[MPlayer-users] $ mencoder mms://url/of/some/asf/stream -oac mp3lame -o stream.mp3

[The Wanderer]

Michal Panoch wrote:

> hi,
> 
> i'm just wondering why is it, that execution of this command results
> in the following:
> 
> .
> .
> .
> ASF file format detected.
> Video stream is mandatory!
> Exiting...
> 
> Why this action NEEDS VIDEO stream as well ?!?!

Because Mencoder is not an audio encoder, it's a video encoder. The
fact that it can also encode audio is purely a matter of convenience,
which appears to have been included simply because one rarely wants to
encode video without some accompanying audio.

> All i need is to save some internet radio asf stream directly into an
> mp3 file, which I thought could not be a problem with mplayer.. But
> after whole night effort to make mplayer work with lame, this
> appears.. :((

Saving directly into MP3 isn't possible, but:

==
mplayer mms://stream -ao pcm -aofile stream.wav && \
lame ${opts} stream.wav stream.mp3 && \
rm stream.wav
==

ought to do the job, with I think just about the same end result.

> I can't even force mplayer to dump the stream to stdout and pipe it
> through lame.. WHY ???

Because currently, stdout is used for printing all of those text
messages which are displayed when MPlayer is run; I'm working on
changing that, after which "send output to stdout" will be able to be
implemented, but that may take a while.

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

A government exists to serve its citizens, not to control them.