metacafe-dl: Download videos from metacafe.com

What is it?

metacafe-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from metacafe.com, based on the code of youtube-dl. Hence, it has the same requirements and features, and its syntax is very similar. The latest version is 2007.10.09. It's also licensed under the MIT License.

As with youtube-dl, I'll try to keep it updated if metacafe.com changes the way you access their videos, but the same circumstances apply. My contact information is at freshmeat.net.

Usage instructions

In Windows, once you have installed the Python interpreter, save the program with the .py extension and put it somewhere in the PATH. Follow the guide to install youtube-dl under Windows XP, as the instructions for metacafe-dl are identical.

In Unix, download it, give it execution permission and copy it to one of the PATH directories (typically, /usr/local/bin).

After that, you should be able to call it from the command line as metacafe-dl or metacafe-dl.py. I will use metacafe-dl in the following examples. Usage instructions are easy. Use metacafe-dl followed by a video URL. Example: metacafe-dl "http://www.metacafe.com/watch/somecode/blah/etc". The video will be saved to the file somecode.flv in that example. As metacafe.com videos are in Flash Video format, their extension should be flv. In Linux and other unices, video players using a recent version of ffmpeg can play them. That includes MPlayer, VLC, etc. Those two work under Windows and other platforms, but you could also get a specific FLV player of your taste.

If you try to run the program and you receive an error message containing the keyword SyntaxError near the end, it means your Python interpreter is too old.

More usage tips

You can change the file name of the video using the -o option, like in metacafe-dl -o vid.flv "http://www.metacafe.com/watch/somecode/blah/etc".
The simulate mode (activated with -s or --simulate) can be used to just get the real video URL and use it with a download manager if you prefer that option.
The quiet mode (activated with -q or --quiet) can be used to supress all output messages. This allows, in systems featuring /dev/stdout and other similar special files, outputting the video data to standard output in order to pipe it to another program without interferences.
The default filename is video_id.flv. But you can also use the video title in the filename with the -t or --title option. For this, the URL must include the video title, which is the typical case.
The program can be told to simply print the final video URL to standard output using the -g or --get-url option.
metacafe-dl honors the http_proxy environment variable if you want to use a proxy. Set it to something like http://proxy.example.com:8080, and do not leave the http:// prefix out.
You can get the program version by calling it as metacafe-dl -v or metacafe-dl --version.
For usage instructions, use metacafe-dl -h or metacafe-dl --help.
You can cancel the program at any time pressing Ctrl+C. It may print some error lines saying something about KeyboardInterrupt. That's ok.

Download it

Note that if you directly click on these hyperlinks, your web browser will most likely display the program contents. It's usually better to right-click on it and choose the appropriate option, normally called Save Target As or Save Link As, depending on the web browser you are using.

2007.10.09

MD5: 69348e455f70b048b8db1263b35f16c2
SHA1: 766e17c0cee0d3416d7120b4fc7397ce87e74ea7
SHA256: 44da4e8f6dc1b250f354e8159199252782b2c847df9face30feb92e66a5a88ce