When recording streaming media you should always make sure you do not violate the Terms of the Service. Also you should make recordings for personal usage only.

To make sure your University allows streaming media recording, you can write to it and ask about it.

Media stream recorders work the same way streaming media player work so it is often hard to detect that you record any stream. However there are some tips that can make your recordings more secure and harder to detect:

• Use single thread instead of multiple threads when recording streaming media. It is a more reliable method of recording anyway.
• Download one streaming lecture at a time.
• Make sure you don't have separate simultaneous streams delivered to your computer: the first one coming to your streaming player and the second one to your stream recorder.
• Do not download too many videos a day.
• If videos are streamed through the HTTP protocol, make sure your stream recorder is set to use a user-agent that is identical to the one that your streaming player uses when connecting to a streaming server.
  Examples of user agents:
  • "NSPlayer/9.0.0.2980" - for Windows Media streams
  • "RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)" - for Real Media streams
  • "WinampMPEG/5.0" - for Shoutcast streams

You may also use WM Recorder in the PRO mode (to record Windows Media and Real Media streams), FLV Recorder (to record Flash streams) or MovRecorder (to record QT streams). These programs allow you to capture packets coming to your streaming players. Because they get stream packets from your local computer you can't be compromised unless you download too many videos.