Novice Here, How do I save streaming media?

[pklees]

From what I gather, I should be able to save streaming video to, say, my desktop as saved file.

How do I do it?

The Wizard isn't much help to me , and I've spent about 5 hours trying different combination of things.

I will paint the picture:

I go to a website and I see a streaming video that I would like to save as a MOV or MPEG to my desktop and file for future use. (I use Mozilla and IE browsers)

WHAT do I do now? How do I employ this thing?

I'd appreciate a monkey-proof answer; ie:

"1) do this 2) then do this, etc."

or...

"NO, you can't do it with this player

THANKS!

[zcot]

chapter 6:
http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-h ... to-en.html

[breadman]

That's my exact question and unfortunately the link is useless! Just want a step by step dummy's guide!

[zcot]

the link is useless!

maybe for you..

here's a step-by-step for you:

1. pull head from ass.

2. realize that nothing will come from no effort.

3. know that knowledge does not come from just "click click".

4. be aware how irritated i am at the moment personally(though not particularly about you entirely) about how people seem to expect something from nothing and moreover they don't just want "something" they want IT ALL!! and them come here and dont even attempt to read any forum rules or do any searching of their own... oh, and they want it NOW too.. and without any effort.

5. understand that any effort to expand your own quality of existence is a good effort, and not doing that is what is useless when you only cry about your quality of existence.

6. believe that merely being able to have 1 fish to eat for dinner tonight is nothing in comparison of being able to know how to fish for every dinner(the non-technical translation means that knowing how the concept works is better than following a 1,2,3-step-guide which only works for 1 exact situation, because with the concept knowledge it can work in any scenerio).

7. realize that by the time you take the effort and time to post something negative and non-informationally useful, and spend the time reading replies and then probably responding, that you could've given yourself the knowledge already if you had spend your time with more quality use such as the standard RTFM.

8. be aware that with the obvious time I am spending responding without giving a direct click-here dummy answer, might actually come from a higher knowledge and experience of how to ultimately complete the task.

9. come to terms that there is no "record" button(although it might not be far from that).

10. post the exact link of the media you want to save from its website.
11. post the directory path of where you want the saved media to end up.
12. post the filename of what the saved media is to be called.
13. post the installation directory of vlc.
14. admit that this link is nowhere near accepting of the term "useless": http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-h ... to-en.html
15. post the type of media you will be saving to.
16. post the type of encapsulation method of the desired saved media.
17. post the words "zcot is my father, and my only desire is to be a useless dummy and ignore the force"... "the force".
18. also you should post your cpu speed, memory, your location on the Earth and network connection qualities.

If you follow these steps, I will give you exactly what you want.

actually you don't have to follow all of them but at the least the important ones. (disclaimer: I will not use a dumb-numbered list of how to do it, but it will be closely useful for that exact type of situation as well as providing some conceptual knowledge of what goes with it.)

sincerely,
zcot

[Guest]

it doesn't ahve to be complex, just press the keyboard buttons ctrl and R together, for recording.

[The DJ]

it doesn't ahve to be complex, just press the keyboard buttons ctrl and R together, for recording.

That is quite experimental.

[DanBrwn]

First, I have just began to experiment with the VLC media player about a week ago. Here is my suggestion. Read, Read, Read. Try to set up the media player to play a simple file without the wizard. Pay close attention to the command line that is created while you click different things. The media player really appears to be just filling in the command line for you as you select items. Copy each of the sections from the media player command line to a file so you can look at it and understand (or try to anyway) what it is creating for you. You will notice in the command line a structure that you can change as required. The following is the best I can describe what you are wanting to do:

File->Open File and select the file
On the page, select Stream Output
Click the Settings Button to open up the settings dialog
To Stream to a file (try this first as it requires the least settings)
Select file in the output method panel and type or browse to the file name
Select the encapsulation method (just leave it at mpeg ts or whatever the default is)
Select the transcoding options you want. (I think you must select some transcoding option, although I do not know this)
Click the ok to shut down the dialog and begin to transcode the file.

