Hello,

I can listen to some programs over the internet using firefox, but I'm
not able to pause or rewind. I would like to capture that sound on a
audio file for later playback. When listening to the sound (with Gxine
I think) I have to wait several minutes while it is buffering. I
conjecture it is downloading the whole sound file. If that is correct
all I have to do is to make a copy of that sound file. The questions
are:

1. If I'm correct that the whole file is downloaded where is it?

2. If for some reason its not completely downloaded, can I capture
the sound as it is being played with fiddling with cables.

3. If for some reason (1) and (2) are not possible, can I run a cable
from the audio out into an audio in jack. I'm sure that can be done,
but maybe someone can give me pointers as I have never used alsamixer
or whatever to capture sound.

Thanks for any help

klee12

Ooops I forgot to add that I'm installing Slack 12, and that my I'm
using the alsa packages. If another package can do what I want, I'd
appreciate hearing about it. I prefer not to install KDE just for this
application, assuming KDE can do what I want.


klee12

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:47:33 -0700, klee12 did catÂ*:

> Hello,
>
> I can listen to some programs over the internet using firefox, but I'm
> not able to pause or rewind. I would like to capture that sound on a
> audio file for later playback. When listening to the sound (with Gxine I
> think) I have to wait several minutes while it is buffering. I
> conjecture it is downloading the whole sound file. If that is correct
> all I have to do is to make a copy of that sound file. The questions
> are:
>
> 1. If I'm correct that the whole file is downloaded where is it?

in the xine temporary bucket, you'll find some leaks from time to
time in your $HOME when xine crashes.

> 2. If for some reason its not completely downloaded, can I capture the
> sound as it is being played with fiddling with cables.

Yes. but the solution is extremly dependant on what is the
source format, capturing a stream is not like capturing a sound source.

> 3. If for some reason (1) and (2) are not possible, can I run a cable
> from the audio out into an audio in jack. I'm sure that can be done, but
> maybe someone can give me pointers as I have never used alsamixer or
> whatever to capture sound.

for "actual" sound capture you may use arecord, it'll
probably involve you in reading the docs.

for actual or streaming sound capture i'd recommend to use
the -dumpaudio or dumpstream options off mplayer.
for actual sound you may also use directly mencoder.

to transmute streams into actual sound files (so you can
use proper pause, rewind, ffw, etc.) you'll have to
chose the correct tool, most of the time mencoder will
be the one.

Thanks Loki Harfagr , I read the documentation of amixer and fooled
around with it for a couple of hours, but no luck. Evidently the alsa
programs can play and record but I couldn't get it to do both at the
same time. Slackware doesn't come with mplayer and mencode. I may (in
the future) try to get them to do what I want.

klee12

On 2007-09-18, klee12 <klee12@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I can listen to some programs over the internet using firefox, but I'm
> not able to pause or rewind. I would like to capture that sound on a
> audio file for later playback. When listening to the sound (with Gxine
> I think) I have to wait several minutes while it is buffering. I
> conjecture it is downloading the whole sound file. If that is correct
> all I have to do is to make a copy of that sound file.

I see elsewhere in the thread you mention that you don't have mplayer,
but can I suggest that this is the answer for you? The syntax to
capture a .ram file to disk for example is:

mplayer -playlist URL.ram -ao pcm:file=saved.wav -vo null -vc null

and the stream will be saved in real time to the working directory as
saved.wav. Then convert to whatever audio format: mp3, ogg etc.

Pick up the svn copy and the complete codecs package, you won't regret
it.

Andrew


--
ὑπεÏ�θοÏ�ὼν δὲ πύÏ�γον á½*μηστὴς λέων
ἄδην ἔλειξεν αἵματος τυ�αννικοῦ.
And a flesh-devouring lion swarms over the battlements,
drinking its fill of the blood of kings. Agamemnon 827-8

Hello,

Thanks Andrew for your suggestions. Mplayer seems like it's what I
need. I'll give a try.

> I see elsewhere in the thread you mention that you don't have mplayer,
> but can I suggest that this is the answer for you? The syntax to
> capture a .ram file to disk for example is:
>
> mplayer -playlist URL.ram -ao pcm:file=saved.wav -vo null -vc null
>
> and the stream will be saved in real time to the working directory as
> saved.wav. Then convert to whatever audio format: mp3, ogg etc.
>


Mplayer wasn't in the Slackware 12 distribution. I found it on


http://www.linuxpackages.net/

and installed it with a few addition libraries. I'm read the
documentation and started testing it and found I need to install
addtitional codecs. I'll get the codecs soon (I'm a little busy now).
After that I'll try to install the mplayerplug-ins.

