Macintosh, The Internet

BBC Radio Shows on your iPod

October 7th 2007, 10:10am

The BBC’s selection of Podcasts is growing (slowly), but if you want to listen to most of their shows you’ll be glued to your computer because they’re still only streamed in Read Audio.

Unless you know a way to grab Real Audio streams and stick them on your iPod. I’ve used the following method to get “listen again” streams for shows I’ve missed. It’s a two step process: you need to download the Read Audio stream and then convert it.

  1. Grab the stream with the nifty CocoaJT. Go to Recorder>Record A Stream. You can find the address whilst listening to the programme by using the Real Player application rather than the browser plugin (click the “Listen using stand alone Real Player” link in the BBC Radio Player window) and then going to Window>Clip Info.
  2. Encode the stream to an iTunes format with ffmpegx, having followed the preliminary steps (needed to get it to handle Real Audio correctly) as outlined in this handy macosxhints.com hint.

Happy listening.

  • peterb

    I just record the stream using RipVinyl and then covert to AAC or MP3 in iTunes.

  • http://www.littlestorping.co.uk Simon

    I don’t know RipVinyl, do you have a link? It took me ages to find CocoaJT – stream rippers for Real Audio seem to be few and far between.

  • http://www.littlestorping.co.uk Simon

    I don’t know RipVinyl, do you have a link? It took me ages to find CocoaJT – stream rippers for Real Audio seem to be few and far between.

  • peterb

    http://www.ripvinyl.com

    Rip vinyl has the merit of being very easy to use more or less immediately. It.’s also cheap.

    To record streaming audio, just select “What u hear” as your source and make sure you switch off all other sound effects the PC might otherwise make!

    Another option might be Audacity which is a hugely more sophisticated freeware program which you can also use for editing and converting to mp3 etc.

  • http://www.littlestorping.co.uk Simon

    Thanks for the link.

    I may give that a try when I finally get round to buying a copy of Windows. Alternately, the brand new Wiretap Studio does a similar thing on OS X, with the ability to pick the output of particular application(s), although at $69 it’s a lot pricier!

    The reason I like CocoaJT (apart from being free!) is that it allows you to dump the real stream direct to disk. I have a notion (totally unproven) that this is quicker but it does also give you the original to play on the computer as well as allowing for conversion to a (further compressed) format for iPod usage. Or to put it another way, I seem to like making my life complicated.

  • http://www.littlestorping.co.uk Simon

    Thanks for the link.

    I may give that a try when I finally get round to buying a copy of Windows. Alternately, the brand new Wiretap Studio does a similar thing on OS X, with the ability to pick the output of particular application(s), although at $69 it’s a lot pricier!

    The reason I like CocoaJT (apart from being free!) is that it allows you to dump the real stream direct to disk. I have a notion (totally unproven) that this is quicker but it does also give you the original to play on the computer as well as allowing for conversion to a (further compressed) format for iPod usage. Or to put it another way, I seem to like making my life complicated.

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