Real media streams: Saving, splitting, converting to mp3?
September 19, 2004 11:10 PM   Subscribe

My own blue thread makes me want to know how I can record these concerts (Real media streams) to my hard drive and then convert to MP3 and then break them up into individual tracks. I'm on OS X Panther and prefer iTunes but will download whatever.
posted by dobbs to Computers & Internet (9 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
There's a piece of software called Replay Music which should do it all for you, automagically.
posted by skylar at 12:32 AM on September 20, 2004


Best answer: Note the part where said he was using a Mac.

The answer to just about every Mac audio question around these parts is either (a) Audio Hijack, (b) Audacity, or (c) both. In your case, the answer is (c): Audio Hijack to grab the streams, then Audacity to chop them up. After that, you can use Audacity or iTunes to convert to MP3.
posted by jjg at 12:37 AM on September 20, 2004


Or you could use Audacity to convert the whole concert to MP3, then chop it up post-conversion.
posted by jjg at 12:42 AM on September 20, 2004


and then? and then? andthenandthenandthen?

Surely it would be better to convert to mp3 last, namely after splitting? - like converting to jpg last in web graphics, you keep the quality drop as late as possible in the process to avoid multiple recompression removing more information.
posted by cogat at 1:34 AM on September 20, 2004


Actually, MP3s can be split losslessly along frame boundaries, and if your MP3 player is smart enough, there won't be any gaps in between track transitions. This may not be the case if you split then encode, as MP3 fills up what's left of the last frame with silence, resulting in annoying track gaps which are harder to get rid of.
posted by zsazsa at 5:31 AM on September 20, 2004


There's also Audion which will do all your conversion and editing. Added benefit of being able to edit and play in the same app.
posted by jeremias at 5:57 AM on September 20, 2004


Another thing to look at is I Record Music which uses the libraries installed by RA (without actually running RA) to record RA streams to mp3/aac/aiff. It integrates with iCal for scheduled recording.

Audio Hijack is impressive for general purpose sound capture, but for recording RA streams this suited me better.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 6:34 AM on September 20, 2004


I often do this with KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic, for studio appearances by various artists.

First, I play the stream clear through, capturing it with Ambrosia's excellent (and free) Wiretap. Then I use QuickTime to chop it up into tracks, manually. I save each of these tracks as AIFFs, and then I convert them to MP3s in iTunes.

It's a bit time-consuming, I suppose -- maybe a minute of my time per track -- but I find it's well worth the trouble. :)
posted by waldo at 7:18 AM on September 20, 2004


Response by poster: Thanks, all!
posted by dobbs at 10:39 PM on September 20, 2004


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