iku

bababardwan
 September 09, 2010, 12:08 PM posted in General Discussion

dajia hao. I'd like to download a youku video. To do this it seems I need to download iku:

http://c.youku.com/iku/

which youku directly links to. Does anyone know if this iku site/application is safe? Is it an adware risk?

the main benefit I see in downloading from youku, is that I should then be able to watch the video uninterrupted. As it is, youku only downloads a few seconds at a time and then pauses for many more seconds.

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simonpettersson
 September 09, 2010, 12:22 PM

You could also download Safari. It lets you download Youku vids without any other software needed. I think the command is Alt-a to open the … activities? … window. From there, you look through the different files Safari has loaded, find the 50+ MB FLV file and double click it. Easy as pie.

Since I pay by the byte, I only want to download Youku vids once, even if I wish to see them many times.

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bababardwan

awesome mate. Great tip. I really appreciate it. I'll give it a shot. So good to have you back. Cheers :)

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bababardwan

on windows 7 the command is Ctrl+Alt+a...or navigate by clicking on "window" . I've double clicked on the file and nothing seems to be happening. I guess I may just have to give it half an hour to load or something. I hope it works in Windows 7 as well as on Macs.

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bababardwan

sorry mate. I think I've worked it out. I'll know in a couple of minutes.

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bababardwan

13.7MB was by far the biggest file. Double clicked and downloaded that, which has taken just under 1/2 hour. It's flashvideo, so doesnt play in windows media player, so used a video converter. Works perfectly after converting it. Only trouble is that is only 7 minutes of video out of a roughly 1 hour show. I note this iku also had something with it that supposedly makes for faster downloading. I think it's different there in China, but I've always found video from China incredibly slow to download here in Australia [despite having broadband]. Youtube on the otherhand is very fast.

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simonpettersson

It's not extremely slow, but it's hardly fast here. VLC plays FLV files without problems. Do you mean you only got seven minutes of a movie that's an hour on the site? That's weird; this method has worked well for me, but then I haven't tried any longer videos.

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bababardwan

Hey Simon, thanks again for what looks like another great tip in the VLC player. It looks like I might be able to play stuff without using a videoconverter.

Do you mean you only got seven minutes of a movie that's an hour on the site?

..yes, that's exactly what I mean. The show [ China Rush Amazing Race] goes for about an hour each episode including ads. On youku the one I clicked on said it actually went for over an hour. I wondered if that 13.7MB just took you to the first ad break and it was broken by ads or something, but all the other files were very small kB files, so there didn't seem to be any other flv files and it wasn't at an ad that it ended. It could have been just that video I guess, but though slow, I'm pretty sure I had watched it beyond that cut out point on youku itself and youku's timeline down the bottom did show it going over an hour. I just hope it was an error in that one particular video and it works in others. Perhaps I should have given it a lot longer, but you're meant to be able to download before it's fully downloaded on the site.

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hamshank

My guess is that I think youku intentionally breakup the files to make you use their software to download and rebuild the files.

I notice if you press play on something then pause it and leave it for a while, the file will only buffer to a certain point. Once you reach another point in the playback it will start buffering the next section.

Hmm....Note to the above...My memory could easily have gotten mixed up between youku with tudou.

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bababardwan

I think you're probably right. Do you have an opinion on whether their software, specifically iku is safe to use?

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hamshank

I honestly do not know. I have avoided it myself because my Chinese is not good enough to be reading whether it also installs annoying things like browser searches etc. It also makes it hard to find any opinions online about it.

I would keep an eye out for extensions in Firefox, Chrome etc...There are occasionally ones that say they support downloading from Youku and Tudou. I'm not sure how good they are but I guess it's a lot safer to try them then actually installing a full program on the PC but I am no expert on things like that.

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bababardwan

ok, I've tried several methods now. The best I've found for a longer video like this is "clipnabber" which shows all the flv files at once for the video. All the other methods only showed the 1st 7 minute file initially [ including the firefox extension downloadhelper]. Yeah, it looks like long videos like this are broken down into several roughly 7 minute flv files. In clipnabber you still have to download them separately, but at least you can get them all downloading at the same time, rather than have to sit through the video and wait for each one to load. I still haven't tried iku yet though.

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kimiik

Sorry I didn't read that part before writting my last message.

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bababardwan

got this vlc player working...that's great...no need to convert the videos. I like a distinctive desktop icon too that makes it easy to spot.

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kimiik
 September 10, 2010, 03:19 PM

Did you try Video Download Toolbar ? To download Flash, that's the best I know and ... it's free.

http://download.cnet.com/Video-Download-Toolbar/3000-2071_4-10888342.html?tag=mncol

On YOUKU you video is cut in files of 10 minutes max. Then, you can get up to 20 files for a movie !

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bababardwan

I've downloaded it but had a lot of trouble trying to install it. Finally it has told me that it's not compatible with my browser/or operating system. I have latest versions of firefox [though I guess being the chinese version, perhaps that could be an issue] and ie, but I even tried changing my default browser to ie, but no luck. qiguai ah. Thanks anyway kimiik.

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kimiik

I also have the latest version of firefox as my default browser but use IE with VDT only to download FLV files.

