Recording BBC radio 'Listen Again' programmes.
 

Hi
Does anyone have experience recording 'Listen again' radio programmes from the BBC websites?

There seems to be 3 categories.

First one is very simple, some programmes provide a podcast to download. No problems with this one.

Second one has an rtsp://..... link that can be found by right-clicking and downloading the link in the 'Listen using stand-alone Real Player' tab. Then that rtsp link can be used to make a recording. No problem here.

The third type is the one that I'm having trouble with. This type just opens up with BBC Radio Player. The only link that I can find is an aod link but I don't know how to extract any useful information from it. Is there some software such as a 'URL sniffer' that can do this?
For example, when you click on the 'Listen again to this show' for Sounds of the sixties it starts playing. How do I find what is the link to make a recording from?
Here:-http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/sounds60s/?focuswin

Re: Recording BBC radio 'Listen Again' programmes.
 

First, you'll need Orbit Downloader. You'll need to view the source code of the little frame that the media player is in on the left, & look for the 3rd occurance of ".rpm" [without the quotes].

Take that partial URL:
/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio2/soundsixties.rpm
Then add http://www.bbc.co.uk on the beginning of it. Now, copy that, then in Orbit Downloader Click the New button & select a place to download the file to, which it should do pretty quickly, as it's basically a kind of playlist. Open that file in a text editor, e.g. Notepad, & copy the whole URL from there, including the long string of what looks like gibberish. Now go back to Orbit & download this file. Then find something to do for a couple of hours, as it looks like either the BBC's server is really busy, or else they're limiting it to only about 5-6KB/s!

Re: Recording BBC radio 'Listen Again' programmes.
 

Hi alien
Thanks for the reply.

I've downloaded Orbit and cranked it up through Wine. It looks as though it might work.
But I already have Linux tools for downloading. It's just a matter of finding the right link to feed in.

When I look through that media player's frame source there are 554 lines of code to inspect.:eek:
When I do a search for rpm it comes up with many many hits.

This is the one that is needed:-
<embed src="/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio2/soundsixties.rpm"
It's on line number 208.

Then, like you said, add http://www.bbc.co.uk to the front.:)
To give:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows...undsixties.rpm

Then I copy and paste it into my Linux gizmo.
What happens then is that Real Player opens up and as the programme is playing it dumps a stream onto my HDD as a wav file. In real time.
Then afterwards I can change it to mp3 or whatever.:)

So it's do-able.:cool:

There's just a bit of donkey work trawling through all that code for a link. Though, if it's always the third or fourth occurrence, that makes it easier to find. And I would still need to do that search when using Orbit.

I was hoping for a piece of silver-bullet software that would hook it out for me.:smokin:

But it's getting better, thanks for the "rpm" pointer/clue.:idea:

Re: Recording BBC radio 'Listen Again' programmes.
 

Ah, didn't realise you were in Linux. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alien42/smilies/tux.gif

Odd, I have Firefox set to send source code to PSPad, & when I told it to list search results for .rpm it only showed 4; 5 if I do it without the preceding ".".

Well, I'm running Proxomitron, which adds 6 lines to the beginning of every page, so for me it's line 214, but yeah. ;)

Ah, well that isn't an option for me, as I refuse to install RealPlayer on my machine. It would take a rather compelling reason for me to even install just the codec [Real Alternative].

Well, I don't know if it'll still work when Orbit's used under Wine, but try going to the Tools menu & select Grab++. In Windows, when you have the Grab++ window open, if you refresh [or just load if it was already open] the page with the media file on it it should show up in a list of resources for that page in the Grab++ window, as it captures their URLs. If it's going to work you'll most likely see the file you want listed after it starts playing in the page. No idea if it'll work under Wine though.