Have you ever WISHED you could capture a stream of your favorite audio program on the net? What about capturing your favorite NPR program? I know I know, they usually make them available for download but some sites don’t, all they do is stream it once and it’s gone forever especially some less popular websites or genres of music.
I found a program on the net call “MPlayer“. It’s AWESOME!
Once you download it you have to figure out where it installed, if you have Windows XP like me it’s in your program files (C:\Program Files\SMPlayer\MPlayer). If you open a command prompt and cd there like this…
cd\
cd “Program Files\SMPlayer\MPlayer”
You’re there!
Now you can issue a few commands like this. These are some streams I helped a buddy hook onto but they’re great examples.
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Captures a stream from The Pulse Rocks – some Christian Rock Music station into a wma file:
mplayer -dumpfile ThePulseRocks.wma -dumpstream -playlist http://www.thepulserocks.com/StreamFiles/wqrp2.asx
Captures a stream from The Pulse Rocks – some Christian Rock Music station into an mp3 file:
mplayer -dumpfile ThePulseRocks.mp3 -dumpstream -playlist http://www.thepulserocks.com/StreamFiles/wqrp2.asx
Although NPR usually makes their shows available for download here is one for WMUK in Kalamazoo, MI:
mplayer -dumpfile WMUK.wma -dumpstream -playlist http://ummedia12.rs.itd.umich.edu:8004/listen.pls
* New – Capture “French in action” from Learner.org :-)
Windows:
mplayer -dumpfile French_03.asf -dumpstream mms://media.scctv.net/annenberg/French_In_Action_03.wmv
mplayer -dumpfile French_04.asf -dumpstream mms://media.scctv.net/annenberg/French_In_Action_04.wmv
Mac (Thanks for my good buddy Mark!):
./Applications/MPlayer\ OS\ X\ 2.app/Contents/Resources/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer -dumpfile French_03.asf -dumpstream mms://media.scctv.net/annenberg/French_In_Action_03.wmv
./Applications/MPlayer\ OS\ X\ 2.app/Contents/Resources/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer -dumpfile French_04.asf -dumpstream mms://media.scctv.net/annenberg/French_In_Action_04.wmv
…etc! Enjoy!
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You could do a lot of different things with this tool. One serious challenge is to find the source for your stream. If WMUK didn’t post their direct link on their help URL I would have struggled to figure it out (but I would have gotten it eventually!). I might post some methods to find your stream source or just let me know if you need some help!
Lastly, you can even capture streaming video!