Saturday, January 17, 2009

Software to Record Steaming Audio

OP Original Question
Several programs like Car Talk and Rick Steve's Travel allow you to
listen to their radio shows via streaming audio. But there are times
that I would like to capture the program in a wmf or mp3 file and play
it later on my SanDisk Sansa. Do you know of any utilities that will
allow you to record a program as it streams?

Repsonse 1
CarTalk is NPR and available on Itunes as a Podcast
Rick Steves Travel is the same way
http://www.ricksteves.com/news/podcast_menu.htm
I have a ipod adapter and I do cartalk (when I think about it). I really would like to get the wifi sync-ipod adapter so I can be lazy and not have to remember to get ipod out of car to sync up new music.

Audacity can convert many audio files to other formats...
http://audacity.sourceforge.net

On the Mac I have a program called Radiolover that would pull 30(?) minutes (shareware?) and make a MP3 out of the stream. The podcast is the way to go though for those two.

OP Reply
I have ITunes setup to download the Car Talk and Rick Steves podcasts. But how can I move them to my SanDisk Sansa as either a WMA or MP3 file? Everything I look at in the ITunes instructions reference an IPod device.


Response 2
Here are a couple of stream recorders that you can save to MP3/wma format

MediaRecorder
MediaRecorder receives streaming media from a Web source and saves it to a file for playback. It's as easy as specifying 1) the source Web address, 2) a file for saving the broadcast and 3) timer-based, clock-based or scheduler-based recording.
http://www.twinklesoft.com/mediaDetail.html

Welcome to the Streamripper home page, an Open Source (GPL) application that lets you record streaming mp3 to your hard drive
http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/

Here are directions specifically for the Sansa
http://cannell.org/blog/using-itunes-my-sandisk-sansa-mp3-player

Using iTunes with my SanDisk Sansa MP3 player
Submitted by Larry on Sun, 03/04/2007 - 12:38. podcasting

Being able to listen to podcasts in my car has made a big change in my daily life. The thirty minute drive to and from the office is much less stressful. It's now a delightful respite from a busy day. On Fridays I usually work in my home office. This leaves a three day period where I don't have the opportunity to listen to podcasts. It's strange but sometimes, on Monday morning, I look forward to the drive.Although I love learning about new things I don't really like gadgets all that much. Once I'm happy with a cell phone, for example, I usually keep it until it is broken, lost, or the battery needs replacing (replacing the phone is usually cheaper). I also don't buy the most expensive gadgets either. My kids have iPods but I couldn't justify spending the extra money just to listen to podcasts and occasionally some music. I also have a seven year old desktop computer still running Windows 2000 (700Mhz Celeron, although the memory was
upgraded to 512MB).So when it came time to buy an MP3 player I went with a SanDisk Sansa
m250 . It's an inexpensive but good audio player that has 2GB of memory and support for "advanced" features like playlists. I say "advance" since I discovered many players don't support playlists, hard to believe.

The method I use for subscribing to podcasts took me some time to get established but it is working well for me now. I was familiar with iTunes since my kids have iPods. In addition, I wasn't able to find any other good windows-based software for subscribing to podcasts.iTunes makes subscribing to podcasts easy. From the online store to the way it automates the retrieval of podcasts; iTunes is simple to use. I haven't found a competing product this easy. I also find it
interesting that iTunes supports Windows 2000 but Windows Media Player does not.

Here is how I update podcasts on my SanDisk Sansa m250.
  • I use iTunes for managing podcasts. Podcast audio files are downloaded into a folder under "My Music". The Sansa is configured for run in MSC mode. This means the player will show up as a USB disk on the desktop computer when plugged in. I synchronize podcasts (and music, by the way) on my computer with the SanDisk Sansa using Allway Sync . This is a fantastic utility that can support many scenarios but works especially well with USB devices like the Sansa.
  • Allway Sync is configured to automatically synchronize files on my Windows 2000 computer with the Sansa (which shows up as a USB disk drive) whenever it detects the player is connected.

I have two synchronization jobs configured:
  1. The audio files in the iTunes podcast folder are synchronized with a folder on the Sansa.
  2. A folder containing my music is synchronized with a folder on the Sansa (more on this setup some other time).

Some things to consider with this setup:
  • I have to be careful and be sure to subscribe to feeds providing files in MP3 format. Sometimes this take a little extra work like going to the podcaster's website, finding the MP3 subscription link and adding the feed manually to iTunes.
  • iTunes is configured to automatically launch upon Windows startup. I also minimize iTunes to the system tray so it can run continuously.Once a week I mark all of my iTunes feeds as played. Otherwise, iTunes assumes they are not being used (they aren't, from iTunes' perspective). The Sansa takes a long time (seems like a couple of minutes) to turn on and get to the first menu after synchronization. I assume this is due to it rebuilding indexes and discovering new content.
So the sequence of events I go through to update the Sansa with new podcasts is:
  1. Plug in the Sansa player into a USB port on the desktop computer. Come back in a couple of minutes and click on the little icon in the system tray that allows you to safely remove USB devices.
  2. To see if there are new podcasts I bring up Allway Sync by double-clicking on it's icon in the system tray and look in the "New File" section.
  3. Once a week I mark all of my podcasts as "played".

I have been using this setup for several months now and it is working well. This is an inexpensive method for subscribing to your favorite podcasts using an inexpensive MP3 player and a Windows computer.

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