Download Random Images with SeqDownload

Many websites display random images every time a web page on their site is reloaded, webcams come to my mind as well that load a new image once every few minutes. Saving a sequence of images is really painful if you do it manually. You have to click reload, save the image, reload, save the image and repeat the process until you do not want to save any more images to your system.

SeqDownload is a nice little freeware application that automates this task for you: download the program from the link above and unpack it in to a directory of your choice - there is no installation involved, run it right from the location you unpacked the files to.

The program on first start shows an empty table. Click on new to add a new automated task. You will have to provide a web addres (url) of either the image that is constantly reloaded or of a web page that displays a random image.

Select the interval that you want the images to be downloaded in and compared to all previously saved images so that you do not end up with lots of duplicates on your hard drive. You also need to select an image format you want the pictures to be saved in.

SeqDownloader automatically downloads the images in the interval that you have specified during creation. If a new image appears it will be saved according to your rules. If an old image is displayed, nothing will be saved.

You can configure the program to monitor and download images from multiple locations on the Internet at once. This can be very useful if you are interested in downloading web cam images that get automatically pushed to the Internet on a site for instance. You may need to experiment a bit with the intervals in which the program tries to grab a new image.

It may make sense to check the website where those images are posted on to see if you can find information about the update interval there. You may be able to save quite a bit of bandwidth if you find the correct information.

Seq Download is a free portable application for all recent versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Tips

1. The program checks for images until you stop the process or exit it. There is no option to stop the process automatically after a set amount of time.
2. You can integrate the command in Internet Explorer so that it is easier to copy the web addresses to the application. It is not really needed though to work with the application.
3. You can create animated images via the File > JavaScript animation menu. This can be useful to create an animation out of images that you have downloaded so far.