Archiving RealAudio Streams on Mac OS X
Standard players for RTSP streams like those for RealAudio don’t cache the files they download, meaning they require a net connection to operate. I found an EZBoard forum message that identified HiDownload, Net Transport, OEP-OEE and StreamDown — Windows-only applications that can download RTSP streams and save them to a playable file. But those trick ponies do nothing to help Mac users.
AudioHijack has been around for years now, but it only captures the audio stream as it leaves RealPlayer and heads off to your Mac’s audio output. This works, but it has its own problems. Googling turned up a discussion of what I was looking for, this list QuickTime utilities, and this discussion of how AirTunes and AirPort Express interact. But I found no real answers. Darn.
30 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
iRecordMusic does the trick quite well:
http://www.bitcartel.com/irecordmusic/
iRecordMusic is only for audio capture. still desperately looking for a streaming video capture tool.
I too found hidownload by googling around. I went ahead and installed it on my wife’s PC
it works great with rtsp at least (didn’t try other protocols). If only there was a Mac version… Maybe it’s worth trying with VirtualPC!
Hi,
i’m also looking for a solution, though for quicktime RTSP-Streams on osx. If VLC can replay your Real-Video properly then this method should work for u http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031216183821835
HTH and have phun, Bosinski
Not sure if you’re still interested but this program can download streaming realplayer and windows media (in OS X).
http://jeanmatthieu.free.fr/cocoajt/
SnapzPro does this. You can use it for 30 days free. It allows you to capture the video and sound of any portion of your screen, essentially taking a screen-capture movie. Works like a charm. Drawbacks: a bit tricky to figure out at first, plus can take 1-2 GB of your drive for temporary memory storage (first it captures the video, then it encodes/compresses it to a video file). http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzpro/
-J
As the post said, he wants to dump the raw original stream, not transcode it to another formwat, so snapz is not suitable.
Read the posts:
for an exemple stream:
rtsp://rx-lvl3-wa28.rbn.com/farm/*/kennedy/kennedyg2/g2demand/08072003_1800_MSN.rm
Download CocoaJT
click RECORD
enter the stream and save with the name of your choice, enjoy
Audio Hijack 2.2.4
only on MacOS X
go to VersionTracker to locate
highly reviewed by real users
Have you found a solution to this? Please, leave me an e-mail if you have. Thanks!
Looking for a way to record RTSP streams. VLC is having issues handling the H.264 format.
Wow, CocoaJT worked perfectly, thanks!
[...] Alternatively, you might have success with mplayer, mplayer, VNC or other options. But they all seem like trouble given that CocoaJT just works. It’s a slightly strange name, though, so I always forget what it is called. [...]
Thanks Matt
http://jeanmatthieu.free.fr/cocoajt/
Is really good! The website is in French, but the software is in English.
For radio you can try StreamRipperX. It’s free and works prety good.
I wish to record the iPhone annoucement at Macworld 2007, it’s an very important product for Apple, must archive it
Chris-
Lucky for you, Apple has a video of podcast of the whole event… maybe someday you can watch it on an iPhone
the video stream ripper for the Mac osx works perfect!
Thanks!
http://jeanmatthieu.free.fr/cocoajt/
I’ve tried cocoa, but it’s not working.
I’m trying to record the following stream. I’m not illegally doing it, I’m trying to rip it for the person who was interviewed for use on their own site, and I don’t want to have to wait 2 weeks for the people at TNT to dig it up:
mms://demand.stream.aol.com/turner/gl/tnt/wmv/01/dd_jstaple_460.wmv
I’ve tried hitting record, entering the stream, and selecting both windows media and real. It says it’s recording, but nothing is showing up on my desktop afterwards.
CocoaJT failed for me. It said it was recording a Real Audio video stream, but only 89 bytes got saved in a file.
CocoaJT does not work for me. I am trying to save a 40 minute streaming quicktime movie, it saves a tiny little file that does not play.
I tried CocoaJT to download a MMS file, but it’s came without sound.
Than I found in my HD a program called: MPEG Streamclip, and it’s work very weel! Download the file, with video and audio.
( http://www.squared5.com/ )
CocoaJT: you need to provide the correct URL, often not the first one provided by the site.
Actually, there IS a way to archive RTSP streams on a Mac. It involves Terminal though. Here are instructions:
1. Obtain the RTSP stream link.
2. Download and install MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html ; Mac version)
To properly install MPlayer, these instructions must be followed.
1. Open a window and select “Go to Folder” from the Go menu. Type “/usr/bin” and click Go.
1. In another window, right-click on the MPlayer OSX program in the Applcations folder and select “Show Package Contents” .
