Audacity Forum

Dear Gale and Steve,
Thank you so very much for the wonderful advice you have freely shared in answering my question. I have been busy this end and not had time to try out your suggestions yet - but wanted just to post that the service you both have given has been outstanding! Microsoft service advice team could learn a great deal from your examples!!! The world would be such a happier place if it followed your examples of a 'real', 'human' service!!! I am ever so grateful - THANK YOU!
I will post again once I have tried out all your suggestions.

There are many firefox plugins which allow to record streaming audio and video, such as downloadhelper among others which I don't recall the name at the moment.

On Mac I've used mpeg streamclip, which is also available for windows (you need the beta version to be able to download youtube).

And BTW, on Linux there's youtube-dl.

steve wrote:Another option is to use "Total Recorder" http://www.highcriteria.com/ It's not free, but at under $20 it's not expensive (free trial available).

My wife's new laptop with W7 couldn't be configured with Audacity to record streaming audio - so she bought Total Recorder and is delighted with the results (to the extent that she's already seriously considering their upgrade package to get the increased capabilities). She uses TR for capture and does her subsequent editing in Audacity.

WC

bgravato wrote:There are many firefox plugins which allow to record streaming audio and video, such as downloadhelper among others which I don't recall the name at the moment.

These are downloaders, not recorders, aren't they? DownloadHelper is not a recorder, anyway. There is a difference - recording is lossy unless it's a digital capture. YouTube videos are always downloaded to your computer, so that the file once downloaded will play in the YouTube page without an internet connection, but the file is hidden in temp folders.

The Freecorder 3 I downloaded from Applian a few days ago works fine in IE8, records to WAV only from the browser (so no system dings) and doesn't nag about newer versions. It is not compatible with Firefox 4.

But it seems Applian have already pulled it and now only either v4 or the very limited v2 (both of which only save as MP3).



Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:

bgravato wrote:There are many firefox plugins which allow to record streaming audio and video, such as downloadhelper among others which I don't recall the name at the moment.

These are downloaders, not recorders, aren't they? DownloadHelper is not a recorder, anyway. There is a difference - recording is lossy unless it's a digital capture. YouTube videos are always downloaded to your computer, so that the file once downloaded will play in the YouTube page without an internet connection, but the file is hidden in temp folders.

Yes, you're right Gale, does are downloaders. But in this case isn't the end result pretty much the same? mpeg streamclip gives the option to save to different formats. I'm not sure about the others...

bgravato wrote:Yes, you're right Gale, does are downloaders. But in this case isn't the end result pretty much the same? mpeg streamclip gives the option to save to different formats. I'm not sure about the others...

When you use a "download YouTube videos" tool there are usually options to save in different resolutions and in FLV and MP4 format. But I don't "think" these tools (that I have in mind) are transcoding (which would be lossy). They are just using the different resolutions that YouTube store internally anyway and muxing to an FLV or MP4 container which should be lossless for audio and video.

If a tool is offering you a download in WMV format then yes that must be transcoding and I think you would see the difference between the saved file and the YouTube content.



Gale

MP4 and FLV are the options given by MPEG Streamclip.