Trying to collect the old episodes of NYPD Blue, and there were some I couldn’t find on usenet. Turns out that the DVDs past season 4 were never produced. But there are old episodes, mostly captured from VHS that are out on Youtube.
After a little research, there is a cute way to capture the video files from youtube.
Click the episode on youtube to start it, and then capture the url in the browser location bar.
Now open VLC, select to play a network stream, and give it that url. It will start to play.
At this point, one can just tell VLC to convert and save, but that takes a long time. An easier and faster technique, as long as the youtube webm format is ok:
In vlc, with the stream playing, open tools->codec information and copy the link that is in the “Location” text box at the bottom.
Paste that link into a browser and go, and now the video plays directly from the Youtube servers.
Now you can just right click on the browser window where it is playing, and save video as.