[linux-audio-user] ASF streams was: audio editor that imports real audio

[Rob]

Patrick Shirkey wrote:
> Well I got close by scrounging around in the source for a few of the
> pages but no success yet. It's a pity that the format causes problems
> for Linux apps. It seems to be used in a lot of good sites that I have
> found over these past couple of days.

I would bet that the problem isn't ASF itself nor downloading from a CFM page, 
but that the URL you have sends you an .asx file, which contains pointers to 
the actual stream URL(s).  On top of that, the .asx file may link to mms: 
protocol URL's, which are some Microsoft streaming protocol that some players 
might deal with (I thought I heard mplayer did, but I haven't tried it) but 
wget or mozilla will not.

If the stream you're trying to download is archived (that is, not a live 
stream that can't be replayed) try this:

wget -O test.asx http://servername/launch.cfm?mixid=5014

Look in that file and see if there are any HTTP links to .asf files.  If there 
are, send the link to your favorite streaming-capable media player program or 
wget it if you want to have a local copy of the whole set.   If there are 
only mms links, you'll need to use something capable of streaming them, or an 
ASF downloader program like asfrecorder (which I myself use; the syntax is 
asfrecorder file.asx and it figures out which stream is best and downloads it 
to your hard disk.)

This may work to an extent with live broadcasts, but what ends up in the asf 
file on your hard disk is anyone's guess.  I've done it that way a couple 
times and it usually ends up being pretty good until the first serious packet 
droppage.

Rob