How can I rip a RealPlayer streaming video?

June 28, 2004 3:00 PM

What are some ways to turn a RealPlayer streaming video file into a ripped, usable file on your hard drive? I've seen stuff for the audio part, but not so much video.
posted by inksyndicate to computers & internet (4 comments total)

mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile [savefile] [url]

This will save pretty much any streaming format to a file. It does not re-encode the data, so you end up with an exact copy of the original.
posted by Galvatron at 3:22 PM on June 28, 2004

Man, those mplayer folks don't make it easy to figure out how to install and run it. Is there a square-one manual a mere mortal can understand?
posted by scarabic at 5:07 PM on June 28, 2004

If you use Windows or OS X, you might find somewhat more user-friendly packaging by looking here or here, respectively. I haven't tried these personally, so YMMV.
posted by Galvatron at 9:01 PM on June 28, 2004

google for a program called HiDownload - it does this sort of thing very well.
posted by ascullion at 4:16 AM on June 29, 2004