Cannot record sound from stream

[ricblanco]

Hi
I have had this trouble for months and despite going all over these forums I can't find a solution. When I record streaming content I cannot get any audio at all. When I look at the codec information there is no audio stream at all. This has happened when I tried to record some lectures. In that case I recorded the audio on Audacity and it worked perfectly. It didn't need tobe perfectly synched as it was mainly slides with voiceover. But I have been trying to record some guitar lessons from Youtube and cannot get sound. I haven't done the Audacity thing as I am sure there must be a solution within VLC. It seems incredible that it can't record audio. So what am I doing wrong? I have tried everything that I can think of with no success. All help appreciated.

Cheers

[JSLover]

When I look at the codec information there is no audio stream at all.

...if you look at codec info & there is no audio stream, then there is no audio stream to play or record. Was this observed on the original stream or when playing back the recorded file?

In that case I recorded the audio on Audacity and it worked perfectly.

...how were you playing the lectures for Audacity to record them? Were you playing them with VLC? If VLC is playing the Audio, it should be able to record it. But this goes back to point 1: what were you doing when you observed no audio stream in codec info?...originally, I thought you meant there was no audio stream in the original stream, now I think you were skipping ahead & telling me about playing the recorded file.

But I have been trying to record some guitar lessons from YouTube and cannot get sound.

...in the case of YouTube (& perhaps even any stream), it's much better (in my opinion) to "Dump raw input", instead of any "recording" with the record button. If you record: you have to "be quick": you have to press Play & then almost immediately press Record or you miss some of the stream, if you simply "Save" the stream, with "Dump raw input", you will get 100% of whatever the stream is & VLC should be able to play the saved file exactly the same as the original stream.

To save a stream

• In VLC, open the Playlist
• In the case of YouTube, start playing the stream, wait 5 secs (confirm it's playing correctly), then click Stop.
• Right-click on the Playlist item for the stream you wanna save, click Save...
• Under Settings, check Dump raw input
• Under Destination, for Destination file, Type or click Browse to set the output file's name (make sure this is an absolute path or you may not know where it was saved/may not be able find it later). Try to guess the right file extension (depending on the source stream), but if you are unsure, just call it filename.video, you can rename it later.
• Click Start
• Wait until VLC finishes, the new Playlist item will stop being bold when it's done. This should be rather quick: if you are saving a 1 hour stream, you don't have to wait 1 hour, as you would if "recording". You only have to wait some amount of time, depending on the speed of the streaming server & your internet connection speed.
• Delete the new Playlist item, it may be called Streaming or something, but whatever it's called: delete it. Right-click on it & click Remove Selected (or left-click on it & press Delete on the keyboard). You wanna delete it, cuz if you accidentally play that item again, it will re-download & re-save the file with the same name: which may corrupt the original save...or just waste time. So as soon as it's done, delete that new item from VLC's Playlist.
• Find the newly-saved file & Play it

So what am I doing wrong?

...I don't know, you didn't post the steps you went thru to try to record, what happened during recording & what happened when you tried to play that recorded file. I can only assume what you did. I can also assume that if I try it now, it would probably work for me...so I need to know the exact steps you go thru & what happens at each step, so I can: 1) tell you if I notice anything wrong with those steps...or 2) attempt those steps myself & see if my result is the same as yours.