Possible to record streamed video?

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The EU have done something to encourage the arts, as a diversion from their usual string of regulations about what we may eat and the type of electric lights bulbs that are permitted. They are subsidising http://www.theoperaplatform.eu to show operas and ballets from 15 opera houses around Europe.

It began transmissions with an undistinguished Traviata from Madrid, followed by Szymanowski’s rarely performed ‘King Roger’, which has a silly story, but ravishing music and a haunting aria for the soprano. Although I missed the live performance – attending a wedding in Finland – I have since seen and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have been unable to find a recording of the work, hence the question as to whether it can be recorded to my PC, and if so, how?

Anyone interested in opera would find it well worth watching. It’s available on demand until some date in October.

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I have been unable to find a recording of the work, hence the question as to whether it can be recorded to my PC, and if so, how?

Yes, there’s several programs available on the Internet. Personally I use the free Ant.com toolbar on Windows and Mac OS X when I want to save a video from Youtube, usually in .flv or .mp4 format. Then I can play them in the VLC player, also free. I can also use Windows Media Player for the .mp4 files.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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Thanks for the prompt reply.
I tried to download Ant for Firefox – the only option on offer – but nothing happened. Investigating revealed it had been blocked by FF as unsigned, with a message about potential malicious sites. It’s somewhat disconcerting when an add-on for FF is blocked by FF itself. Could it be corrupted, or do you think it’s safe to overrule FF and authorise the installation?
Looking through the 50 sites Ant is designed to work with the vast majority seem to be You Tube type sites for sharing short videos. Will it work with 2 – 3 hour operas? Netflix is on the list, which is encouraging. I could commence a free trial and download a film, but am unwilling to commit to a 12 or 18 month contract for unlimited broadband until the problem of the increasingly frequent disconnections is resolved.
You mention .flv or mp4 format, which are meaningless to me. How would I know which to choose? Sorry to be a pain, but this is a new area for me.

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I like their regulations on use of low energy light bulbs.

cheers, Paul

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I like their regulations on use of low energy light bulbs.

cheers, Paul

I’m glad you do, but then you probably don’t have two chandeliers and find it almost impossible to find bulbs that will fit. Also the ban on pearl bulbs is infuriating, clear bulbs give a much harsher light, and I’m sure it makes scarcely any difference to the global warming.

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I like their regulations on use of low energy light bulbs.
cheers, Paul

I’m glad you do, but then you probably don’t have two chandeliers and find it almost impossible to find bulbs that will fit. Also the ban on pearl bulbs is infuriating, clear bulbs give a much harsher light, and I’m sure it makes scarcely any difference to the global warming.

Global warming is a modern day Myth.

This sort of “regulation” is nothing more than an effort to control the population to sustain an elite class.

For Youtube capture, this has been working for me and I use FF:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-video-and-audio-dow/?src=api

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For Youtube capture, this has been working for me and I use FF:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-video-and-audio-dow/?src=api

Thanks Russ. Installed it and found a 2.5 minute video interview with a company in which I hold shares (unfortunately, as the share are at a 10 year low, 90% below the price I paid).

Didn’t really know whether I was recording or just watching, but all was well and it was there on the desktop. Audio and video quite acceptable, for speech at least. However, i don’t see how this if going to allow me to record from theoperaplatform.com.

So still hoping for a solution.
George

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This sort of “regulation” is nothing more than an effort to control the population to sustain an elite class.

On behalf of the Elite Class i thank you!!

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Progress eh!

cheers, Paul

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Climate change isn’t.

For sure, but that’s a fact of existence on Earth, like gravity.

Video downloader (FVD) Chrome extension handles a lot, for Youtube I use this URL capture site.

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I went to your theoperaplatform.com Opera site and once Verdi – La traviata started playing I used the Ant. com toolbar icon to Download it. It will save as an .mp4 file of about 2.4GB, on my 1Mbps Internet service it will take a bit over 10 hours.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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Thanks for that. As mentioned in #4, I was put off by FF blocking the installation as potentially malicious, but you appear not to be having any problems, so will give it a go.

Surprised that downloading is so much slower than watching on line. Will have to let it d/load overnight – seems that it will take more than the 8 hour period outside my 10 GB monthly allowance, but not by too much. In any case, can’t let it monopolise the PC for most of the day.

However, I’ll be surprised if it’s able to run for so long without disconnecting. If it does fail I’ll just hope that the current problem is resovled before mid October, when King Roger becomes unavaiable. It’s not very encouraging that my next door neighbour has the same ISP and the same difficulties. The phone line is probably defective, or too far from the exchange – if the latter, will need to switch to cable.

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Surprised that downloading is so much slower than watching on line.

