Downloading videos from different platforms for offline viewing is not really difficult; usually all we need is an extension or an online service. However, streams are trickier creatures, since they can use several playlist and subtitle formats, making them harder to capture. That's where a Firefox-compatible extension called The Stream Detector comes in, helping you easily detect and copy video streams for extraction and use with other programs.
We have previously explained how to download saved Twitch live videos, and we've also shared some resources for downloading YouTube videos. But there are always those times when we need the URL of the playlist associated with a stream. Why? Maybe we want to move its playback from the browser to an external program, or try to record a few minutes. Detecting and copying video streams manually is not impossible, but if you prefer an extension to do the heavy lifting… the answer is The Stream Detector, compatible with Firefox.
How to detect and copy video streams with The Stream Detector
A simple click on the extension's icon will present all detected items, including playlists in M3U8, MPD, F4M, and ISM formats, and VTT, SRT, TTML, TTML2, and DFXP subtitles. MP4 and WebM files are also included. In fact, you can tell it to extract the stream URL with support for tools like youtube-dl, Kodi, and FFmpeg.
On certain portals, the amount of links that The Stream Detector detects is gigantic, and we recommend making good use of the filter to clean up results. Copying addresses as regular URLs is still interesting, since we can use them in classic players. For example, if you want to play a Twitch live stream with Media Player Classic Home Cinema, just open the address and press Play.
The developer of The Stream Detector does not recommend the extension on mainstream services like YouTube and Facebook because of their proprietary technologies, and because the support of other tools is much more robust (say, the aforementioned youtube-dl). At the same time, its GitHub profile hosts a copy of the extension for Chrome, but it has no support of any kind; it's there in case someone wants to experiment. Give it a try!
The Stream Detector (Firefox): Click here
