rtmpdump: save RTMP streams as raw FLVs

Technology

If you’ve ever needed to download video that’s distributed in a Flash application, you may have encountered a scenario where the video is being streamed via RTMP instead of progressively downloaded over HTTP. Luckily, there’s application called rtmpdump which, as its name suggests, is able to dump an RTMP stream as if you had downloaded a standard FLV.

After downloading and building the source, you can save the contents of an RTMP stream with the following command, replacing the RTMP url and the desired output file name:

rtmpdump -r rtmp://hotname[:port]/path -o output.flv

The program is distributed with a Perl script called get_iplayer, which apparently used to be capable of quickly finding Hulu streams and passing them to rtmpdump, but it looks like this feature isn’t currently working due to a recent Hulu obfuscation switcheroo. My fingers are crossed that this will be available again soon, but until then, the tool is still useful for pulling content from RTMP urls that you know about.

rtmpdump

12 thoughts on “rtmpdump: save RTMP streams as raw FLVs

  1. Paul G says:

    Is there a Windoze version?

  2. Math Campbell says:

    It’s a good wee app that rtmpdump.
    I’m the developer of iPlayer Downloader, a mac-based BBC downloader, and we’re currently integrating get_iplayer into the app (we currently use a ruby script). Having some problem with path-forwarding but we’ll get there.

    The service did used to support hulu, but it’s main purpose is to get BBC iPlayer shows…
    You can get our app at http://www.lawrencedudley.co.uk/iplayer

  3. terra says:

    is there a new download-source for the rtmpdump?

    1. rtmpdump: save RTMP streams as raw FLVs Becky Stern says:

      I found a few promising leads by searching for it, it’s not on sourceforge anymore.

  4. Anonymous says:

    It is worth mentioning related programs like rtmpsuck and rtmpsrv

  5. Anonymous says:

    It is worth mentioning related programs like rtmpsuck and rtmpsrv

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