[MPlayer-users] -dumpstream on ASF/WMA is real-time only. Can it be accelerated?

[Alun Jones]

My program, iFetch (http://www.wftpd.com/ifetch) tries to download BBC Radio
using a number of different streams - and MPlayer has been very useful to
date in doing so, thank you (along with LAME to convert the files to MP3).

 

The BBC has recently been switching formats, and now pretty much exclusively
uses WMA for its files, at least for overseas users like myself.

 

Every other stream that has been used before - RTSP / RA, Flash RTMP / AAC -
has been streamed much faster than real-time (for the Flash streams I use
flvstreamer), so a half-hour show may take only five minutes to dump. MMS /
WMA, on the other hand, seems to only stream at real-time. A half-hour show
takes a half hour to dump. Dumping the three hour long "Bruce Dickinson
Friday Rock Show" is just too painful to contemplate.

 

http://mabblog.com/blog/?p=91 illustrates another user with the same
concern.

 

Here's a sample command line I'm using, which will work for the next seven
days or so (after which time the BBC removes the content). After that time,
you can always use iFetch to generate more requests, if you need to.

 

"C:\program files (x86)\mplayer for windows\mplayer.exe" -noconsolecontrols
-nomouseinput -vc null -vo null -prefer-ipv4 -bandwidth 10000000
"mms://wm.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc7coyopa/bbc7_-_friday_2300.wma" -dumpstream
-dumpfile "c:\downloads\bbc\100528\b007k1xw.wma"

 

Please let me know if there's anything I'm doing wrong, if this is a
fundamental limit set at the server, or something else entirely. I would
really like to be able to download these WMAs without being tied to the
network for hours. The goal, after all, is to be able to listen to these
shows on the bus to work, where I don't have network connectivity and only
an MP3 player for company.

 

Alun.

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