Does anyone know how to rip a Real Audio File to an MP3??

Tony-- I remember reading that you do this, but how?
Thanks,
Wes

One way to do this is with Total Recorder. It's what I use, although other, better solutions might exist.

The people at RealNetworks would prefer that we don't do this.

When you see a website with a streaming RealAudio file, usually it'll be made deliberately so that you can't download the file to your hard disk. There's a certain kind of RealAudio file that can be saved to the hard disk, but unless they've specifically made that kind of file in the first place, it's next to impossible to save a stream.

There's gotta be a way, though, right? I mean, the data's coming down and is buffered on your computer for audio playback, so there's gotta be a way to save it. Well, there's a couple of ways to do it.

The official, recommended way, and the way that I'm going to tell you about here, is to use a product called "Total Recorder" to do the work. It will intercept any digital audio being sent to your sound card and turn it into ordinary wave data that you're free to encode in any way you like. It is a very good program and should be in everyone's audio tool kit.

There are also programs which will masquerade as a RealPlayer client and save streamed audio to the hard disk, as well as programs that will decode these streamed files into wave data. However, they are not publicly available because they violate RealNetworks' patents. I will not recommend them to you.

OK, while we're at this subject I figure I'm going to ask a question that's been bugging me for a while now : Tony, is there also a way to save streaming realvideo or quicktime files to your harddisk?

The reason I ask this is because I'm a big movie fan, and therefor would like to save some movietrailers on my HD (like the ones on this site here).

It's like you say : all the data gets buffered on my PC before (or whilst) playing, so there must be a way to save it?

I have never had a problem saving the movie trailers at the apple site. I just click on the little arrow in the lower-right corner and there is a "save as quicktime movie" option there. I've saved many movie trailers that way.

To answer the broader question: Quicktime and Windows Media are the same as RealAudio in this respect. The server operator chooses to either make it in a streaming-only format, or to make it in a save-to-hard-disk format. If the server operator doesn't want you saving the file, there won't be an option for doing it. The only programs which will save for you in those instances will be bootleg programs. I can't help you with locating copies of bootleg software.

Hmmm. I've tried saving the trailer of the new "Scooby Doo" movie just now in the way you described, and I CAN see the "Save as Quicktime movie" option, it's just greyed out.

I guess I'm out of luck now?

Anyway, thanks for the quick response.

Hmm. It's possible that you need the registered "pro" version of quicktime to get the save option. Not sure.

There was a program called StreamBox VCR that would save streaming media to your hard drive. Real Networks got very angry and put a stop to it (probably sued them out of business). It basically would just dump the stream to your hard drive in the same format it's broadcast in.

From then on, you could use something like Cool Edit to convert the Real file to WAV and so on. The program is not that easy to get a hold of, but it is very good.

The Streambox people still have a web site ( www.streambox.com ) and are still in business as far as I can tell... No mention of their old StreamBox VCR product at their web site any more. Too bad, because StreamBox VCR had a lot of great options for capturing streams, including the ability to scan a web page for links to RealAudio streams (as opposed to letting you fish through the source HTML for the URL). Yup, too bad this one isn't publicly available...

There was also StreamBox Ripper, which would do a faster-than-real-time decode of RealAudio streams at very high quality (without any sample-rate-conversion aliasing in the high frequencies) and also encode on-the-fly to MP3 or WMA with a host of options, including batch conversion. Too bad that's one's not publicly available, either...

Yup, too bad...

Methinks someone forgot a couple of 's in his post...



/Michael

Sometimes s can be implied without being explicitly stated.

Certainly, but on the 'net no one can hear you scream (or was that "not hear your inflection"... :-)

Just wanted to confirm what I thought I (quite clearly) saw

/Michael - who'd never do a search for such a program...

Used to be in an older version of winamp, there was a plugin that allowed you to play/stream a real audio file. All you had to do is run that as the input plugin and DiskWriteras the output.... violla. instant wav file. Then encode with your favorite encoder. Kind of a pain, but it got the job done....
I can't seem to get my current copy of this plugin to work with my now tremendously newer version of winamp, also could not find an any version of the plugin on winamp.com at quick glance,
if you want to search for it,
I think it was called UnReal, it doesn't work on my machine, but appears in my plugin's list as "innover's RealAudio Plugin (x86) [IN_RA.DLL]"
Wish I had more better info...
-grammerpolice?

I've tried them. They won't work with the newer versions of the RealAudio codecs, unfortunately.

I have a copy of streambox VCR. There is another utility, can't recall the name, that sniffs the network and shows any Real Media URL's as they pass by on the wire.

If anyone would like to look at it, for educational purposes only, I can whip you over a copy if you mail me.

There are also numerous sites hosting the program if you try google. Unfortunately, the last version of streambox won't connect to current Real Servers as it identifies itself as streambox. I hex edited my copy so it claims to be real player and it worked against the demo version server I am using at home.

I don't encourage swiping streams without consent.

Hi.

It's really too bad that I had to hit "extend search" a couple of times in my edonkey client, before even one hit of "StreamBox" showed up. Tooo baaad.

Of course, I am not implying that I downloaded a hacked copy of either Streambox Ripper nor Streambox VCR, nor to I say that doing so would be a good idea. I was just checking wether either program was still available somewhere on the internet.

cu,
sven

Edit: Actually, I don't even have an edonkey client with an "extend search" button on my computer, nor do I (even rarely) view or decode or save to disk any multimedia streams I stumble across on the net. I am quite satisfied with the CDs and DVDs I own.

Yeah you usually do need Quicktime Pro to save/edit movies. Of course you can always fish the movie out of your browsers cache. It's going to have a strange name, but it shouldn't be too hard to find with it's .mov extension