But before I go on, I have a few questions which I hope you, or
anyelse, can shed some light on.

1. I'm using gxine for listening to the webcasts; it's not that great
but I came with the Slackware distribution. and does the job mostly.
If I install the mplayer plugin, do I have to uninstall the gxine
package?

2. Normally when I listen to a webcast over the web I just click on a
link, and Gxine is automatically launched. If I use the Mplayer plugin
and it works, how can I get it to save the audio as a file? Will the
plugin look at some cofiguration file. If not, what's the easiest way
to get the URL of the stream. I've saved the link and looked at it was
unable to find a link to pass to mplayer.

>Pick up the svn copy and the complete codecs package, you won't regret
>it.

I'm not sure what the svn copy is. However can get a Slackware
packages for the player and the plugin and I can get
all-20061022.tar.bz2 at

http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/

Nothing missing and it should work, right?

Thanks again for your help

klee12

Hello,

I tried to install mplayer using on my computer. The package
description of from www.linuxpackages.net said there would be a list
of required software in a file, slack-req in the package. I looked at
that file and found many required packages, eg faac >= 1.25, faad2 >=
2.5 that were not in my distribution. Does that mean I have to hunt
them down somewhere? Or are they optional?

Thanks in advance for any help

klee12

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 2007-09-28, klee12 <klee12@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> I tried to install mplayer using on my computer. The package
> description of from www.linuxpackages.net said there would be a list
> of required software in a file, slack-req in the package. I looked at
> that file and found many required packages, eg faac >= 1.25, faad2 >=
> 2.5 that were not in my distribution. Does that mean I have to hunt
> them down somewhere? Or are they optional?

Well there's your problem! :^) IMHO, it's generally best practice to
stay away from linuxpackages.net as many of their packages are sub-par
or rely on lots of external dependencies that aren't part of Slackware
meaning you have to go out and get even more packages to satisfy those
deps. However, http://www.slackbuilds.org has a good build script for
MPlayer, a script for the codecs, and a script for the mplayer-plugin.
None of these require any dependencies that aren't part of the typical
Slackware installation.

- --
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:5
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> Well there's your problem! :^) IMHO, it's generally best practice to
> stay away from linuxpackages.net as many of their packages are sub-par
> or rely on lots of external dependencies that aren't part of Slackware
> meaning you have to go out and get even more packages to satisfy those
> deps. However,http://www.slackbuilds.orghas a good build script for
> MPlayer, a script for the codecs, and a script for the mplayer-plugin.
> None of these require any dependencies that aren't part of the typical
> Slackware installation.
>
Thanks for your suggestions Alan Hicks. Acturally there were quite a
few (more than the two I listed) external dependencies, and I
suspected that I would have trouble making them work together.

I went to slackbuild.org and got the builds for mplayer, mplayer-
codecs-all, and mplayer-plugin. The first two builds went flawlessly;
for the plugin I installed seamonkey as suggested in the README, then
tried to do the build. I got the following messages

configure: Determining mozilla/firefox packages to build against
checking for MOZPLUG... configure: WARNING: mozilla-plugin not found
checking for MOZPLUG... configure: WARNING: firefox-plugin not found
checking for MOZPLUG... configure: WARNING: seamonkey-plugin not found
checking for MOZPLUG... configure: WARNING: xulrunner-plugin not found
checking for MOZPLUG... configure: WARNING: iceape-plugin not found
configure: error: Unable to find mozilla or firefox development files

I'd appreciate any help on what I'm missing

klee12

Hello,

After the last post, I went back looked at the error output more
carefully. It said that I didn't have /usr/bin/pkg-config and
continued the processing. I checked list of packages found there was a
package with that name, installed it and ran the build. Now the build
successfully got past the configure error messages. I think that the
README was incomplete since it said to install MPlayer and SeaMonkey
but omitted pkg-config.

The build did not complete. After some the last compilation, I find
the lines

cp Source/nsIScriptableMplayerPlugin.xpt mplayerplug-in-dvx.xpt
make -C po
make[1]: Entering directory `/tmp/SBo/mplayerplug-in/po'
msgfmt -o da.mo da.po
make[1]: msgfmt: Command not found
make[1]: *** [da.mo] Error 127
make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/SBo/mplayerplug-in/po'
make: *** [languages] Error 2
~
Any help appreciated

klee12