You will have to understand that most people here have probably had a steep learning curve (As I have just to get what I know) and usually are not willing to answer very basic 1st day stuff if it does not appear you have put forth little effort. I have a little sympathy though since I have just went through it myself. Good Luck

[zcot]

thank you DanBrwn.. that is well stated.

I see after reading my earlier post from yesterday, that it is not as useful for a direct solution. It was at the height of my insanity.

But I will make a howto for the documentation if there are exact parameters such as I mentioned above.

[TMR]

maybe for you..

here's a step-by-step for you:

1. pull head from --please stay polite--.

2. realize that nothing will come from no effort.

3. know that knowledge does not come from just "click click".

First off, I think these kind of replies to someones question (be it a dumb question or not) by someone who's supposidly in the know, is complete rubbish. I admit that his description of the link as "useless" was a rude reply to someones outreached hand of help. Never the less, the attempt to demean his total human existence because of it is really uncalled for. He said he spent 5 hours of effort on it trying to figure it out, so there's no call to say that, "realize that nothing will come from no effort." I've spent a good deal of time on it also trying to figure out how to save a stream with no luck either so far .

Everything seems self explanatory unitl you get to the "Save to file" dialogue. It seems like it's asking you to pick a file to save the stream to. What? How can you pick an existing file to save your new file to? And/or, why did the programmers expect the random populace to know ALL file extentions to very codec, if that's what info needs to be entered into that field? It should just be asking WHERE you want to save your new file and WHAT you want to name the new file and then it should automatically save the file to your choosen location with the correct file extension according to the choice of encoding you picked. It should be that simple, but it's not. I'm deffinitely missing something here. I just don't know what yet.

Edit/Update: It seems that I was writing my reply at the same time as Zcot and I posted mine without knowledge of his later post of explanation for his earlier agitated reply. And therefore, my upper paragraph is mute.

[zcot]

TMR:

I want to make a brief off-topic clarification.. it wasn't breadman who spent 5 hours, it was the original poster pklees(who even obviously spent the time to go out of his way to coherently ask about the issue he was having) whereas breadman didn't even seem to do that.. -or hell even use complete sentences to make his statement(the epitome of his haste in my opinion).

anyhow I do apologize to you for having to read that response as obviously it bothered you enough to feel compelled to respond to it... -and actually it bothers me too that I was moved to write it, and that it exists there. But, to let it be known, I did put alot of careful thought into all of it and had no intention to demean his total human existence.. -only to add information and experience into it.

I'll continue to offer info on this topic as well as provide some sort of howto for it within the coming days.

[zcot]

In spite of not having any exact parameters of a situation, here's an initial sample walkthrough of saving a radio feed. I guess nobody was willing to make the effort and help out with some specifics, so I just grabbed the first thing I encountered and didn't put any more thought into it.

But, wth, there's a format started now..

So, I saw a link to the media from a post on the forum and that's that.

Keep in mind for this sample I am excluding some of the technical parts that would be involved with the issue of the decision making that would deal with having some exact parameters.. -as far as these things:
-how I obtained the exact media address:port.
-how I determined the exact structure and type of the media that existed there.
-how I decided what should be done as for how and what and what type and parameters I was going to save of the media.
(this example transcodes the entire stream where I am excluding parts of the whole stream as well as down-translating the bit-rate of audio)

And in spite of better practices, I decided to go ahead and use a numbered list of "click-here" lines.

hope it is helpful..

1. run vlc

2. select menu File -> Open Network Stream

3. select HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/MMS

4. paste this address:port combo to URL: http://193.188.255.10:8000/

5. check Stream output

6. click the Settings... button

7. look under Output Methods:
8. select Play locally
9. select File
10. click Browse
11. browse to desktop
12. type "test01.media" for the name
13. click the OK button.

14. look under Encapsulation Method:
15. select Raw

16. look under Transcoding options:
17. check Audio codec
18. select mp3 in the drop-down box
19. change bitrate to 64 with the kb/s drop-down box

20. click the OK button.

21. click the OK button.

22. note that recording will be happening now...

23. wait a few seconds..

24. click the stop button

25. close vlc

26. realize that the saved text01.media is on the desktop