I find that to be true with larger files but then I have to keep in mind that it is writing to a drive so I Pause the playing and just download to play later. Using other than the C: drive for saving can impact the download time. Most times I save to the C: then move the videos later to a larger USB drive.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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I Pause the playing and just download to play later.

Doesn’t pausing the playing also pause the download? Must give it a try tonight.

I had no disconnections yesterday, so shorty after midnight decided to try my luck and see if it would work. After downloading and installing ANT, I went to the operaplatform, found ‘King Roger’, clicked on it, nothing happened, until the message ‘unable to connect to the site’. Sure enough the router’s connected indicator was red. Further attempts, with any thing full length had better wait until a BT engineer sorts out the problem, hopefully some time next week.

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Doesn’t pausing the playing also pause the download? Must give it a try tonight.

I had no disconnections yesterday, so shorty after midnight decided to try my luck and see if it would work. After downloading and installing ANT, I went to the operaplatform, found ‘King Roger’, clicked on it, nothing happened, until the message ‘unable to connect to the site’. Sure enough the router’s connected indicator was red. Further attempts, with any thing full length had better wait until a BT engineer sorts out the problem, hopefully some time next week.

No, the Pause hasn’t caused any problem with YouTube downloads, haven’t needed to try from other Web sites. Closing the browser does stop it but with Firefox if I go to History and Restore Previous Session the downloads usually pick up where they left off.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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Climate change isn’t.

This is a site I use to record and download the audio from YouTube videos…

http://www.youtube-mp3.org/

You are correct “Climate Change” is an on-going process that has been around since ‘Day 1’. However the notion that it is ‘man made’ is an out & out lie IMHO.

Thanks for http://www.ant.com it looks quite good.

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However the notion that it is ‘man made’ is an out & out lie IMHO

For the sake of your kids I hope you are right, but I wouldn’t bet the house on it.

cheers, Paul

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I’ll bet the folks in the Little Ice Age were glad to have cars to warm up the world for them.

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For the sake of your kids I hope you are right, but I wouldn’t bet the house on it.

cheers, Paul

Paul, they are going to be so many trillions in debt, the weather won’t matter much. I installed Ant and it was just what I was looking for to download video with.

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Thanks for the link to this interesting opera resource.

For downloading, the Torch browser (based on Chromium) http://www.torchbrowser.com has an inbuilt downloader. It optionally can extract the audio also. I’ve not found any undesirable behaviour from it except “compulsory” auto-updating.

Another approach of course is to capture the screen while viewing – depends on a good steady connection,and might lose video quality, but at least you can record at viewing speed rather than via a slower download. The Ashampoo Snap product is one of several such aps – very modest price, especially when they are running special offers, and although mine often crashes at the end of a recording, it always saves the whole recording in viewable form so it does the job.. https://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/pin/1224/multimedia-software/snap-8

To be fair, I’m not using the latest version which might have overcome the crashing..

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I opened another tab and am downloading La Traviata using Internet Download Manager which I have found will download most things.
my on-line speed is a bit slow this am about 5megs and so it will take about 1-1/2 hours

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I opened another tab and am downloading La Traviata using Internet Download Manager which I have found will download most things.
my on-line speed is a bit slow this am about 5megs and so it will take about 1-1/2 hours

Thanks for that, it gives another string to my bow if I run inti difficulties with Ant.

Your choice of username suggests you are also from the UK.

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Georgelee:
You might be able to get around the 10Gb/mo limit by downloading the long file overnight on the last day of the month. It might work but I’m not sure. It depends on your provider.

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Georgelee:
You might be able to get around the 10Gb/mo limit by downloading the long file overnight on the last day of the month. It might work but I’m not sure. It depends on your provider.

Thanks for the suggestion. Midnight to 8 am is free time, outside the 10 GB limit. That’s when I install new versions of Windows on the three machines, and sometimes apps if near the end of the month, i. the 15th, and close to the 10GB, or 15 GB when already over 10 GB. As I usually go to bed about 01.30 it’s no real hardship.

PS. Several posts have suggested the download time is more like 2 hours than 4. #27 an almost unbelievable 5 minutes.

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A wider audience might like the (25th and tenth, consecutively) anniversary concerts from the Royal Albert Hall of The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables.

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A wider audience might like the (25th and tenth, consecutively) anniversary concerts from the Royal Albert Hall of The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables.

Interesting. I have the 10th anniversary concert of Les Misérables with 17 Valjeans on VHS, later transferred to DVD, so it must have been at least 10 years ago. probably dumped the VHS by now.

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Interesting. I have the 10th anniversary concert of Les Misérables with 17 Valjeans on VHS, later transferred to DVD, so it must have been at least 10 years ago. probably dumped the VHS by now.

