How can I export an Adobe Connect recording as a video?

I wrote this Python script to export an Adobe Connect recording as a video:

'''
Requirements:
- python 2.7 or 3
- wget, unzip, and ffmpeg accessible from command line.

Examples:
python connect2vid_v2.py https://my.adobeconnect.com/pqc06mcawjgn/  --output_filename=" Understanding how the Network impacts your service"

Please email Franck Dernoncourt <[email protected]> if you improve this code.
'''

import shlex
import subprocess
import os
import glob
import argparse
import sys
import re


def run_command(command):
    print('running command: {0}'.format(command))
    process = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split(command), stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    while True:
        output = process.stdout.readline()
        print(output.strip())
        if output == b'' and process.poll() is not None:
            print('Done running the command.')
            break
        if output:
            print(output.strip())
    rc = process.poll()
    return rc

def create_folder_if_not_exists(directory):
    '''
    Create the folder if it doesn't exist already.
    '''
    if not os.path.exists(directory):
        os.makedirs(directory)

def extract_connect_id(parser, args):
    '''
    Function written by Aaron Hertzmann
    '''
    # ----- extract the connectID or ZIP file  -----

    if len(args.URLorIDorZIP) < 1:
    #    print('Error: No Connect recording URL provided.')
        parser.print_help()
        sys.exit(0)

    if args.URLorIDorZIP[0][-4:].lower() == '.zip':
        sourceZIP = args.URLorIDorZIP[0]
        connectID = os.path.basename(sourceZIP[:-4])
    elif len(args.URLorIDorZIP[0]) == 12:
        connectID = args.URLorIDorZIP[0]
    else:
        s = args.URLorIDorZIP[0].split('/')
        connectID = None
        for i in range(len(s)-1):
            if 'adobeconnect.com' in s[i]:
                connectID = s[i+1]
                break
        if connectID == None:
            print("Error: couldn't parse URL")
            sys.exit(1)

    return connectID


def main():
    '''
    This is the main function
    '''

    # ================ parse the arguments (part of the parsing code was written by Aaron Hertzmann) ======================

    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Download an Adobe Connect recording and convert to a video file.')
    parser.add_argument('URLorIDorZIP', nargs='*', help='URL, code, or ZIP file for the Connect recording')
    parser.add_argument('--output_folder',default='output_videos',help='Folder for output files')
    parser.add_argument('--output_filename',default='noname', help='output_filename')
    args = parser.parse_args()

    #main_output_folder = "all_videos"
    main_output_folder = args.output_folder
    output_filename = args.output_filename
    output_filename =  re.sub(r'[^\w\s]','', output_filename)
    output_filename = output_filename.replace('@', '').strip()
    print('output_filename: {0}'.format(output_filename))
    connect_id = 'pul1pgdvpr87'
    connect_id = 'p6vwxp2d0c2f'
    connect_id = extract_connect_id(parser, args)
    video_filename = 'hello'
    video_filename = output_filename

    # ================ Download video  ======================
    output_folder = connect_id
    output_zip_filename = '{0}.zip'.format(connect_id)
    create_folder_if_not_exists(output_folder)
    create_folder_if_not_exists(main_output_folder)

    # Step 1: retrieve audio and video files
    connect_zip_url = 'https://my.adobeconnect.com/{0}/output/{0}.zip?download=zip'.format(connect_id)
    wget_command = 'wget -nc -O {1} {0}'.format(connect_zip_url, output_zip_filename) # -nc, --no-clobber: skip downloads that would download to existing files.
    run_command(wget_command)
    unzip_command = 'unzip -n {0} -d {1}'.format(output_zip_filename, output_folder) # -n: Unzip only newer files.
    run_command(unzip_command)

    # Step 2: create final video output
    cameraVoip_filepaths = []
    for filepaths in sorted(glob.glob(os.path.join(output_folder, 'cameraVoip_*.flv'))):
        cameraVoip_filepaths.append(filepaths)
    print('cameraVoip_filepaths: {0}'.format(cameraVoip_filepaths))

    screenshare_filepaths = []
    for filepaths in sorted(glob.glob(os.path.join(output_folder, 'screenshare_*.flv'))):
        screenshare_filepaths.append(filepaths)

    part = 0
    output_filepaths = []
    for cameraVoip_filepath, screenshare_filepath in zip(cameraVoip_filepaths, screenshare_filepaths):
        output_filepath = os.path.join(main_output_folder, '{0}_{1:04d}.flv'.format(video_filename, part))
        #output_filepath = '{0}_{1:04d}.flv'.format(video_filename, part)
        output_filepaths.append(output_filepath)
        # ffmpeg command from Oliver Wang / Yannick Hold-Geoffroy / Aaron Hertzmann
        conversion_command = 'ffmpeg -i "%s" -i "%s" -c copy -map 0:a:0 -map 1:v:0 -shortest -y "%s"'%(cameraVoip_filepath, screenshare_filepath, output_filepath)
        # -y: override output file if exists
        run_command(conversion_command)
        part += 1

    # Concatenate all videos into one single video
    # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7333232/how-to-concatenate-two-mp4-files-using-ffmpeg
    video_list_filename = 'video_list.txt'
    video_list_file = open(video_list_filename, 'w')
    for output_filepath in output_filepaths:
        video_list_file.write("file '{0}'\n".format(output_filepath))
    video_list_file.close()
    final_output_filepath = '{0}.flv'.format(video_filename)
    # ffmpeg command from Oliver Wang / Yannick Hold-Geoffroy / Aaron Hertzmann
    conversion_command = 'ffmpeg -safe 0 -y -f concat -i "{1}" -c copy "{0}"'.format(final_output_filepath, video_list_filename)
    run_command(conversion_command)
    #os.remove(video_list_filename)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
    #cProfile.run('main()') # if you want to do some profiling


