How to download a PDF file from a web page using Flash Player (flexpaper)

[Pynot]

Hi,

I need to download a PDF file from a web page that uses Flash Player as a document viewer (I guess it uses "Flexpaper Viewer" tool to protect the PDFs from download). Is it possible to download it? Or would I have to convert those SWF files to PDF (I don`t even know if that is possible...)?

EDIT: So, this Flexpaper Viewer is the PDF converted to SWF and split (each page gets one .swf file).

Here is what I did:
1: Grabbed the swf links using Adblock Plus function "Open blockable links"
2: Created a download list on IDM with those links and downloaded them.
3: Batch converted the .swf files to .tiff using SWFTools (swfrender command line tool) with this script:

for %F in (*.swf) do "C:\swftools\swfrender.exe" "%F" -o "%~dpnF.tiff" -X 1210 -Y 1712

-x = width, -y = height
4: Created a multipage PDF from those TIFFs using Irfanview Tumbnails
5: Now I'm doing a OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scan on the pdf with Abbyy FineReader 11 Corporate.

After the scan, I think the document will become a text searchable pdf, not 100% but the biggest part.

Thanks everyone that helped.

Best Regards.

[Throndor]

Hey there,

as far as I know downloading the PDF file directly is not possible. You could try to download the swf file from the website using the "Flash and Video"-addon for Firefox (http://tinyurl.com/68ttf76). Then you have the file on your PC and print it or use a virtual printer to convert it to PDF (if that is possible in this case).

Best Regards

[Pynot]

Hey there,

as far as I know downloading the PDF file directly is not possible. You could try to download the swf file from the website using the "Flash and Video"-addon for Firefox (http://tinyurl.com/68ttf76). Then you have the file on your PC and print it or use a virtual printer to convert it to PDF (if that is possible in this case).

Best Regards

Thanks for the help m8.

I managed to get all the swf files for each page with IDM (692 swf files).

Now I need to batch convert those swf frames into high dpi image or pdf file, so I can use Abbyy FineReader with OCR to create a searchable PDF.

Does anyone know a command to that on Windows 7, using FFMPEG or SWFTOOLS (SWFRENDER)?

Thanks.

[poisondeathray]

These are compressed swf shape elements (not video or jpg/png elements), so ffmpeg/mencoder/libav cannot open them

You can use swfrender from swftools to batch render each swf to a lossless png
Then you have the option to convert that png image sequence to whatever

Just replace the "PATHs" with the actual directory paths for swfrender.exe, the input directory, and output directory

for %a in ("*.swf") do "SWF_RENDER_PATH\swfrender" "INPUT_PATH\%a" -o "OUTPUT_PATH\%~na.png"

[Pynot]

These are compressed swf shape elements (not video or jpg/png elements), so ffmpeg/mencoder/libav cannot open them

You can use swfrender from swftools to batch render each swf to a lossless png
Then you have the option to convert that png image sequence to whatever

Just replace the "PATHs" with the actual directory paths for swfrender.exe, the input directory, and output directory

for %a in ("*.swf") do "SWF_RENDER_PATH\swfrender" "INPUT_PATH\%a" -o "OUTPUT_PATH\%~na.png"

Thank you very much for your help.
I had found that script to batch convert them some hours ago, but I've converted the .swfs to .tiff instead. Do you think that tiff has less quality than png, I mean do you think that png would be better for a OCR reading on Abbyy FineReader than tiff? Or a change in the container format has no difference in quality?
Thanks m8.

[poisondeathray]

There is no quality difference between tiff and png.

png will be smaller in filesize, because it uses lossless compression, tiff is uncompressed

If you're familiar with audio, the analogy would be flac vs. uncompressed pcm wav

[Pynot]

There is no quality difference between tiff and png.

png will be smaller in filesize, because it uses lossless compression, tiff is uncompressed

If you're familiar with audio, the analogy would be flac vs. uncompressed pcm wav

I see. Now I'll just wait the loooooooong OCR reading on Abbyy, hope the program doesn't crash...

Thanks man.

Best Regards.

[nikolanm]

Hi,

I need to download a PDF file from a web page that uses Flash Player as a document viewer (I guess it uses "Flexpaper Viewer" tool to protect the PDFs from download). Is it possible to download it? Or would I have to convert those SWF files to PDF (I don`t even know if that is possible...)?

EDIT: So, this Flexpaper Viewer is the PDF converted to SWF and split (each page gets one .swf file).

Here is what I did:
1: Grabbed the swf links using Adblock Plus function "Open blockable links"
2: Created a download list on IDM with those links and downloaded them.
3: Batch converted the .swf files to .tiff using SWFTools (swfrender command line tool) with this script:

for %F in (*.swf) do "C:\swftools\swfrender.exe" "%F" -o "%~dpnF.tiff" -X 1210 -Y 1712

-x = width, -y = height
4: Created a multipage PDF from those TIFFs using Irfanview Tumbnails
5: Now I'm doing a OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scan on the pdf with Abbyy FineReader 11 Corporate.

After the scan, I think the document will become a text searchable pdf, not 100% but the biggest part.

Thanks everyone that helped.

Best Regards.

Hi,

I know this is old thread, but I need this solution a lot now... Is there any software or better way now to download books that are in flash from a website? Or at least can you explain this steps further?

Thanks,

Nikola