Hello stevieb,

I found an old article from 2000 (Capturing Video in Real Time) mentioning a few things interesting if you ask me. Maybe Video::Capture::V4l module? Try to give it a go based on the information of the article, maybe you can come in contact with the author of the module and the article, maybe they have some progress on that.

I think that could be a a good starting point, hope this helps.

Update: Maybe also take a look here (3 Ways to Capture Adobe Flash Videos on Ubuntu Linux - wikiHow), it is written in Perl.

Update2: Have you read this (Perl and Video Capture), it has a code example and also some recommendations.