I bet most of you have no idea how much stuff loads with a web page. Most of the times what you see in the address bar is not even the real link as it is hidden behind javascript or ActiveX. That's why you are unable to find the real link to a Youtube video. But in the case of Youtube things are pretty simple as there are plenty of tools to get you that clip with little to no fuss.
However, if you want to see what hides behind javascript or just to have an idea on the number of links a webpage accesses during load up, you need a special tool able to sniff them. And if you combine the link sniffing feature with the ability of downloading whatever loads in that page, you've got yourself quite an instrument there, able to help you download videos on any webpage of the Web.
Fire Lion's Link Sniffer is designed exactly for this and comes at a $19.99 price (special Christmas offer which I personally hope will stick a while longer than Yuletide season). It is available for testing, but unfortunately there is a limit of 10 links sniffing, so you'd better be careful what pages you load during evaluation.
Link Sniffer comes with a straightforward interface and there is no beating about the bush. It comes with an intuitive toolbar and all you need is a glance in order to learn how to use it. The application's main instruments are the Sniffer, which detects all the links loading in a webpage, the Downloader, which manages all items you want to download from the links, and the Mini Browser.
Besides all this Link Sniffer is also equipped with a video converter, in case you want downloaded files to be saved as AVI, MPEG, 3GP, ASF, FLV, MOV, MP4, OGG, MP3, WAV, WMA or WMV. Unfortunately, with OGG format we have encountered some problems as the resulting file would not play in an audio player and upon loading the file into a video player it ran without sound. Several tests later with different files led to the same result.
Working with the application is easy; simply start the sniffer (the green arrow is a good clue in this sense) and load up pages. In almost an instant Link Sniffer will begin displaying the links in the page. Downloading movie clips is as easy as spotting the URLs for the largest file size, right clicking and choosing the download option.
Link Sniffer offers the possibility of automatically converting the files to popular video formats like AVI, MPEG or WMV. You can also extract just the audio and save it as MP3 or WMA (extracting in OGG format did not work during our testing).
In some cases the file may not download to the computer (this generally happens with URLs that do not end with a file name and .flv extension). In this case you can copy the URL to clipboard and paste it in your browser's address bar. This should start the download of the video file with the web browser.
Link Sniffer can be used to convert any movie file you have on your computer and corresponds to the list of supported standards. You get to choose the output format and the video size (preserving the original or reducing it will provide the best quality of the result). After conversion is over the original file can be automatically deleted from the hard disk.
When downloading the application can handle multiple tasks at the same time, providing the user with the percentage of the complete task. Unfortunately there is no pause button and if you want to interrupt an activity you will have to delete the entire file from the list as you cannot stop the operation or pause it.
After the task is complete you can manage some very useful options like playing the file in the built-in FLV player, open the folder it is stored in or open it from Link Sniffer with the associated player on your computer.
Link Sniffer should work with all browsers (we tested it with Internet Explorer, Opera and Firefox) but if it gives you trouble with discovering the links simply copy them in its internal browser and watch the Sniffer. Mini Browser is trimmed to the basics offering the possibility of navigating back and forth and stopping the loading of a page. There is no tab support for favorite link storage as it is designed simply for loading pages for the Sniffer to check.
Although Options menu may not seem like much, it has a very important role as besides letting you decide the default folder for saving the files it also allows setting up profiles for the Sniffer. It will only look for those files you tell it to monitor the webpages for. The eight profiles available cover a pretty wide range of multimedia files as well as archives, different document types (DOC, PDF, XLS, PPT, RTF, TXT) and images. If the list of extensions does not suit your needs you can add your own file formats for the Sniffer to look for.
Link Sniffer is an easy way to pick up multimedia files loading with a webpage. The downside is that the average user may not be comfortable with just viewing the links and displaying a thumbnail of the file the link directs to would be absolutely great. However, Link Sniffer allows you the download of video clips from a myriad of websites like YouTube, Metacafe, iFilm or MySpace (these are just a few that came to my mind but I am sure you have a much larger list of video sources).
The Good
Link Sniffer does a great job at detecting links loading in a webpage and displaying the size of the files they are pointing to, as well as allowing you to download them to a user defined location.
It comes with eight profiles designed for detecting all sorts of files and these can be customized by the user by adding new extensions to be sniffed.
All downloaded files can be converted to a wide palette of formats easily and quickly. The application is flexible as it allows the user to add more strings to profiles, thus enriching its sniff senses.
The Bad
The application still has a few issues to be fixed. During our testing we encountered a few websites whose links required copy/pasting in the web browser for download.
Also, converting to OGG format resulted in the audio track of the clip being eliminated while preserving only the video (exactly the opposite of what every user would expect).
For download tasks in progress there is no way to pause the job or stop it unless you delete the file from the list, which will also delete the file from the disk.
Trial version is limited to ten links, which can make testing it a bit more difficult especially if you choose the wrong profile first (Image Profile will detect a myriad of links).
The Truth
All in all the application does a great job and its users do not require special knowledge for handling it. It may let you down sometimes as it will not detect the links on each and every page you load, but the overall percentage is quite good.
For DailyMotion.com you may not get a valid link, but that's just because they have changed the type of link and Link Sniffer does not include it. Here's a tip: adding .on2? to Default or Multimedia profile will solve the problem.
The original price was cut in half dropping from $39.99 to $19.99 as a special offer. Frankly I hope the offer is unlimited as this is the right price for the application, but that is up to the developing company.
Source: http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/FireLion-Link-Sniffer--Review-74354.shtml
Thanks to SoftPedia review team for their hard works.
