[2009.11.20] How to Download PDC2009 Videos using Firefox and DownThemAll!

This is a quick little post on how to download all the PDC 2009 videos in one go (well almost) with Firefox.

All you need is the DownThemAll! extension for Firefox and you are good to go. In case the link changes in the future just search for it on Mozilla's website.

Steps:

• Install DownThemAll!
• Go to the videos section on the PDC2009 main page
• Right click and select DownThemAll! from the context menu as in Fig. 1.

  
Fig. 1

• Set the location of the downloaded files (1) and add a filter (2) for the types of files you want to get. In this case, I wanted the high definition versions of the videos, but all the videos end with .wmv. The hi-def files are in the wmvhigh folder so by using that as the filter, I can only grab the ones I wanted. You can also change the filter to get the pptx files as well. This is in Fig. 2.
  NOTE: Make sure you have a few gigs of hard drive space and time, because it will take a while to get them all.

Fig. 2

• Once the download starts (you can change the number of simultaneous downloadable files) you will see something like Fig. 3. Don't worry about the incompletes or failed files, you can always go back and resume getting them. Notice also that the files are named in the format of CL00.wmv and FT00.wmv. The PDC website has a renamer batch file you can download to change the names of the files once they are downloaded. [Get the file and instructions]

  
Fig. 3