Membership in the local public library here is free, and a great many DVDs, including opera, are available to borrow free of charge.
That sort of puts a damper on downloading, I know, but it is one source that readers of this thread should be aware of that is worth investigating before they go mad trying to download multiple-DVD length productions.

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Climate change isn’t.

This is a site I use to record and download the audio from YouTube videos…

http://www.youtube-mp3.org/

This looks like a very convenient way to obtain the audio stream but, really, 128 kBits/sec. is not even close to being good quality sound.

One possible alternative, if nothing else works, is to use a simple, free screen recorder app such as SMRecorder. You can set it to record whatever is happening on your screen and also set it for up to 30 frames per second and CD-quality sound recording. Note: When installing any free app these days, including SMRecorder, you should watch for and uncheck offers to install other software, toolbars, etc. during the installation process! I don’t think a screen recorder is the best way to achieve your goal, but it may do in a pinch as long as someone is there to click to begin recording.

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The Opera Platform is a wonderful new innovation for we opera buffs. How lucky we are to view these operas in the comfort of our own homes.

Firefox is my browser and several years ago I installed the Firefox add-on “DownloadHelper”. I have been very satisfied. No problems whatsoever in capturing streaming operas, concerts, youtube videos, etc. The major reason for this, though, is that my Internet Provider is Verizon…which offers FIOS service (Fiber Optic Service). For those interested here is a little info about it. http://searchtelecom.techtarget.com/definition/optical-fiber. A couple of days after it’s live stream I was able to download King Roger in 5 minutes or so. You may wish to give it a try, but a lot will depend on the speed of your internet service. Good luck.

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The Opera Platform is a wonderful new innovation for we opera buffs. How lucky we are to view these operas in the comfort of our own homes.

Gee, 5 minutes to download the entire opera is amazing, when Berton reckoned 10 hours. You must have a really fast fibre optic connection.
A BT engineer is due on Monday, and once it’s determined whether this phone line is ever going to work properly, or needs to be switched to cable, I can sign up to the 12 or 18 month contract for unlimited downloads. We will need that if we start watching the opera platform at all regularly. But we don’t need extreme speed, and will settle for something more economical.
It’s remarkable how things have changed in the last few years. In 2011, when my wife and I resigned from the Friends of Covent Garden, annoyed at the way Friends were being treated, we consoled ourselves with the knowledge there are 10 or 11 operas annually from the Met shown in cinemas, and a mix of 10-12 operas and ballets from Covent Garden. That was quite good, then the Bolshoi started cinema showings, and now everybody is at it. There are relays from English National Opera and Glyndebourne each year, many from the National Theatre, then the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s Globe (the one with no roof), a few from West End theatres, concerts by the BPO and many art galleries and exhibitions round the world.
Such an abundance of riches means one can find plenty to attend, and the only stinker I’ve seen was ‘Glories from the Vatican Museums’ with the ludicrous idea making a 3D film about paintings using cut-outs to give an illusion of depth. The cinema showing of the ‘Matisse Cut-outs’ last year was a Godsend for me at a time when my arthritis was very bad and made it impossible to face the crush.

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There are lots of things I wish I could download but cannot.

However I CAN download from theoperaplatform.eu with Video DownloadHelper on Firefox with no problem.
http://www.downloadhelper.net/

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I tested downloading your operas for about ten minutes with a Chromium based browser extension called Video Downloader Professional (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-downloader-professi/elicpjhcidhpjomhibiffojpinpmmpil) and software called Freemake Video Downloader (http://www.freemake.com) and both worked fine, so that gives you a couple of other alternatives.

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whether it can be recorded to my PC, and if so, how?

VideoDownloadHelper (downloadhelper.net) is an AddOn for FireFox which has worked perfectly for me for a couple of years.
It is simple to use and downloads at high speed whichever format is available and usually with one click.
Once down, I often strip out the audio and convert it to MP3 with other freeware.

It sits in the toolbar and animates to show when any downloadable video is present: excellent

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Hello Georgelee,
Video DownloadHelper used on firefox is quite reliable.
Another add on that may or may not work for you on firefox is YouTube Video and Audio Downloader
It has a neat trick available,it can be set up to create an mp3 of a recording that can be burned to cd later,
for ‘Opera on the road’.
Regarding finding lamps for your light fixtures,you can look at amazon USA or Canada,or
europeanbulbs.com

I humbly believe Andrew Watt and Mark Steyn on ‘climate’,and loathe nannystateism.

Cheers!

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P. J. O’Rourke

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Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P. J. O’Rourke

And having government with little money or power is like letting all teenage boys run wild.

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