about recording something from an internet radio station...

[brinny]

how do i record something from an internet radio station?

 

[Cute Tink]

You need a program capable of recording from different audio sources. Audacity is capable of doing so, but it can be a bit of a pain at times (it is free though).

There are probably many other available programs. Basically anything that can record audio should work fine, provided it can record from different sources.

I would make sure, first, that recording the audio you intend to record is legal. Wouldn't want you getting in trouble

 

[brinny]

hahaaa thanks...maybe i should as permission first

 

[Qyöt27]

You need a program capable of recording from different audio sources. Audacity is capable of doing so, but it can be a bit of a pain at times (it is free though).

There are probably many other available programs. Basically anything that can record audio should work fine, provided it can record from different sources.

I would make sure, first, that recording the audio you intend to record is legal. Wouldn't want you getting in trouble

The highest-quality option is stream recording, rather than through the sound input (which is what Audacity does). It doesn't recompress anything since it simply takes the MP3, AAC, or Vorbis stream transmitted by the station and saves it to a file on the hard drive, in much the same way your DVR doesn't recompress anything (or at least it shouldn't). You may or may not have to deal with manually splitting the result into separate tracks, though.

The ease of doing this is dependent on the streaming protocol/method used. There are obviously some types you *can't* do this with, because the technology doesn't allow for it as easily.

And then of course there's the legal issue as mentioned above, but I see this as far more accurate of a parallel to home taping (audio cassette or VHS or whatnot) than all the hubbub over peer-to-peer stuff ever was.

 

[NiobiumTragedy]

The highest-quality option is stream recording, rather than through the sound input (which is what Audacity does). It doesn't recompress anything since it simply takes the MP3, AAC, or Vorbis stream transmitted by the station and saves it to a file on the hard drive, in much the same way your DVR doesn't recompress anything (or at least it shouldn't). You may or may not have to deal with manually splitting the result into separate tracks, though.

Not sure what you're getting at there seeing as Audacity records by default as an uncompressed wav file. In this case, the easiest way would be to record the stereo mix which would be the same exact quality you receive on your computer output from the stream.

 

[Qyöt27]

Not sure what you're getting at there seeing as Audacity records by default as an uncompressed wav file. In this case, the easiest way would be to record the stereo mix which would be the same exact quality you receive on your computer output from the stream.

Lossy radio stream->Stereo Mix through sound card*->Hard disk as PCM->Lossy conversion to save space (because the user probably will convert it back to MP3 or whatnot if they don't force Audacity to do it while capturing)

*which also requires any additional configuring of the audio device to avoid introducing clipping, and any normalization that might be needed after getting the audio into Audacity.

as opposed to,

Lossy radio stream->Hard disk as the original data that was transmitted.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

how do i record something from an internet radio station?

Got VLC? - no, get it...

Now follow this,

• Media > Open Network Stream
• Under "Network Protocol" enter the URL of the radio stream - I use Digitally Imported Vocal Trance radio stream for example http://stream-134.shoutcast.com:80/vocaltrance_difm_mp3_96kbps
• From drop-down menu at bottom, select "Stream"
• Click on "Destination Setup" to show option for saving stream to a file.
• Tick "Display Locally" - across from that there should be a drop-down option menu and it should read "File", if so then click "Add" button next to it.
• You should now be prompted to add a filename. Under Activate Transcoding, Profile - select the correct file type fpr the stream to be saved such as "Audio - MP3"
• Click "Next" button
• Finally, Click "Stream" button.

VLC will now play the stream and record it to the filename chosen.

Caveat: This was done on Linux but it should be the same for the Windows version of VLC.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

how do i record something from an internet radio station?

If you want to record it to your PC, i found the free Hi-Net-Recorder to be fairly easy, and the free JetAudio does a good job as well, plus being a nice player.

If you want to play it (and perhaps record it) to an outside unit, then you can get one of those Chinese $2.10 FM Transmitters on Ebay (search FM Transmitter + Car Charger 4 iPhone 3G iPod MP3 MP4, and make sure you choose Price and shipping: lowest first from the sort option)

Note that legally you can only make one copy of copyrighted songs, and very few allow you to share them (Don Fransico being one that does). I have a list of sources that allow sharing, but cannot post link yet.

