How do I find links for iTunes U Videos to download using the 'resume' feature in curl

Question

I have a flaky internet connection and I was trying to download some course videos on iTunes U. Three attempts to download 800 MB files failed because the connection was reset. So I'm now trying to find a way to use curl and its -C - option to download the videos with the ability to resume.

But I struggled to find an effective way to get the link from which iTunes downloads the videos. There might be CDN's hosting the content and the URL's will change over time. But how do I find out which link curl must download the video files from right now?

These are free videos and I don't think there's authentication involved. Even if that were the case, there should be some way to get the relevant cookies and use them with curl.

Update: I found a link to the RSS feed in this case and I picked up the link to the relevant mp4 files. But in general, how do I get to the rss feeds for iTunes U courses?

Answer 1

It turned out to be pretty simple in the end. I just had to grab the source of the rss feed that instructed my browser to switch to iTunes. Once I download the rss feed using a tool like curl, this one for example, it's a matter of scraping the links to the mp4 files and downloading them with curl.