On Mon, 16 Oct 2006, Paul (NCC/CS). wrote:

> Obviously there must be ways of recording these .ram programs,
> but how? What do people suggest?

   I use mplayer myself to do this sort of thing, but it is a bit of a pain 
in the ass.  It usually goes something like this:


   1: Find link to program, click it (in browser with no plugins; I use 
Opera with most of these things not even installed), view source.


   1.5: (not every time) Wade through insane amounts of Javascript that 
tries to be smart and determine what player you have installed; opening 
"player applicaton" window, etc.


  2: Find link to show, usually in the form of 
http://some.address/something.rm or http://some.address/something.asx.


  3: Download file using wget: 'wget <address>' -- this will save a tiny 
little file.


  4: Look in that file for the 'real' URL, usually in the form of 
rtsp://some.address/something.ram or mms://some.address/something.wma .

(It is apparently illegal in most countries to use standard audio formats 
and transport methods that anyone can use, you see.  *Especially* if you 
are a public service company.)


  5: Pass real url to mplayer, and tell it to save stream:

'mplayer -dumpstream prot://real.address/file.ram -dumpfile file.ram'


  6: Wait until it completes. ("Thank you for using proprietary and 
patented technologies. Core dumped.")


  7: Fire up mplayer again and listen. ('mplayer -ao whatever <filename>')



   Other people have already commented about using lame or mencoder.  IMHO 
the difficulty is in steps 1-4.  Especially 1.5 ...

   I hope there's a better way to do it with Reaplplayer.  Can you see the 
URL from within the program perhaps?  Then you should be able to skip 
directly to step 5.


Good luck, and sorry about the rant.


MAgnus