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Streaming audio recording forum





• Streaming audio recording forum
  
  Ask your questin about streaming audio recorders, streaming audio rippers.

• Replay Music ^{editor's choice}
  
  Record any web radio station or streaming music service. Get perfectly separated high quality MP3 files, automatically tagged with the artist and song title. Record from Yahoo! Music Unlimited, iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo LaunchCast, Music Match Radio, Radio@Netscape, AOL Radio, AccuRadio, Pandora. Record from LP's and cassette tapes.

How to record Real Media and Windows Media streams in parts using NetTransport





To record a part of Real Media or Windows Media stream with NetTransport:




1. Add a new download or open the properties dialog of the download.


2. Click the "Other settings..." button.


3. Select the "Streaming" tab.


4. Enter the start and end times of the download in the "Locate" group.


5. Click "OK" button to close the "Other settings" dialog.



Now you may record a stream as usual.

Now that you have the .asx file, you may record your stream in parts:



1. Download, install and run WM Recorder


2. Turn the PRO Recording mode


3. Turn AUTO Recording on (AUTO ON)


4. Play the .asx file in the Windows Media Player


5. The recording will be done automatically

How to record Windows Media (Audio and Video) streams in parts with WM Recorder

Unlike RealMedia Windows Media streams don't allow the usage of start and end times.
Recording of Windows Media streams in parts is more complicated.



If you already had an ASX file you just need to edit it.
Otherwise start playing of video stream in Windows Media Player 9+ (this also works in the 8th and 7th versions). Then click "File" -> "Export Playlist to File...". This will save a .asx file for that video.



Now you have to edit the saved .asx file. You may use almost any text editor for that purpose, for example Notepad. But do not use MS Word!



In edit mode you will see a StartTime value that you need to edit.
Also you need to add Duration value like in the following example:

StartTime value = "00:25:00.000"


Duration value = "00:15:00.000"

<Asx Version = "3.0"> 
<Entry> 
<StartTime value = "00:25:00.000" />
<Duration value = "00:15:00.000" />
<Ref href = "mms://123.321.231.21/filename.asf" />
</Entry>
</Asx>

How to record RealAudio and RealVideo streams in parts

In many cases for on-demand streams, the server supports start and end times so the stream can be recorded in parts.
Sometimes URL may have the times showing the beginning and the end of the streaming media like in the following example:

rtsp://somehost.com/somedir/01012004.rm?title=01/01/2004-Sometitle&start=1:30&end=2:03:18

In the final analysis, no single player has all these features:





• HTTP 1.1 random access



• Seek/jump to offset



• Precise cursor control



• Selection marking and review, with precise adjustment of segment boundaries



• Export in/out times






If we want the natural contextualizing forces of the Web to work on media files, we'll need to establish this feature set as a de facto standard. And we'll need UI conventions that make the selection of time-based content as universal an idiom, across platforms and applications, as the selection of text already is.

Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player doesn't support HTTP 1.1 random access, so you can only hunt for ins and outs within the portion of an MP3 file that's already loaded. You can move forward and backward using the arrow keys but not precisely: WMP seems to divide this function into 20 increments no matter what the length of the file. And there's no jump-to/seek-to feature.

WMP does, however, take a stab at providing UI for extracting a segment. Its Media Link for E-Mail feature offers these controls: Mark In, Mark Out, and Send media link in e-mail. The lack of precise selection control makes it hard to establish the right ins and outs. There's no way to review or adjust the segment you've selected. And the resulting description is only accessible by way of e-mail. But the e-mail does include this interesting XML attachment:

<Asx Version = "3.0" > 
<Param Name = "AllowShuffle" Value = "yes" />

<Entry> 
<Param Name = "SourceURL" Value = 
 "http://rdscon.vo.llnwd.net/o1/_downloads/itc/mp3/2004/
      David%20Bornstein%20-%20New%20Solutions.mp3"/>

<StartTime value = "00:23:43" />

<Duration value = "00:01:15" />

<Title > David Bornstein - New Solutions</Title>

<Ref href = "http://rdscon.vo.llnwd.net"/>
</Entry>
</Asx>

This is an ASX file. The complete set of ASX elements is documented here.

When I opened the ASX attachment I'd sent myself it did play the referenced segment but only after loading half the 20MB file; as already mentioned, this is because WMP doesn't do HTTP 1.1 random access with MP3s.

Like Winamp, RealPlayer allows random access into a web-based MP3 file and enables you to jump (Real calls it seek) to exact minute:second offsets. You can also move forward and backward in one-second increments using CTRL plus the left/right arrow keys.

In version 10, we see the beginning of a segment-editing sensibility. When you add a clip to your Favorites, you have the option to set a start time (though not a corresponding end time or duration). On Windows, for the clip mentioned above, the result is this shortcut:

"C:\Program Files\Real\RealPlayer\realplay.exe" /startpos:00:23:45 \
 http://rdscon.vo.llnwd.net/o1/_downloads/itc/mp3/2004/
      David%20Bornstein%20-%20New%20Solutions.mp3

I'm puzzled, though, as to why the shortcut couldn't be this instead:

"C:\Program Files\Real\RealPlayer\realplay.exe" \
  http://rdscon.vo.llnwd.net/o1/_downloads/itc/mp3/2004/
       David%20Bornstein%20-%20New%20Solutions.mp3?\start=23:43&end=24:58

or, alternatively, a reference to a .RAM encapsulation of that URL by way of a ramgen service. It seems to me that if Real Networks hosted a well-known instance of that service, it could accumulate an interesting library of media fragments.

Something else puzzles me here. If you construct this URL and load it, you'll find that RealPlayer's 23:43 isn't quite the same as Winamp's, or ITConversations', or my own clipping service's, or Audacity's. In RealPlayer, the sentence that begins like so, "Historically when we think of how social change happens," appears not at 23:43, but at 23:50. I've yet to get to the bottom of this discrepancy, which amounts to a whopping seven seconds in this example, but it's clearly problematic. QuickTime, by the way, exhibits the same behavior as RealPlayer.

I blogged this 75-second clip from David Bornstein's Pop!Tech lecture posted on ITConversations. Given a start time of 23:43 and an end time of 24:58, it's easy enough to form this URL:

http://www.itconversations.com/clip.php?showid=251&start=23:43&stop=24:58