Shifty Challenge Recording Einstein Program (RealPlayer rtsp:// .rm webcast.ucsd.edu)

Preface, Praise, & Problem

Preface: Greetings all! This is my very first post - ever. My moniker, Time Shifter, expresses my purpose for educating myself and helping others to successfully record/capture streaming video/audio -- and that is simply doing with software what VCRs have legally allowed for years, i.e., to record multimedia content for the legal purpose of 'time shifting' its playback as a matter of personal convenience. Frequently I come across multimedia content (such as news, science, or entertainment programs) which look interesting, but for which I do not presently have time to view/listen, and there is no guarantee that content will still be available on the internet at a later date, and therefore stream recording is immensely useful for time shifting playback until a time of convenience.

Praise: Many thanks to this website (!) for introducing me to a wonderful streaming recorder called WM Recorder. I was reluctant to put down the $50 bucks to purchase it. But it turned out to be one of the most valuable and useful software purchases I have ever made! It is a fantastic product which I use far more often than I ever dreamed. While it isn't a perfect solution that will successfully capture every single case of streaming multimedia . . . it is close!

Usage Hints: This product is most useful in its non-default mode called AUTO OFF, then select what to record from the VIEW LIST of automatically-captured links. No need to watch/listen to any content while recording. Streaming capture can proceed at 5X real time!!! Up to 100 streams (depending upon your bandwidth and what the streaming server allows) can be captured simultaneously.

I've been able to use WM Recorder to capture 20 audio programs simultaneously,
and 10 TV programs simultaneously!

Problem: And now for my first request for assistance. I am currently trying to record a Real Video program about Einstein, called E=mc2 from this webpage:

http://www.uctv.tv/library-test.asp?showID=11026

which can be viewed directly from this link:

http://webcast.ucsd.edu:8080/ramgen/UCSD_TV/11026.rm
OR from the above metadata:
rtsp://132.239.224.19:554/UCSD_TV/11026.rm?cloakport=8080,554

Here is the very strange and rare PROBLEM:
The program streams to RealPlayer just fine. And then using WM Recorder, the stream recording process begins and proceed to 100% completion. BUT the resulting file is unplayable. Details: The stream recording process took about 11 minutes on my 800 kb/sec connection, and produced a file called 11026.rm with a size of 93 MB. But this file will not play using RealPlayer. The video behaves as if the RealPlayer 'pause' was permanently stuck, i.e, you can use the RealPlayer progress slider to advance to anywhere within the video and see a still image at that point, but the video & sound will not begin - as though the pause were stuck. My RealPlayer version is recent (v10.5). Some other science videos on this website exhibit the very same behavior after recording -- yet others can be captured and viewed just fine with RealPlayer. I offer the E=mc2 program just as a case example.

Does anyone have an idea on this, or have the time to try this themselves?

Thanks!

TimeShifter

Here is the reply from the developer of WM Recorder:

Originally Posted by alex

The E=mc2 file from
rtsp://132.239.224.19:554/UCSD_TV/11026.rm?cloakport=8080,554 needs to be "fixed" after recording. WM Recorder picks the wrong audio modem.

Right click the file in the Saved Recordings window and select File Processing / Reprocess File from the pop-up menu. 2 codecs are listed there. The codec used during recording was the 8000 Hz. Select the other one (32000 Hz) and reprocess the file.

The recording is available in my FTP (89 MB)

www.netfor2.com/mc2_fix.zip

Thank you very much, Stream Recorder, for forwarding my problem to the developer of WM Recorder!

And thank you, WMR-developer, for your excellent troubleshooting and solution! The FTP file you provided worked perfectly. Then I followed your steps to create my own, which also was successful! Now I can WMR-download and reprocess several other science videos that had exhibited the same problem. I'm impressed and grateful.

Time Shifter