2. Double-click “Contents” then “Resources” then “External_Binaries”.
3. Right click on one of the files and select “Show Package Contents”. If you have an Intel Mac, the file to right-click on is “mplayer-intel”. If you have a G4 or a G5, the file is “mplayer_ppc”. If you have a G3, the file is “mplayer_noaltivec”.
4. Double-click “Contents” then “MacOS”.
5. Drag the “mplayer” file to the “/usr/bin” window you should have opened before. When asked for your password, enter it.
Now let’s get back to the main
Actually, there IS a way to archive RTSP streams on a Mac. It involves Terminal though. Here are instructions:
1. Obtain the RTSP stream link.
2. Download and install MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html ; Mac version)
To properly install MPlayer, these instructions must be followed.
1. Open a window and select “Go to Folder” from the Go menu. Type “/usr/bin” and click Go.
1. In another window, right-click on the MPlayer OSX program in the Applcations folder and select “Show Package Contents” .
2. Double-click “Contents” then “Resources” then “External_Binaries”.
3. Right click on one of the files and select “Show Package Contents”. If you have an Intel Mac, the file to right-click on is “mplayer-intel”. If you have a G4 or a G5, the file is “mplayer_ppc”. If you have a G3, the file is “mplayer_noaltivec”.
4. Double-click “Contents” then “MacOS”.
5. Drag the “mplayer” file to the “/usr/bin” window you should have opened before. When asked for your password, enter it.
We’re done with installation, so let’s get back to the actual downloading.
3. Open Terminal (in Applications/Utilities).
4. At the prompt, type the following: mplayer -dumpstream substituting the Stream URL for .
5. When you see “Core Dumped” then you can close Terminal, as it’s done.
5. The dumped media file will be located in your user folder and named “stream.dump”. You need to rename it, and make sure that the renamed file ends with “.rm” for RealMedia, or the proper extension for the media type.
These instructions might seem complicated, but once you’re set up, it’s easy.
NOTE: Some web sites throttle the bandwith for streams, so it may take a while to download.
Hope this helps.
There a few things (well, from my perspective anyway) that need to be explained here for us less literate:
1. How do you in mac os x environment obtain the rtsp link or the rtsp URL for the BBC media file – streamed audio?
2.Even if the spep 1. is cleared, trying both in CocoaJT and by the method given by d235j results in 640 kB of the program recorded.
Here is the part of the message i got in the terminal when executing mplayer -dumpstream rtsp://….. :
Cache size set to 640 KBytes
among the other lines, which might (please, correct me because i might be wrong on this) explain why CocoaJT stops every time at exactly 640 kB of the recording. You can listen to the first 6 or so minutes of the program and then nothing…
Help, someone? I hate having to resort to use Windoze for this!!!
Of course, i forgot to mention that the developer(s) of the CocoaJT mention on their web-site that the recording facility in their app is due to the MPlayer – hence (maybe?) that 640 kb cache size set by MPlayer resulting in 640 kb of the recording in CocoaJT?
d235j, thanks a lot for your instructions, since it finally worked like a charm! After managing to obtain rtsp://… link (it was easier than I thought) everything worked just fine!
You have made my day.
Still, this stuff with CocoaJT needs to be solved…
to d235j:
Thanks for the help. Unfortunately I did not get complete files when trying this. On my windoze machine, I use Flashget, and the file sizes are larger – showing that I’m experiencing some packet loss here when I use the dumpstream function.
Any ideas? Is there a program with a GUI that exists yet to do these types of things on OS X?
Thanks,
_S
A much easier way to do it is through Mozilla’s Firefox in OS 10.4. For example, http://www.borderline-extra.de is a music website that has archived all its real audio internet radio transmissions.
http://www.borderline-extra.de/realaudio/be124.ram is the file for a particular program but if you change the “.ram” to “.rm” as the URL and press “return” it opens up a dialogue box through which you have the option of saving the file.
I have tried this with other file suffixes (e.g. “.flv” file types) and it works as well.
I hope this is of some help to someone.
Robert
After much searching, I have never found a way to do ra stream ripping in a satisfactory way on OSX(formerly I used net transport on Win, which was 10X easier than any of the OSX solutions I have seen). The best solution I have found is using Crossover with Gigaget. It actually does a great job & works OK with Crossover(Net Transport does not).
CocoJT works just find too, but won’t batch stuff which is a problem with the stuff I DL (NPR programs with ~20 different “segments” to the show).