2004.06_Streamtuner-Listen and Capture Streamed Media-Save Directly as Mp3 Data Files.pdf

LINUX USER

Streamtuner

Soundgrabber

Many proud owners of broadband Internet connections

enjoy listening to Internet radio streams in the back-

ground. Although the enormous range of stations can

make it hard to keep track, the real question is how

do I go about recording a program that I really like?

BY JÖRG SCHUMANN AND CARSTEN SCHNOBER

Icecast [3] sites list hundreds of

Web radio stations. Web radio sta-

tions broadcast a continuous stream of

MP3 formatted music. You can use any

MP3 player, XMMS [4] for example, for

sound output, and the Streamripper [5]

command-line tool to capture the

stream. Streamtuner [6] provides the

GUI needed to coordinate the whole

setup.

Although XMMS has a native Disk

Writer plug-in, which will store a stream

locally, the plug-in decodes the incoming

stream, converting it to an enormous

wave file on the local disk. As you can

imagine, extracting your favorite track

from the stream can be tricky.

Red Hat, or

Mandrake,

ensure that you

are root , and enter

rpm -Uvh *.rpm to

launch the Streamripper

and Streamtuner installs.

These programs require a few

additional packages such as the GTK

libraries, which are typically pre-

installed on most systems; Streamtuner

also needs Curl .

Streamripper and Streamtuner have

not found their way into the stable

Debian version, Woody , although there

are backports from future versions,

which are not currently in stable. Both

packages can be installed by following

the typical steps: dpkg -i *.deb in the

Debian directory. Again Streamtuner

needs the libcurl2 package.

To ensure that you have the latest ver-

sions, enter the following lines:

ing pack-

ages.

Streamtuner

uses the XMMS

MP3 player to play music.

This program is included with all the dis-

tributions mentioned so far.

Tune In!

If you have never tried out Web radio

before, check out the Shoutcast home-

page at [1] for a great selection (see

Figure 1). Fans of almost any genre

should find something to their liking.

Click the Tune in! button to the left of a

station to pop up a dialog that prompts

you to specify the player you want to

use. A MP3 stream is not just a simple

MP3 file, but a playlist with the pls or

m3u suffix.

In the KDE browser, Konqueror, click

on Open in the first dialog box. A second

window will appear, if you have not pre-

viously assigned an application to this

Installation

Most major distributions do not include

this update, so check out the packages

from [7], [8], and [9]. If you have an

RPM-based Linux system, such as Suse,

deb http://www.back U

ports.org/debian U

stable streamtuner

deb http://www.back U

ports.org/ U

debian stable stream U

ripper

Figure 1: Shoutcast caters to every taste.

in your /etc/apt/sources.list

file and, working as root ,

type apt-get update , fol-

lowed by apt-get install

streamripper streamtuner

to download the packages,

after updating your exist-

Figure 2: XMMS tells you the address for your

favorite stream.

June 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

Capturing Streams from Internet Broadcasts

T he Shoutcast [1], Live365 [2], and

Streamtuner

LINUX USER

Figure 3: Streamripper stores the tracks from the stream in indi-

vidual files.

poll the stations in the dis-

play for latest details.

You can click on a genre to

display the streams assigned

to that genre. The arrow key

left of the genre name allows

you to open up a sub-cate-

gory of the genre.

The list of streams on the

right includes a description

written by the stream

provider. Many stations also

serve up the name of the current track

and artist. The next column tells you the

number of listeners, and Maximum

shows you how many concurrent listen-

ers a server can support. If all of these

slots are taken, you will have to wait for

someone to close a connection to listen

to this stream.

If you are interested in the sound qual-

ity, check the column on the outside

right. The higher the bit-rate, the better

the sound quality.

After deciding on a station, click with

your mouse to select the station, and dis-

play three buttons in the toolbar with

your options. Connect launches XMMS

and play the stream. Record tells Stream-

ripper to save the track you are currently

playing in MP3 format, Browse will open

the browser and surf to the station’s

homepage. The Stop button has no effect

on Streamripper or XMMS. Streamtuner

simply calls these external programs, but

does not maintain a connection to them.

The Preferences entry opens a dialog box

with an overview of the genre, name,

and some technical details.

If you need to change the preferences

for the browser, you can select Edit |

Preferences | Applications to enter your

browser software, and its parameters.

Enter your browser in the Visit Website

field, and your MP3 player in Listen to a

.m3u-file . The setting for Record stream

will launch Streamripper in a separate

window if no further parameters are sup-

plied. You can specify -d and any

writable directory on your hard disk to

tell Streamripper to capture to this direc-

tory, otherwise, the files will be placed in

a directory with the name of the radio

station below your home directory.

You can use more parameters for

Streamripper. The -l parameter restricts

the recording time to a specific number

of seconds, and -s tells the program not

to create separate directories for each

stream. Check out the manpage for more

options, by typing man streamripper .

file type. In this case, you need to select

Open with:… . Type xmms in the textbox

in the next dialog box that appears, or

select the program from the KDE menu.

Click on OK to launch the Web radio

stream in your player.

The Streamripper program is responsi-

ble for recording. Typing streamripper ,

followed by the address of the required

stream will open up a connection to the

target host, and save the tracks it serves

up in individual MP3 files on your local

disk. To find out the exact address of the

Web radio station, check the File name

field in the File Info window in XMMS;

press [Ctrl-3] to display the window (see

Figures 2 and 3).

■

INFO

[ 1] Shoutcast: http://www.shoutcast.com/

[2] Live365: http://www.live365.com/

[3] Icecast:

http://www.icecast.org/streamlist.php

[4] XMMS: http://www.xmms.org/

[5] Streamripper:

http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/

[6] Streamtuner:

http://www.nongnu.org/streamtuner

[7] Suse packages for Streamripper and

Streamtuner: http://apt.bygden.nu/SuSE/

9.0-i386/RPMS.suser-scorot/

[8] Red Hat packages for Streamripper and

Streamtuner: ftp://newrpms.sunsite.dk/

projects/newrpms/www/htdocs/apt/

redhat/en/i386/9.0/RPMS.newrpms/

[9] Mandrake packages for Streamtuner and

Streamripper:

http://mandrake.binarycompass.org/

Mandrake-devel/contrib/i586/

More Ease of Use

The basic version 0.11 of Streamtuner

(see Figure 4) only provides an overview

of the Shoutcast list. The Streamtuner

homepage has additional plug-ins on

offer to support Live365 and Icecast’s

Xiph. Unfortunately, there are no bina-

ries available, and the stability of the

plug-ins is questionable, but if you enjoy

tinkering with your system, just down-

load, build, and enjoy.

When you type streamtuner to launch

the program, an overview with a typi-

cal file manager design

appears. The left hand

panel contains a tree view

with various genres. There

is also a list of top ranking

streams across all genres.

The find function below

the list allows you to

search for a keyword

against the list of entries,

and quickly discover a sta-

tion currently playing your

favorite artist. To search

for a keyword, click on

Update ; this button will

Secure Storage

Right-clicking a stream will pop-up a

context menu that has the above

options, and an Add Bookmark entry,

that can help you find the addresses of

your favorite streams in future sessions.

GLOSSARY

Figure 4: Streamtuner a complete overview.

Backport: Some Debian users do not want to

switch from Woody to a version that is still

officially classified as unstable, just to keep

their machines up to date. To help these users,

http://www.backports.org/ provides newly-

built Debian packages that Woody does not

have, or where the Woody versions are obso-

lete.

www.linux-magazine.com

June 2004

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