Getting the AFL Videos from 2010 and 2011

All games from 2010 and 2011 are stored on the BigPond servers as simple mp4 files and would be easy to download if anybody had a link to them. The AFL website used to make this a simple problem, but the world is full of spoilsports and nowadays all the file links are hidden behind a wall of javascript. The BigPond AFL videos website is no friendlier. 


But it is not hard to discover a video link if you use FireFox.


Using FireFox and Download Helper


You can install DownloadHelper from the FireFox Add-ons manager or else by going directly to http://www.downloadhelper.net/. Both FireFox and DownloadHelper are (of course) free.
Then go to BigPond AFL Videos and use the fancy navigator to select ON DEMAND, Essendon TV (OK, some other club if that is what you really want) and Matches. Pick a match and it will start to play in an embedded Flash machine. Do not omit to set the quality as high as possible (there is a control for that under the video, on the right).


Now you will notice that the the DownloadHelper icon at the top of your browser has started to animate, and if you click the little down arrow next to the icon you will see the name of the file you are playing.

Wave your mouse over this name and one of your options is to download the file. Another option is to copy the file's URL, and you can do this if you prefer to download later or if (like me) you plan to share the link with somebody else. 


That's about it. As far as I know, any download from a BigPond server is unmetered for anybody who uses BigPond for internet access. I have never bothered to confirm this because I am signed up with iinet and it comes of my quota in any case. Perhaps somebody might comment. 


Patterns.


After you have discovered a few of these link addresses you start to see that they follow a predictable pattern. This is because the Telstra engineers use scripts to create the video files in the first place, and it has the benefit of making it easy for people like myself to use scripts to download them. It also means that you can predict the urls for any game from a few simple rules.


For most of 2010 and all of 2011 the pattern has been like this:
Q1 http://bptvpd.ngcdn.telstra.com/pd_afl0/OnDemand/2011/ON/iVideo/Premiership/RDnn/AFL11_rdnn_hhh_vs_aaa_1st_qr_full_2M.mp4
Q2 http://bptvpd.ngcdn.telstra.com/pd_afl0/OnDemand/2011/ON/iVideo/Premiership/RDnn/AFL11_rdnn_hhh_vs_aaa_2nd_qr_full_2M.mp4
Q3 http://bptvpd.ngcdn.telstra.com/pd_afl0/OnDemand/2011/ON/iVideo/Premiership/RDnn/AFL11_rdnn_hhh_vs_aaa_3rd_qr_full_2M.mp4
Q4 http://bptvpd.ngcdn.telstra.com/pd_afl0/OnDemand/2011/ON/iVideo/Premiership/RDnn/AFL11_rdnn_hhh_vs_aaa_4th_qr_full_2M.mp4


To make real links, replace nn (in both places) with the round number, hhh with the home team name and aaa with the away team name. Round numbers are 01, 02, 03 and so on. Team names are adel, bl, carl, coll, ess, fre, geel, gcfc, haw, melb, nmfc, port, rich, stk, syd, wce or wb.
The last half of 2010 used the same pattern except that 2011 used to be 2010 and AFL11 was  AFL10. You can see the pattern working in the tables underneath.


For Bombers Fans


Friendly sandbelt has a list of all Essendon matches from 2010 and 2011 (corrected 9/9/2011). If you want anything, just right-click a link:


2011

R01 ess v wb Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R02 syd v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R03 stk v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R04 carl v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R05 ess v coll Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R06 ess v gcfc Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R07 ess v wce Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R08 bl v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R09 rich v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R11 ess v melb Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R12 fre v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R13 ess v nmfc Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

R14 haw v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R15 ess v geel Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R16 ess v rich Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R17 adel v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R18 ess v carl Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R19 coll v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R20 ess v syd Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R21 wb v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R22 wce v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R23 ess v port Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 EF1 carl v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Mind you. I'm guessing about the final, it hasn't happened yet as I write this.


2010

R01 geel v ess All R02 ess v fre All R03 carl v ess All R04 wce v ess All R05 coll v ess All R06 ess v haw All R07 ess v port All R08 stk v ess All R09 ess v rich Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R10 ess v wb Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R11 syd v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

R12 ess v geel Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R13 haw v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R14 adel v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R15 melb v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R16 ess v wce Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R17 nmfc v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R18 ess v stk Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R19 ess v carl Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R20 ess v coll Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R21 ess v bl Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 R22 wb v ess Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

The next post will go into what you have to do to download the media streams from 2009 and 2008. I will eventually even cover 2007, because even though the quality is lousy there is some good historical stuff there, and I admit I got a kick out of seeing Mark Johnson with long white hair.