Saving Windows Streaming Media into a file...

Calum · Post by **Calum** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 5:27 pm

is there any way to download a windows media streaming movie, perhaps using mplayer or mencoder? if so how? i have seen what i think is this amazing video which has the following link:

http://www.milkandcookies.com/stuff/sbg.asx

now that is simply a small text file with markup pointing to the following location:

mms://ifilm.wmod.llnwd.net/a65/o1/portal/2460092_200.asf

now i can play this movie by typing "mplayer" and then the url of the asf file, and i presume that IE users will put in the asx address and get the movie in their browsers, but is it possible to download the movie (perhaps by converting it to something like an mpeg file?) locally? i am worried this gem might not last and i'd like a record of it for posterity!

thanks in advance, incidentally, although i am not sure if there is a way to do it or not...

Void Main · Post by **Void Main** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 5:47 pm

Just add the "-dumpstream" param and then rename the "stream.dump" to "something.asf" after it finishes.

I really enjoyed this little nugget when the file finished downloading:

Thank you for downloading a media file containing proprietary and patentend technology.

Makes me want to send someone a little note telling them to suck my left big toe.

Calum · Post by **Calum** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 6:09 pm

thanks voidmain!

that is an odd message, but judging by the mplayer site, they are being wryly sarcastic.

Void Main · Post by **Void Main** » Mon Jan 05, 2004 6:12 pm

Silly me, I thought the message came from the stream. I'm sure you are right that it was an mplayer message in which case I totally agree. :)

Tux · Post by **Tux** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 10:18 am

This command will encode the strem into a non-M$ format for you, but bear in mind this in encoding on top of encoding => lossy.

For RM:

mencoder rtsp://64.132.47.216/stuff/whatever139.rm -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -oac copy -o movie.avi

Same for ASF/X

mencoder mms://64.132.47.216/stuff/whatever139.wmv -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -oac copy -o movie.avi

Doing 'mencoder -vc help' will list your other options for vcodec=

Calum · Post by **Calum** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 12:49 pm

hmm, not sure if i agree that avi is a non MS format, in fact it seems to be a microsoft format designed to carry video and audio encoded in a number of different ways, which has been superceded by wmv (according to microsoft).

that's beside the point though, thanks for the start! now i will know what to look for!

thanks guys!

Tux · Post by **Tux** » Tue Jan 06, 2004 1:16 pm

You could actually call it movie.mpg, which is proabaly also the correct thing to do as the example used a mpeg4 codec. As far as I know AVI nowadays is a kind of wrapper format with the video inside encoded with other (usually proprietary) formats. I don't believe any sort of standard dictates AVI (so it proabbly is therefore MS hehe)
Anyway, mplayer and most Linux stuff has no care for file extensions..

EDIT: wow, thats what you basically just said, nevermind me.