html
|-- /images/ -> www.example.com/images/
| |-- /banner.png -> www.example.com/images/banner.png
| +-- /icons/ -> www.example.com/icons/
| +-- favicon.png -> www.example.com/icons/favicon.png
+-- /audio/ -> www.example.com/audio/
|-- intro.mp3 -> www.example.com/audio/intro.mp3
+-- voice.flac -> www.example.com/audio/voice.flac
When you access index.html your browser will look for all the other embedded URLs and will get them from the server too. You can use tools like Firebug for Firefox or the Chrome Developer Console to capture the requests. One of those requests should be the URL to the media file.
If you have an HTML <embed> tag (or a <img> tag), the URL to that media is specified by the src attribute, which can be also examined with tools like Firebug or the Chrome Developer Console. You can make a rightclick->Inspect Element anywhere on the page and examine the HTML.
<embed src="/audio/intro.mp3"> -> www.example.com/audio/intro.mp3
F12 to bring up the Developer Tools window (in Firefox as well if you have Firebug installed). In the Developer Tools window, go to the Network view, click on the speaker icon on the target page, and for the example you posted above you'll see the following URL appear in the list of requests in the Network view: img.tfd.com/hm/mp3/H0004900.mp3
Commented
Jun 25, 2013 at 21:59
<embed src="http://img.tfd.com/m/sound.swf" flashvars="sound_src=http://img.tfd.com/hm/mp3/H0004900.mp3"...
Commented
Jun 25, 2013 at 22:01
Another way to find url with audio file is check get requests by Developer Tools in Chrome browser:
Nowadays webpages commonly uses players written with Javascript, so you need a little html and js knowledge to dig out and use some web development tools like others mentioned
But there is an easier way of doing this. You can just use an app like Internet Download Manager (IDM) which offers to download any kind of multimedia file on playing on a browser. It supports all audio video playing websites like Youtube, Grooveshark etc. Its shareware but you can make this operation with trial version too.
Install the application and restart your browser. It supports Firefox, Chrome, Opera, IE, Safari etc.
When you play the file on the page you will see an icon on the left top of the window
After you click icon you will see the download file info window which has file url and other information. You can copy and use file name part of the url. Usually it has a pattern and you can guess or find paths of other files.
Developer console.,
Once you open your internet go to the settings and to find developer console. What ever is on the page will be provided in the source code. You just have to find it. Some sites block this info from viewers being able to see the things like location, dates, times. But depending on what site you're visiting you may be able to find this information. As long as the site isn't high security, like government or porn..... You should be able to find the original links and everything else to be honest. You will be surprised at the amount of information that can be pulled from this. If you ask me, This is the smartest and most simplistic way to do it. You don't have to build any code or use anyone's else's code. Your just simply phishing for the information you need on the websites source code.
