So, what prevents the KCRW podcasts from also having the (non-Harry) music in them? Is there a possibility of someday having the whole, unedited show in a podcast?

I’m pretty sure it’s a copyright issue.

I probably shouldn’t admit this but if you have mplayer and/or mencoder, you can grab the stream off the net. With a little halfway decent audio editing software, you can make your own podcast.

But I didn’t tell. . . EEK . . . it’s the Copyright Police!

But look…it’s the Fair Use Liberation Army, come to save the day!

Thanks for the advice…that’s an interesting idea.

Do they have the music on the downloads from audible.com. I haven’t checked those out yet.

What would be the difference between the real streams and the podcast? Just the fact you can listen to it anytime... er… anywhere? I don’t get it.

Well, a stream is just that, a stream. It’s buffered a little bit, but not really stored anywhere on your system. It’s not a copy.

A podcast is stored and transported. It’s a copy.

That’s the difference, I think.

I have not seen the audible downloads, because I wasn’t willing to sign up for their “free” preview and end up paying $15/month if I forgot to cancel.

Audible.com has players only for Windoze, not Mac or Linux. Since I use Linux, I’m sol. Further one can listen only on-line: that’s their rights management system: one must connect to listen to the files one has downloaded from them. Before the podcasts I captured the show with
mplayer.

Random Troll: if you’re on Linux, then you can grab the stream using

/usr/local/bin/mplayer -noframedrop -dumpfile whatever.stream -dumpstream {url}
/usr/local/bin/mplayer whatever.stream -ao pcm:file=whatever.wav -vc dummy -vo null
/usr/local/bin/lame -h -b 48 whatever.wav whatever.mp3—tt KCRW—ta “Harry Shearer”

I have this set up as a cron job.

Did I mention I’m a total nerd?

Use at your own risk. If your cat disappears or mutates into a flesh-eating badger, you have only yourself to blame.

Hahaahaa Steve! You’re not the only nerd around here. Kubuntu man here. And a long time ago, on HuffPo, I refered to you as Steve Mack. Oops. Sorry.

Nope, different Steve entirely.

Did I mention that my home box and laptop are running FreeBSD?

Outnerd that.

I’m running OpenBSD on my home box and home laptop but am getting mplayer and lame compiled via cygwin on my work windows box because that’s what my iPod hooks up to. :-)

OK, I think I’ve out-geeked you, Steve, but only because I’m standing on your shoulders. :-)

I’ve got mplayer running on Windows via cygwin and I’ve set up a cron job to record the live simulcast every Sunday from the mp3 feed—no resampling or conversion needed.

mplayer needed one patch to compile on cygwin, but it works like a champ.

Here’s the script, called leshow.sh

#!/usr/bin/bash
export showName=LeShow-`date +%F`
/usr/local/bin/mplayer <a href="http://media.kcrw.com/live/kcrwlive.pls">http://media.kcrw.com/live/kcrwlive.pls</a> -noframedrop  -dumpfile \
     ~/Podcasts/LeShow/${showName}.mp3 -dumpstream >&/dev/null

and my cron entry:

58 12 * * 0     /home/jk/scripts/leshow.sh
02 14 * * 0     killall mplayer

(I’m on ET.) I added a little wiggle room for time jitter and to catch the delightful Harry announcer banter before and after the show.

OK, back to work. :-)

jk: That’s very similar to the actual cronjob I run.

The major difference is that my script is a little more general, since there are other shows I like to grab off the “air” for archival or later listening. It spawns an at job that kills the stream grab at a user-specified delay. The conversion step is mostly because some of the streams I grab are RealPlayer only and I’m not sure whether they’ll save properly as .mp3.

I’ll have to do some testing.

I also like the raw stream because it loads more quickly into my audio editor.

I see I’m not the only one who likes to save the “banter” and/or snarky remarks before and after the actual program. In a backhanded way, I’m sort of disappointed that KCRW dropped “Car Talk” right after “Le Show” – I loved to hear Mr Shearer grinding his teeth doing the intro to “Click and Clack”.

heh, and I thought I was a nerd! Anybody have all the Le Shows saved somewhere? I only have all the MP3s since June 2005. I hate listening to spoken word on the PC, so I stay away from streaming.

Great to see a forum up and running by the way!

Trumad: the snarf scripts that jk and I have worked out will work for the archived RealAudio as well. I’d grabbed a couple of them, just to see if I could. Someday I might write a script to snarf the whole lot if I ever add another disk drive or two to the home box.

cool! I’d love to give them a whirl someday! I was only 10 in 1995 though (when the archive starts), so I’m not sure how wuch of the satire I’ll understand, I’ll still enjoy the snarky interpolations though!

I was only 10 in 1995 though (when the archive starts). . .

Sure. Make me feel old.

am I the only reading this that is compleatly confused? :S
Trumad-I was 5 when the archive starts… some of the satire goes over my head…some it doesn’t lol…depends!...snarky is always good though!

i have a tape player with a built in mic in front of a 52 kb modem recording the live “simulcast” every monday from the mp3, no resampling or conversion needed.

ears needed to listen.

Now thats old school! :)

Reminds me of my middle school days and making mix tapes.

Not that related to this topic but I couldn’t figure out how to start a new topic. BUT check out this new Political Comedy Web Series

Check out this Web Series: Fun With War Crimes-Mission Accomplished – Bush on Trial May 1, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXxTooNIsBc