Record live stream to MP4

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Thu Dec 6 23:17:37 GMT 2012, Craig Cockburn wrote:

>I'm wanting to record a live stream of BBC Alba to an MP4 file. Can
>someone tell me how to do this please as I've looked extensively and
>nothing works, mostly it's out of date info.

Hello :-)
Using the very latest snapshot (master, i.e. git-fa7d46f ) of get_iplayer 
from git at:
http://git.infradead.org/get_iplayer.git

OS is WindowsVista 32bit SP2, using a fairly recent win32 binary of RTMPdump 
2.4.

Assuming you want to capture the live stream at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv/bbc_alba/watchlive
(which is only accessible from UK IPs and would require a TV licence, 
obviously...)

Optionally refresh the livetv cache by running:

get_iplayer --refresh --type=livetv

(This is what I got:
Added: 80000:   BBC Alba - live
Matches:
80000:  BBC Alba - live
80001:  BBC Four - live
80002:  BBC News - live
80003:  BBC One - live
80004:  BBC Parliament - live
80005:  BBC Three - live
80006:  BBC Two - live
80007:  CBBC - live
80008:  CBeebies - live

INFO: 9 Matching Programmes

C:\Program Files\get_iplayer> )

and then by running the following command:

get_iplayer --type=livetv --pid=bbc_alba --modes=flashvhigh --force --stop x

get_iplayer will save in real time the highest quality rtmp live stream 
available,
which is 688x384p @1,539 Kbps, and after "x" seconds have passed,
it will stop the recording and in the end save it into a nice .mp4 file.
NB: If you are using the master version from git, you can use with 
the --stop switch
the time format hh:mm (e.g. for 1 hour long recording, --stop 3600 can be 
replaced
by --stop 01:00), see commit 8e662e0:
http://git.infradead.org/get_iplayer.git/commit/8e662e0af0866e8fe409f8d7998a8340e8322bce

If you don't use the  --stop switch, you'll have to stop the recordind 
manually,
by exiting the running command prompt window; you will end up with a partial 
flv file, e.g.
BBC_Alba_live_2012-12-07_144201.partial.mp4.flv (if you have not "hidden
extentions for known file types"). Rename to 
BBC_Alba_live_2012-12-07_144201.flv
and then use FFmpeg to remux losslessly to the mp4 container, just like 
get_iplayer
does internally:

ffmpeg.exe -i "BBC_Alba_live_2012-12-07_144201.flv" -f mp4 -vcodec 
copy -acodec copy "BBC_Alba_live_2012-12-07_144201.mp4"

And there you have your mp4 file!

Greetings, Vangelis

EDIT: When I started composing this e-mail, dinkypumpkin had not posted his 
insightful ones...
English is not my native tongue, so it took me some time to finish it...
At the risk of now being redundant, I decided to still send mine,
for the benefit of the OP and others...dinkypumpkin, I hope you don't mind 
:-)