Best free streaming media recorders
How to record streaming media
This is one of most common questions I get from subscribers. It's also one of the most difficult to answer as there are serious legal issues involved.
So serious that many of the free software products designed to capture streaming media have been hounded off the web by copyright owners and their henchmen. I keep a short list of these programs on my website [1] but it's difficult to keep up-to-date as the download sites are always going offline.
And it's not only the legal issues; there are other complications: There is the associated problem of DRM protection not to mention the difficulties in dealing with many different streaming media formats and their associated codecs.
My advice for cutting through this maze is simple and pragmatic: If possible, use a free web service to record the streaming media, and, if that fails, simply record the streaming media while it is playing on your PC.
If you just want to do something simple like record a YouTube video, then sites like ZamZar [2], SplanDoo [3] and YouConvertIt [4] will do the job for you. Just plug in the address of the stream and select the format you want and you are finished. Depending on which site you've chosen, either a download link will be emailed to you or you will be able to download the captured file directly from the site.
Unfortunately, this simple approach will not work for many streams. In this situation I suggest you simply play the media stream on your PC and record what's happening on the screen and coming out your speakers.
Sure, there is some quality loss, but the great advantage of this approach is that it completely bypasses the whole question of DRM protection; if you can play it on your PC then you can record it from your PC. And you can record it in a form that is free of any protection and can therefore be replayed through any device that supports the appropriate file format.
For video streams there are several free session recorders that will do the recording job. You can find a good list of candidates on my website here [5]. These products are really designed for preparing on-screen tutorials and similar tasks, but several are capable of recording video replays.
Krut [6] in particular works well, though it can only output files in .MOV and .WAV formats. However, the output files can readily be converted to other formats using free conversion sites like ZamZar [2] and YouConvertIt [4].
There are some traps with Krut, particularly with video card and sound card settings, so I strongly suggest that you read this excellent tutorial [7].
My personal freeware favorite for on-screen capture is CamStudio V2 [8], because the output is in the more widely used .AVI and .FLV formats. It too has issues with video and sound cards, so you had better read the Krut tutorial [7] for guidance on this issue. The same solutions suggested for Krut are also applicable to CamStudio.
Just as you can record streaming videos playing on your PC, you can also record audio streams playing through your PC speakers. In fact, there are a number of free programs designed specifically for this task. My favorite is MP3myMP3 [9] which records directly from your sound card output. A slightly more complex alternative is to use the record option which is available in the Audacity Audio Editor [10], but this is probably overkill for average users who would be best off with the simplicity of MP3myMP3.
All these solution bypass the format problems and DRM protection issues. They don't, however, bypass the legal issues. I'm not going to preach to you on this matter; instead I trust in your good judgment.
[1] http://techsupportalert.com/more/extended.htm#91[2] http://www.zamzar.com/url/
[3] http://splandoo.com/
[4] http://youconvertit.com/OnlineVideo.aspx
[5] http://techsupportalert.com/more/extended.htm#105
[6] http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=129468
[7] http://www.freewaregenius.com/2007/04/13/krut-computer-recorder/
[8] http://camstudio.org/
[9] http://www.mp3mymp3.com/mp3_my_mp3_recorder.html
[10] http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
How to download MP3 audio from YouTube videos
Sometimes it's great to be able to download a video from a site such as Youtube, in order to play it offline or on a portable MP3 player. There are lots of programs that claim to be able to do this, some of which cost quite a bit of money. But there are also some free ones too, including some web-based tools. My favorite is Vixy, a web site that is quick, free, and easy to use. Just paste in the Youtube URL and select an output format, and within a minute or so the site will fetch the video, convert it to your desired format, and let you start downloading. Best of all, perhaps, is that one of the output formats is plain MP3 audio, so if there's a music video on Youtube that you want to listen to on your MP3 player, now you can.
http://vixy.net
Record FM radio music to MP3
TimeTrax TraxCatcher is a stand-alone FM radio with a dockable MP3 player that allows you to directly record music files from FM and store them on the MP3 player and your PC. Software to tag and organize the MP3 files is included. Of course you can do the same thing via streaming internet radio but this way you don't use any of your internet bandwidth plus you get a usable MP3 player as well. MRP is $159. While at the site check out their other products for recording XM, XM-Online and SIRIUS broadcasts.
http://www.timetraxtech.com/