I am looking for simple, straightforward, reliable software or browser plugin that will save any video that streams on my monitor to a file I can subsequently put onto a DVD.

Is there such?

Months ago I had something that did that (Real Audio video downloader). If I hovered the mouse cursor over any video, a tab opened up at the top of the video that said "Record this video." Click the tab, the video was saved. But then Firefox did an update (without my asking it to) and put a message on my screen saying that it was disabling the Real Audio video downloader because it was causing stability issues with some users and nothing I have been able to do has ever gotten it to work again.

Recommendations?

tanstaafl.

Try this:
http://www.keepvid.com/

Apparently they are now called iLiVid now. I had an older keepvid.com that didn't work for me, so I tried the iLiVid program.

I have misgivings about any program whose default installation parameters are to install a toolbar that will be both ugly and useless and to change my default search engine to their own. After changing their installation defaults (see attached) I took a chance and installed the program. It didn't work, said I had no Flash plugin (YouTube would disagree with that statement) and since the new version of RealAudio I put in last night now works with FireFox, I deleted the iLiVid program.

However, I still cannot save the video I am want to put on DVD, apparently some videos are protected or incompatible format or ??? I really don't know a lot about this video downloading stuff. (Bet you'd never have guessed, right?)

Any idea how I could get this on a DVD so my Spanish teacher can play it for the class?

tanstaafl.

It's just an embedded Flash video. There should be other programs to allow ripping the video to disk. Once you've done that and have the .flv video file, you'll need another program to transcode the video and author the DVD. Most DVD authoring programs should handle the task, but if they don't import .flv you can use another program to convert it to a compatible format first (MPEG2 for instance).

This program might be able to pick the video from your cache folder: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/video_cache_view.html

And this program can take an flv and author a DVD from it: http://www.winxdvd.com/resource/convert-flv-to-dvd.htm

No, I play the video but it doesn't show in my cache.

tanstaafl.

I remember you asking this before, and I remember suggesting this one to you, but I don't remember whether it worked for you or not:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/

No, it doesn't seem to work for me. I can play and download other videos (from YouTube for example) but this particular one is resistant to my efforts.

Are some videos copy-protected or something>

tanstaafl.

Yes, that video is resisting download. It's embedded within the "Flow Player" flash object, and there's a layer of simple authentication it's going through to ensure that you can only play it from the page that requested it. I'm sure there's ways to work around that, but I don't know how at the moment. My usual solution was to use an app like that Video Download Helper, but for some reason it's not working for you.

If you don't want a feature set in the browser that may change every 4-6 weeks with new versions, switch over to their "Extended Support Releases". These only get upgraded once a year as far as features go, but still close security holes when found.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html