How To Convert RealMedia Streams to Downloads
You’ll know from previous posts that I love NPR. I wanted to listen to the pieces I found via their copious RSS feeds on my PDA, but alas, these are streams, not downloadable files.
But, with a bit of surfing, I figured it out. Should work for anything where you can get RealMedia streams. Here are the steps.
0) Get yourself a download manager that can download “rtsp” links. I’m using Net Transport, which is free, easy to use, and effective.
1) Make sure you’ve configured NPR audio to use RealPlayer (I haven’t figured how to do this trick with Windows Media Streams).
2) Find a “Listen Now” link you’d like to download.
3) Save this link to a file. This file will be of type “.smil”. With Firefox, you can do this saving operation easily.
4) Edit the resulting file with a text editor. Locate the quoted link that begins “rtsp” and that points to something of type “.rm”.
5) Use Net Transport (or whatever download manager you have) to download the “rstp” link.
6) Put the resulting file on your PDA, and enjoy. If you don’t have anything that plays Real files, Realplayer for PocketPC is free. There are also a number of programs out there which will allow you to convert to other audio file formats.
This procedure works, but it is a bit fiddly. That’s why I’ve created a roundtuit, hoping someone creates a GreaseMonkey script that does the whole job.
Hope I’ve helped to share the joy of NPR, and other media that is only available as streams.
[…] search, and figured out how to download the media files that backup these streams. You can find it on my main blog “Truth Like The Dark”. […]
Pingback by Roundtuit :: Stream-no-more (A GreaseMonkey Roundtuit) :: May :: 2005 — May 29, 2005 @ 3:17 pm
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