Don't use VDT with your main browser or it will start everytime there's a flash on the screen. How annoying !

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bababardwan

yeah, I actually liked the idea of a vdt toolbar being installed in ie as I don't use ie otherwise, and I don't want toolbars unnecessarily installed in firefox [though I know you can deselect them in view]. Good tip though. That's exactly what's happening in firefox everytime there's any media content at all on the screen with a programme I installed called download helper. Don't know why this VDT won't install, as the website says it's compatible with windows 7 and ie 8, but the installer says there's a compatibility issue.

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simonpettersson
 September 11, 2010, 12:36 AM

Thought I'd post this, even if it might not help Baba (it might be of use to others looking at this thread). The trick I talked about using Safari above can be done in Firefox, too. You need to go to Tools -> Site info. On the "Media" tab you can access this sort of stuff.

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bababardwan

I like this tip too because I prefer firefox. However I'm having less luck with it than I was with safari. It might be because I'm using the Chinese version of Firefox. It doesn't have "site info" but rather the closest was page info, and going on the media tab under that, it did have a lot of similar files, but I couldn't find a flv file:

http://static.youku.com/index/img/bg_header.gif

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0607/index/img/logo_s.gif

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0123/v/swf/qplayer.swf

http://static.youku.com/index/img/master.png

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0607/v/img/ico_renren.gif

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0607/v/img/ico_Qzone.gif

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0607/v/img/ico_kaixin.gif

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0607/v/img/ico_sina.gif

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0607/v/img/ico_139.gif

http://static.atm.youku.com/201008/0818/BJ1584/u300-50sym.jpg

http://static.atm.youku.com/201008/0818/BJ1584/u300-250llsym.jpg

http://g4.ykimg.com/0130391F484B3DCE7F43AF02F05FB6F5D1FB9A-901A-1DF5-A38A-681BAA4F40BB?time=2010-02-15+09%3A56%3A10

http://g3.ykimg.com/0100641F464C715A4E1DE802F05FB6262AB236-49FE-5B41-99FB-353E5D468C1D

http://g3.ykimg.com/0100641F464C7A9566803C02F05FB6A678685F-DC3E-4E0F-DEB2-F46D27F3CB6D

http://g2.ykimg.com/0100641F464BB4E57104240375E98944461F5A-31B1-36CD-D958-C6827655991C

http://g1.ykimg.com/0100641F464B9F2F2C836E02F74F0B2505C194-8CF8-DA2A-AABE-091FF062D0D3

http://g2.ykimg.com/0100641F464BB48FAD4B3B03756786633BA836-64A7-0C1A-96C4-A64C4FC34F81

http://g1.ykimg.com/0100641F464C4BEBF4F6E900920A8F178D2D69-3431-98FB-888A-9B774ACA2B6A

http://g3.ykimg.com/0100641F464BC7301A996A038DDE3F418342D8-A962-53EE-5AE5-696B84A74068

http://g2.ykimg.com/0100641F464BD9441D127A00920A8FCD707D2F-432F-324A-4614-D93941C1005F

http://g1.ykimg.com/0100641F464BB37144262C025156702CC548E0-40BD-6F14-4516-BE2F50682C79

http://g2.ykimg.com/01270F1F464C83C87DABA5000000006547AFF5-4993-95B7-87ED-D92E06DC4B49

http://g2.ykimg.com/01270F1F464C8186F13DCA00000000B2883443-15CA-36A6-F3E9-D5C17A43BA5C

http://g2.ykimg.com/01270F1F464C7FC26D3B3600000000842EBC16-25B5-0390-EFC9-160FAE61D715

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0607/partner/img/ico_renren_16x16.png

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0607/partner/img/ico_sina_16x16.png

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0607/index/img/smiley/Yo17.gif

http://g1.ykimg.com/0100641F464C8AB4E498C0037531525675196F-1A41-BB31-6F60-8D9FBD5E7330

http://g1.ykimg.com/0100641F464C8A8680B1B2037A1F2485698ED4-A819-3288-7C2A-80706597A72B

http://g3.ykimg.com/01270F1F464C8A6DFE261700000000A135CBA8-6265-A9F0-88C2-7C9C9BA50B43

http://g3.ykimg.com/0100641F464C894A6E398F023FCB62CB55E093-BE27-CD1F-4841-AFA553A81497

chrome://livemargins/skin/monitor-background-horizontal.png

chrome://livemargins/skin/monitor-background-vertical.png

chrome://livemargins/skin/monitor-play-button.png

http://img.alimama.cn/cms/images/1283257290404.jpg

http://img.alimama.cn/cms/images/1283333896606.jpg

http://img.alimama.cn/cms/images/1283333917179.jpg

http://img.alimama.cn/cms/images/1283333992073.jpg

http://cpro.baidu.com/img/text_cpro_bright.png

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/abglogo/abg-zh-CN-100c-000000.png

http://mscdn.allyes.com.cn/sm/alisun/0910/cbskh18.jpg

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simonpettersson

I admit I didn't actually try with Firefox. I assumed FLV files were considered "Media", but it would seem they're not.