Can you record streaming content faster than 1x speed?

[Kevin Ar18]

Assuming the streaming content is not live ... can you actually record the stream faster without playback?

If is technically possible?
And, if so, can VLC do it with the GUI somehow or will I need to learn the command line?

[The DJ]

i doubt many servers would support it. In theory a lot is technically possible. Will it provide to be useful ? Unfortunately only to a very small group I think. As such I doubt anyone is gonna spend time on this, unless they need it themselves. Besides the only streaming technology that supports what you propose is RTSP i think. For most streaming formats it won't be possible.

[datool]

what you propose is not streaming, but a technique closer to standard file transfer protocols.
Streams by default limit themselves to a max bitrate, e.g. 1mb/sec and tie it in to match the video, so for 1 second of data transfer you get 1 second of content.

File transferring allows you to open the beginning of the file and watch it as you download - the same as streaming.
however your speed is not limitted so you can download the file faster than it's video length.
File transferring doesn't hit a maximum buffer, unlike streaming. So you can actually finish downloading the whole file if your speed is fast enough, not 3 seconds in advance of your current position.
That's why YouTube works so well, they don't stream or buffer content. They send the whole file and only interupt the transfer if you try and navigate to a point that you haven't yet downloaded.
Then it stops the transfer and resumes from the point you selected, keeping the old data in case you rewind again.

This currently only works with files that are not locked by the application that is downloading it.
Or if the application downloading it is also the player, again YouTube is such a program (Flash).
Like streaming you'd have to be receiving the file in a linear fashoin too, so peer to peer apps are out of the question.

Streaming doesn't allow you to fast-forward or rewind, you get what you're given or you go without as the cache is emptied as soon as you've watched the content.
Navigating to an area you haven't already downloaded causes a big delay as you pause the transfer, restart it from the point you selected and discard everything else.
This is a security measure, to stop you from recording endlessly as the filesize of recorded streams becomes too large for computers to support within a few hours.
Stop and you lose connection, lose part of the stream.

VLC could do both very easily, they're not hard systems to program, they're simply very server restricted.
You cannot record faster than the server is willing to offer, so recording from podcasts faster than 1x speed for example, will always be impossible until Apple redesignes the podcast standard to allow you to download more than 1x listening speed.

[Kevin Ar18]

If the server limits the download rate of the stream, could the stream be split up into multiple connections to the same server each retrieving a different section of the file (thus downloading faster than real-time)? I guess some servers might give you a hard time on this, but I would think it would work on a number of servers. I'm a little uncertain as to whether anyone would want to commit to actually programming such a feature into VLC though.

(In reply to The DJ) I would probably classify the ability to download streaming videos as a pretty desirable feature for many people. Lots of people download videos for one reason or another, and wanting to download streaming content is no exception to that. A few reasons that might come to mind:
* want to watch offline
* want to convert or edit the video
* want better control over watching the video (jumping from place to place) -- some streams/videos will sometimes give you serious trouble if you try to jump around (real video).
* of course, I don't know know all the reasons, but you do see people asking about it a lot

[The DJ]

There is a big difference between downloading and saving, and downloading at full speed. The RTSP standard does have provisions for downloading as fast as possible, but like i said, only very few servers support it, and only very few of the video and audio you see on the web is using RTSP in the first place.

Splitting into multiple connections is complicated and server managers usually don't like it, won't allow it or even ban you for that.

There is also a big difference between actual streaming, and progressive download.

VLC can already save most of the streams it receives. The new Windows/Linux version even has a simple "record"-button. The mac version does not have this yet, because no developer has had the time to add it yet to the Mac OS X interface.