Recording new HD BBC Radio 3 UK stream

[mckradio3]

Have just registered. I write with some background for non UK contributers.

Today, Tuesday, 14th December, 2010, UK BBC Radio 3 has added 320 kbps flash stream after an unannounced trial in the summer. It sounds superb. It may only be available in UK - I do not know.

The web address is

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/hd-audio/index.shtml

Right clicking on the page gives info:
BBC media player v.2.24.18269.21576
bbc_radio_three|320 kbps|aac|AK

I am listening via a rather clumsy setup. Ethernet to my Toshiba laptop, HDMI to HDtv: wired (not optical) spdif output to standard d/a decoder/pre-amp and eventual analogue stereo output.

How can I record it? It is accessed from BBC Radio 3 website and is audio only using flash and BBC media player.

My question is - how can I record this? For those not in UK - the BBC have closed almost all discussion forums and message boards to save precious funding which is by a licence system which is mandatory to anyone in the UK who can view BBC TV by any route - there are no adverts. This is why there have been rumours of international distribution of BBC tv (including HDTV) funded by commercial interests. We are very fortunate to have several hundreds of satellite channels including a very large number of HDTV channels but, the good material is often only available to subscribers - but all BBC content is free, including all programmes over the preceding 7 days (tv and radio) which are available by a special webpage (BBC iPlayer) but most programmes are removed and unplayable 7 days after original transmission or sometimes 7 days after accessing the programme. The audio on demand will NOT be available for BBC Radio 3 HD.

If anyone can help, I would be grateful. Live concerts are the staple diet of Radio 3. Recordings of Radio 3 are easy and legal as it is broadcast on FM in the UK (good, but local transmitter has too much noise,) DAB 192 kbps (not good enough) and as real audio and /or wma stream in addition to this new service, which sounds better to my ears than any of the other methods. I believe the tests were universally appreciated and audibly superior, when transmitted during the last week of the famous "BBC Proms" concerts, the "party atmosphere" of the "Last Night of the Proms" is shown on tv and like all of the huge number of concerts, also on line in many countries.

It is an RTMP stream resticted to the UK. I was able to download and capture it as well as extract AAC audio into m4a with Replay Media Catcher 4 without any problem.



You can also try to download RTMP streams with freeware CooJah + Blader, Orbit Downloader, StreamTransport.

And you can try to capture RTMP streams in real time while you listen to them using freeware CooJah (without Blader), Orbit Grab Pro.

Related:
FAQ: How to record/download/capture/save Adobe Flash .FLV video RTMP stream from embedded player
How to record rtmp:// flash video .flv stream from embedded Adobe Flash Player

[mckradio3]

Many thanks. Will try.

mckradio3

[any ANONYMOUS forum user]

I would be really grateful if you could guide me through the steps. I have been intermittently successful but I clearly am a complete newbie at this task and would be so grateful for the exact settings that you were successful with and your recommendations about burning to disc and what sort of disc to use. I have recording and playback facilities for most types of disc.

Sorry to take up your time. I have been told that I cannot make any more "test" recordings and I am quite happy to buy Replay Media Catcher 4 if I am sure it will work.

I just started recording with Replay Media Catcher 4, then navigated to BBC3 radio and played the hd stream. RMC downloaded it automatically.

If you want to capture RTMP streams from your local flash player while you play them (instead of downloading), you can go to the Tools -> Settings -> RTMP Download Tweaks and tick the option to always record RTMP streams instead of downloading. This is helpful if you want to play your stream in real time and record it as well, because it allows to avoid 2 threads: one for playing and another one for downloading.

If you want to extract AAC tracks from FLV files into m4a files after recording automatically, just select the "Audio Extraction (AAC into M4A)" in the "Conversion settings" belows the list of recordings.

That's it. Just start recording and select the conversion settings and you're ready to go.


As for burning to CD/DVD/Blu-Ray, if you want to burn to an Audio CD that can be played on any CD player, conversion is needed. If you want to burn your files for archiving purposes, you can use any disc that you like. I burn my files with freeware ImgBurn, although there are lots of other great programs.

I've burnt more than a thousand of discs and not all of them are good. Some of them became unreadable in year or two, but most of such discs were cheap ones (50-100 disc spindles). Since your recordings shouldn't take much space, I recommend to store them online. Free space offered by Dropbox, Microsoft Skydrive,... should be enough for you. But of course you can burn DVDs (Verbatim or something else). I just recommend to avoid spindles and to burn the same content onto discs from different companies, if your content is very valuable.