Update: 10.17.2007

http://www.orbitdownloader.com/download.htm

This is a free app that allows you to sniff for pretty much any media file, even if they have caching turned off. As an example, I was able to download a 60 Minutes interview with Osteen and Horton from a flash video streaming server. Pretty awesome …
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Figured this out today, not really difficult or all that complicated, but you do need some fundamental computer knowledge to be able to do this (Instructions for XP only):

1) Download and install Firefox (if you haven’t already, shame on you – www.getfirefox.com ).

2) Download and install a Flash Video player (I use Riva FLV Player – http://www.rivavx.com/index.php?id=422 ).

3) Using Firefox, browse to the website where the video resides.

4) If the video doesn’t auto-play, click the play button on the flash player in the browser. This will initiate the download of the FLV file into the Firefox cache. Also, you’ll want to wait for the whole file to download within the player before proceeding. Otherwise you’ll only get part of the video.

5) Browse to “C:Documents and Settings(Profile name)Local SettingsApplication DataMozillaFirefoxProfiles(random numbers & letters).defaultCache”

6) Sort by date to show the most recent files in the Cache folder.

7) The FLV file will be a random letter/number named file with no file extension and should be the largest file at the top (or near the top of the list, may be second, third, or forth). It WILL NOT be the files starting with “_CACHE_”. FLV files are usually going to be several megabytes in size. If the video is short though, it could possibly be smaller than a meg.

8) Copy the file out of this folder, paste it to your desktop (or some other location), rename the file and put a .flv extension on the end of it.

9) Attempt to open the file with the FLV player. If it plays your video, you’ve successfully copied over the correct file. If not you’ll need to try one of the other large files at the top of the list in the Cache folder.

(Optional)

10) Sign up for a free account @ www.mediaconverter.org and convert your FLV file into any other major video file format (Max. 100 MB file)

– So far, I have been able to obtain Flash Videos from ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Youtube, Google, MySpace, MyFoxDFW, and several other sites. The only one I couldn’t get it to work on was NBC when trying to snag Heroes. They apparently have caching turned off on those files. So it’s possible that at the server level, if the site has caching turned off, this won’t work. You’ll have to go a different route to download the file … maybe using this … http://www.mediapirate.org/