BBC listen again

[Flat in Fifth]

Is it possible if listening to a streaming audio from the beeb listen again to save the file or somehow record it to transfer to an mp3 player.

Obviously the programme is not in their podcast list.

(Using XP-Home SP2 and all updates
IE7 or Mozilla
if that helps)

[FourWheelDrift]

I used to use Windows Media recorder, just start the audio and then click record.

I think it saved as a WMA but I just converted it. Googled "WMA to MP3" probably, was a while back.

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Thursday 25th January 23:27

[Flat in Fifth]

DOH! never thought of that. So you fire it up in the BBC player or stand alone Real Player whatever, but just have Sound recorder running and record it. Simple, i'll try it when I get home as severs here don't allow streaming audio from beeb.

As it happens don't need the wma > mp3 convert as my player (JVC) handles both.

[wolves_wanderer]

Or try this:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I always found windows media recorder to be a bit quiet.

[chriswright]

I found this was quite good

[twister]

If you'd prefer to rip the original stream as opposed to re-recording it in realtime with the risk of network glitches affecting the recording quality, then this is also possible using tools such as FlashGet.

For some streams (e.g. BBC7) where a "Listen using stand-alone Real Player" link is provided, simply copy and paste the link URL into FlashGet and let it do its thing.

For other streams where no link is provided, you'll have to get a bit friendly with the HTML underneath the Radio Player window. With your mouse pointer hovering over the left-hand side of the window (e.g. somewhere within the "Now Playing" area) right-click and select (in IE7) View Source or (in Firefox 2) This Frame > View Frame Source. An editor window containing the HTML source should now open, use the Find option to look for ".rpm", and continue searching for occurrences of this string until you find the first one which looks like an almost complete URL (e.g. "/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio2/bigband.rpm". Copy and paste this into FlashGet, then append "http://bbc.co.uk" to the start before trying to grab the file. Once the rpm file has been downloaded (it should just take a second or two, it's a small 'un!), open that in any old text editor and you'll find another URL beginning with "rtsp://" (e.g. "rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio2/bigband.ra". Paste THIS into FlashGet and hey presto...uhh safeway...uhh morrisons, your download should begin.


If you then need to convert the resultant RealAudio file into something else, I find MediaCoder does a pretty decent job.

Edited by twister on Saturday 27th January 22:51