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[Soul Boy]

Hi All

I am fairly new to MC and have so far found it very good and stable. That is apart from one really irritation error. I like to record BBC Radio shows, the BBC in thier wisdom, hide the direct URL for the .rm file somehow so I record the program via my soundcard - which works fine - on the BBC Radio "Listen Again" link. This is fine as i set it up to record and then forget about it for the duration of the show. I set the "Maximum track length" to 120 minutes (the length of the show) but when i return it shows a recording time of 202 minutes (82 minutes of silence) an error message saying "Error piping data to external application" and then "Failed writing wave file"  Sometimes, it does write the wave file regardless of what the error says, other times it does not write the file.

Does anyone have any idea why the "Maximum track length" function does not seem to be working?

Also, it would be so much easier to use the "Schedule Service" but as I say I cannot find the direct URL address for the shows "Real Media File" buried deep within the BBC webpage.

Any clues would be most appriecated.

[Matt]

Is there any chance they have an MP3 stream?  Because then you could use MC's "Open URL..." or Scheduler to just have it record the native stream.

[Soul Boy]

Hi Matt.

No, there is no MP3 file, as I said they stream as a "real media" file but the URL for the actual .rm file is buried deep within the webpage and I cannot find the direct ulr. This would be the best solution I agree.

[Mr ChriZ]

See  the following post
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=49308.0

All BBC streams are available in ASF (Windows Media), which may help you.
The www.reciva.com link at the bottom can help you find these.

[Soul Boy]

Ok guys, quick update.  I have found the 2 URL's that i want to record. The first is http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/realmedia/live/localradio/london.ram and the second is http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/realmedia/fmg2.ram. If I paste these into my "Open URL" line then it does indeed, open the live stream in MC.

Great I thought, I set up the "Schedule" to record these streams at different times today. When I looked at the "Schedule" later, the "Status" read finished with the corect number of minutes I set it for. Now for problem number the second. I cannot find where MC has recorded these streams. I have searched my default folder (d:music) and my temporary folder (d:temp) but there is nothing there. I left MC running etc. Am i missing something or am I just being really stupid ?

[marko]

of course you're not being stupid, you'd expect MC to automatically import the files it created

Check what path you have set at: "Tools > Options > File location > Ripping, Recording & Other Audio"

That should give you a clue as to where to start looking.

[Soul Boy]

Hi Marko

Thanks for your prompt reply. However, been there, done that! I have even searched my whole PC for any files that have been created with todays date and still nothing!!

Any other recording, ripping etc is always filed in my d:\music drive. If i record direct from the soundcard using "recorder" whilst streaming, it files it in the d:\music drive.

[marko]

OK, so I just tried a scheduled 3 minute recording of Radio 2's .ram stream, and my results are the same as yours.

The scheduler appears to be just going through the motions and not actually doing anything ?

Edit:
Tried another scheduled stream recording, this time on an .asf based stream.
I got a few firewall prompts as jrworker tried to access the stream, and once allowed access, all MC did was to save the actual asf file. It still failed to record anything.
The attempt to record Radio 2 did not produce any firewall prompts at all.

[marko]

Is there any chance they have an MP3 stream?  Because then you could use MC's "Open URL..." or Scheduler to just have it record the native stream.

Does this mean that the "record stream" task available in the scheduler only works on mp3 streams?

[Soul Boy]

Marko

Thanks for trying. I was starting to think i was going mad!! It seems very strange that it does not actually save the file anywhere even though it goes through all the motions. BTW I am using MC 12.0.534

[marko]

No worries.
I've just performed another couple of tests here:

An mp3 stream is 'recorded'. 'Recorded' here actually means 'saved' as none of the recording settings except for disc location of saved file are honoured. A nice touch however is that the recorded file is available for playback from "My Web Media" in the tree.

I tried scheduling MC to play the ram stream, and then a second scheduled to task to record it, but sadly, MCC /23003 only fires up the sound recorder tool, you still need to be there to press the 'start' button. (remember to set your soundcard's line-in source to "what you hear" in order for this to work.

Another trick you could try (depending upon how determined you are and how much disk space you have at your disposal) is to set MC's output mode to disk writer, schedule MC to start playback at the correct time, and also schedule a command line task to close MC when you want the recording to stop.
This only seems to work if you use the Radio 2 asf stream, add it to a playlist on its own and schedule playback of that playlist. The Disk Writer can only output a wav file. My 4 minute test produced a 100 Mb file, so, what, roughly 3 gigs for two hours?

To set up the disk writer, go to "Options > Playback > Audio > Output Mode"
To schedule an MC shutdown, set up the task like so:


When you next open MC, you'll be wondering why you can't hear any music, and then you'll be wondering why your hard drive is full, and then you'll remember that MC is still in disk writer mode and you will hate me

It's clunky, but it does work. Sorry I can't come up with anything more streamlined...
Anyone else?

-marko