I found the location at last, It seems the new google chrome has changed the location for Flash temporary files, instead of using the old location for cache files
...AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache
it is using the below new location:
...\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash
However I am not sure if it is keeping all files there or only big files (say 100Mbs or more).
Thanks for help!
Update March 2018
Now a days, in most cases, youtube doesn't buffer complete video at once, it buffers in chunks as you watch. Pause the video, the buffering will also be paused.
Also, youtube, uses two WebM streams, one for video and other for audio. These both webM streams will be in cache as separate files. So we have to combine both to watch a video, or play both to watch the video. (But if you fallback to old browser which doesn't support WebM, youtube will fallback to MP4)
Again, not sure if browser is keeping the old chunks of the these files or not, but even if it is keeping, its very hard to find all those right chunks and combine them.
However, if you still interested, chrome uses below cache locations:
C:/Users/.../AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache
C:/Users/.../AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Media Cache\
I'm using a different version but maybe this helps you anyways.
I had this problem with the latest dev channel. Version 26.0.1397.2 dev
I fixed it by deleting the folder PepperFlash
in .config/google-chrome/
and .config/google-chrome/Default/Pepper\ Data/
, for some reason there is a copy of of the .so file for the pepper flash plugin, which is not really needed because there original copy on /opt/google/chrome/PepperFlash/
should be loaded as well which may be causing a conflict or something.
Make sure to backup your whole .config/google-chrome/
folder just in case.
I don't use the standalone flash package anymore, just the pepper flash version included with Chrome, just in case you are wondering.
Best Answer
Flash video files are marked with a delete-on-handle-closed flag whereupon as soon as the handle to the file is closed (eg, the page it’s playing in is closed), the file-system immediately deletes the file. Furthermore, you cannot simply keep the page open and then copy the file because these files are opened in exclusive-access mode, so trying to open or copy them gives an access-denied error.
What you need to do to copy Flash videos from the browser cache (this works for other browsers as well, but you need to change the cache directory) is as follows:
%localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache
for Google Chrome%localappdata%\Chromium\User Data\Default\Cache
for ChromiumNB, most video players can’t play partial Flash videos. That is, you need to make sure to have the beginning of the video, even if you stop the download before it finish. In other words, you can’t just skip to the middle of a video, then use Unlocker to copy a section from the middle because when you try to play it back, it will not work (the video will be blank, and if you are lucky, you may get the audio). Getting it from the start of the video, but stopping before the end does however work, though it may stop playing back some seconds before the actual point at which you stopped it (because of the block-nature of the encoding scheme used).
Also, you can always just use a video-downloading extension. I prefer YousableTubeFix because it includes Youtube customizing functions like disabling autoplay/autobuffer, removing comments, etc. There are also websites like KeepVid that can get you the videos for download.
Update:
Most of the above information (about copying the videos) applies to older versions of Chrome (extensions still work well—for now). The Chrome devs have changed how various things like streaming videos work and where certain files are stored since this question was first asked and I originally wrote this answer. It is now much easier to copy (most) streaming videos. The other answers below now apply to videos streamed in Chrome, but since they are still changing them, you should check each location to be sure you get the right file(s).
In newer versions (~21, 22 or so and up?) Chrome no longer uses locked-temporary files in the temp-directory. Instead, it now saves streaming videos to the regular browser cache folder in the User Data Directory (e.g.,
%localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache
) and the files can be easily copied from the OS (e.g., Windows Explorer).However they still have no descriptive filenames and must be identified first. This is easier if you first clear the browser cache before starting the video and then sorting the files by size.
Note however that this still only applies to certain videos like those on YouTube; sites that use other methods of streaming videos like RTSP will still not work as they still use “native files” in Windows (and presumably tmpfs in *nix/Mac). As such, they must still be “ripped” using the same stream-capturing tools as before.