BBC Radio 3 Testing Lossless FLAC Streaming

[robtweed]

On 4/14/2017 at 1:00 AM, jhwalker said:

 

Thanks for this pointer - listening to the stream (shows as 32/48 in VLC) via the URL mansr provided above

I also successfully have VLC 3..0.0 playing the R3 FLAC stream, which is awesome.  Question: does anyone know how to capture/save the stream to a file using VLC?  VLC command line, perhaps?

 

[robtweed]

1 hour ago, robtweed said:

I also successfully have VLC 3..0.0 playing the R3 FLAC stream, which is awesome.  Question: does anyone know how to capture/save the stream to a file using VLC?  VLC command line, perhaps?

 

 

I think I figured it out - for anyone else interested:

 

./VLC -I rc https://vs-dash-ww-rd-live.bbcfmt.hs.llnwd.net/al/lossless/client_manifest.mpd --sout="#transcode{vcodec=none,acodec=flac}:std{access=file,mux=raw,dst='testr3.flac'}"

 

[robtweed]

5 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

In Windows you can go into the Sound CP and show disabled devices. If sound mixer shows up you can use that as the playback device. Then you can use Audacity to record those digital streams in full fidelity. 

Thanks for that info.  However I use a Mac and want a way to do this via the command line, so I can now schedule a recording via a script file.  VLC's command line allows me to now do this :-)  Also doesn't need any other software than VLC v3.0.0 and no system re-configuration.

[robtweed]

The reason I use the command line option is:

 

1) So I have the option of capturing and saving as FLAC; and

 

2) so I can build an automated scheduled process around it - so I can set up the dates/times of all the Prom concerts and record them unattended.  

 

The command line option for VLC allows me to do the former, but as you've found, it doesn't have a reliable, built-in way of scheduling.  However, by using it as a command line call, I can use other stuff to create a scheduler: in my case I've written a simple Node.js script that triggers the call to VLC based on start-date/times I've entered and which are held in a JSON structure.

 

One key problem with the VLC command line, however, is there's no way to reliably stop it recording at a scheduled time - the documented mechanism doesn't work for some reason.  So what I do is to get Node.js to very crudely force the spawned VLC process to terminate.  That works, but leaves me with one remaining problem: the resulting FLAC file has no information on its total duration.  VLC and other FLAC-supporting players will play it, but some things like fast forwarding may not work correctly.  The solution I've found is to load the file into a sound editor program (I use Sound Studio on the Mac) and then save it (a good opportunity to edit and trim the recording anyway).  That magically adds back the missing information on total elapsed time, and bingo you have a full-quality recording of the Prom concert.

 

OK a bit more of a palaver than I'd like, but it works, and boy are those recordings fantastic!

 

 

[robtweed]

Thanks for that info, Bystander - that CLI command looks much neater without the transcode.  I'll give it a try within my script