Explanation on how the script works:

Assume that the Adobe Connect ID is p6vwxp2d0c2f, i.e. the URL is https://my.adobeconnect.com/p6vwxp2d0c2f. You can add /output/p6vwxp2d0c2f.zip?download=zip at the end of the URL to download some zip archive containing a bunch of audio and video files as well as some .xml files. E.g., https://my.adobeconnect.com/p6vwxp2d0c2e/output/p6vwxp2d0c2e.zip?download=zip could contain:

 Directory of C:\Users\[...]\p6vwxp2d0c2f

02/09/2019  11:27 AM    <DIR>          .
02/09/2019  11:27 AM    <DIR>          ..
02/09/2019  11:00 AM        52,239,473 cameraVoip_1_11.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         1,364,573 cameraVoip_1_11.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         7,176,904 cameraVoip_1_15.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM           188,012 cameraVoip_1_15.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             6,004 cameraVoip_1_3.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             1,698 cameraVoip_1_3.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM        62,603,505 cameraVoip_1_7.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         1,625,383 cameraVoip_1_7.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             2,249 ftcontent1.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             8,219 ftcontent1.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM            25,685 ftcontent13.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM            85,464 ftcontent13.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM           199,781 ftcontent5.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM           657,091 ftcontent5.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM           182,297 ftcontent9.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM           601,758 ftcontent9.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             1,354 fttitle0.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             3,272 fttitle0.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             1,354 fttitle12.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             3,298 fttitle12.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             1,354 fttitle4.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             3,290 fttitle4.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             1,354 fttitle8.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             3,298 fttitle8.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         1,815,158 indexstream.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         7,703,603 indexstream.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         5,316,597 mainstream.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM        21,259,001 mainstream.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM       217,448,561 screenshare_2_10.flv
02/09/2019  11:01 AM         1,364,572 screenshare_2_10.xml
02/09/2019  11:01 AM        32,364,457 screenshare_2_14.flv
02/09/2019  11:01 AM           188,011 screenshare_2_14.xml
02/09/2019  11:01 AM           387,981 screenshare_2_2.flv
02/09/2019  11:01 AM             1,698 screenshare_2_2.xml
02/09/2019  11:01 AM       237,470,572 screenshare_2_6.flv
02/09/2019  11:01 AM         1,625,385 screenshare_2_6.xml
02/09/2019  11:01 AM                48 telephony-files.xml
02/09/2019  11:01 AM               691 transcriptstream.flv
02/09/2019  11:01 AM             2,391 transcriptstream.xml
              39 File(s)    653,935,396 bytes
               2 Dir(s)   1,590,358,016 bytes free
  • cameraVoip__.xml contains the audio + webcam if any.
  • screenshare__.xml contains the audio + webcam if any.

To merge them, you can use ffmpeg (I took the ffmpeg commands from Oliver Wang / Yannick Hold-Geoffroy / Aaron Hertzmann):

ffmpeg -i cameraVoip_1_11.flv -i screenshare_2_10.flv -c copy -map 0:a:0 -map 1:v:0 -shortest output.flv

where:

  • -map 0:a:0: map the first input file to be used just for the audio.
  • -map 1:v:0: map the second input file to be used just for the video.
  • -shortest: cut the audio or video in case cameraVoip_1_11.flv and screenshare_2_10.flv don't have the same length.

If you want to keep the webcam video and place it in some corner of the video screen sharing:

ffmpeg -i cameraVoip_1_11.flv -i screenshare_2_10.flv  \
                         -filter_complex \
                         "color=s=1072x480:c=black [base]; [0:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=640x480 [upperleft]; [1:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=432x240 [upperright]; [base][upperleft] overlay=shortest=1 [tmp1]; [tmp1][upperright] overlay=shortest=1:x=640" \
                         -c:v libx264 -c:a mp2 output.mkv

Regarding mapping the cameraVoip__.xml to the correct screenshare__.xml, in case there is more than one:

One could look at the cameraVoip__.xml / screenshare__.xml to get the timestamps of when the audio / screen share video began. This allows to map the screenshare__.xml with the correct cameraVoip__.xml.

E.g., in https://my.adobeconnect.com/p6vwxp2d0c2f/output/p6vwxp2d0c2f.zip?download=zip, from cameraVoip_1_11.xml, line 21:

<String><![CDATA[Thu Feb 07 21:11:23 2019]]></String>

Otherwise, another way could be to sort cameraVoip__.xml / screenshare__.xml, then map the first cameraVoip__.xml with the first screenshare__.xml, the second cameraVoip__.xml with the first screenshare__.xml, etc. I don't know if it'd break in some cases (seems to be ok for the couple of Adobe Connect recordings I looked at but perhaps that's because people always share screens).


  1. Log into your Adobe Connect account
  2. Click on Meetings > My Meetings
  3. Click on the link for the recording
  4. Click the “Recordings” link (right-side of screen)
  5. Click the link in the “Name” column
  6. Copy the “URL for Viewing” – Example, http://mycompany.adobeconnect.com/p12345678/
  7. Paste it into a new browser tab then add the following to the end of the URL: output/filename.zip?download=zip
  8. Your URL should look similar to this example, http://mycompany.adobeconnect.com/p12345678/output/filename.zip?download=zip