 

[Qyöt27]

Got VLC? - no, get it...

A) MPlayer family >>>>>>>>>>>>>> VLC. Always has been.

mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile filename.ext URL

Sadly, my preferred MPlayer variant, mpv, removed this particular functionality (although it can play the streams, and since it does have encoding functionality to mostly replace mencoder, you can convert it to PCM .wav or FLAC, but that still defeats the purpose I was getting at here). Good thing I have mplayer2 binaries lying around too. mpv is better for practically everything else, though.

B) FFmpeg can do it better also.

ffmpeg -i URL -acodec copy filename.ext

As I said before, it's usually an MP3 stream, so '.ext' probably should be '.mp3'. But if it's AAC, use '.mp4', and if it's Vorbis or Opus, use '.ogg' (for Opus support, the build of ffmpeg has to be from after 2012-09-28; preferably it should actually be from this year, though).

You should now be prompted to add a filename. Under Activate Transcoding, Profile - select the correct file type fpr the stream to be saved such as "Audio - MP3"

C) Activate Transcoding is completely and totally unnecessary; uncheck it. Click the 'Create new profile' button. At the top, name the profile 'Matroska'. On the 'Encapsulation' page, select 'MKV'. On the video codec and audio codec pages, select 'Video' and 'Keep original video track' and 'Audio' and 'Keep original audio track', respectively. Save the profile, and when you're on the main screen, select the Matroska profile from the drop-down instead of 'Audio - MP3'. This also means that the file you save as needs to be '.mkv'.

I recommend using MKV because it's a general-purpose container, and won't complain at you for putting any of the common formats used for streaming radio in it (Opus might be a tad shaky because it's still experimental, and not exactly common yet; the same thing applies to VLC as it does FFmpeg, since VLC relies on FFmpeg's libraries - primarily libavcodec and libavformat - for most of its core playback stuff). For playing in standard MP3 players or something like Winamp, you'll need to extract the audio back out of it (for this, you can use mkvextract, or ffmpeg with the -acodec copy option). Or you could keep it in MKV and just use VLC or MPlayer to play it.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

A) MPlayer family >>>>>>>>>>>>>> VLC. Always has been.

You trying to say VLC is part of the mplayer family - since when?

 

[Qyöt27]

I was using the > as a greater-than sign.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

I was using the > as a greater-than sign.

Haha, I see now. The ">>>>>>>>>>>>" surely would not compile that great

To be honest, I see mplayer and VLC pretty much equal but in different respects. VLC is better as a cross platform solution and is a good option for Windows users seeing as the tight fisted OS maker doesn't provide an all-in media player by default as they want you to pay extra money for something that should be there to start with. Mplayer has better command line use under Linux and has several front-end options too. Personally speaking, I use mplayer usually in Linux but install VLC too so as to have a change or test things.

Isn't it great that open source allows you to choose...

Interesting to note, VLC was around before mplayer, VLC started life in 1996 whereas mplayer was created in 2000.

 

[Qyöt27]

To be honest, I see mplayer and VLC pretty much equal but in different respects. VLC is better as a cross platform solution and is a good option for Windows users seeing as the tight fisted OS maker doesn't provide an all-in media player by default as they want you to pay extra money for something that should be there to start with. Mplayer has better command line use under Linux and has several front-end options too. Personally speaking, I use mplayer usually in Linux but install VLC too so as to have a change or test things.

Well, considering they're both based around libavcodec, you wouldn't expect much of a difference (same thing for ffdshow or LAV Filters for Windows). However, there have been pretty significant ones that separated them. For a long time there were issues with the way VLC handled H.264, completely separate from how libavcodec was decoding it. I want to say the seeking was borked. I think it's fixed now, but yeah.

As an umbrella organization, though, they do provide hosting for projects that have significance no matter what one's choice of player is. And if VLMC ever properly matures, it'll likely be the most comfortable option for Premiere users to jump to.

Interesting to note, VLC was around before mplayer, VLC started life in 1996 whereas mplayer was created in 2000.

Depends on how you categorize it. VLC's initial release was in 2001.