Virtual jukeboxes

The web is currently abuzz with talk of an evolving breed of push-button, 'two-dot-oh' services that allow you to name a tune and have it streamed to your computer instantaneously and for free (as opposed to those that feed you music deemed similar to the bands or artists you type in). This is predominantly thanks to the people behind BlogMusik, a new French outfit who have adopted the concept and slapped a cutesy iPod-like, Flash interface on top to get the fad-followers salivating.
BlogMusik draws its content from Radio Blog Club, which in turn taps into music uploaded by bloggers. Every genre of music is catered for, some of it belonging to multi-platinum selling artists and some the work of unknowns.

Common sense would suggest that unless the copyright holders of this material are receiving royalties from BlogMusik et al, they are likely to be breaking the law and will soon be squished into oblivion by music industry watchdogs. If this is true, the case against them must be progressing treacle-treadingly slowly because similar well-established startups such as Streampad, Fine Tune, Webjay and The Hype Machine look pretty healthy to me. Maybe the limitations imposed by the streaming protocol serve to bolster their legitimacy? I don't buy the, "it's hosted in France so anything goes" tack. Could it be that such technology is considered less of a threat to the music industry because people will still want to own physical discs, or at least digital files which can be transferred to any device and played anywhere?

While it is possible to rip the music you listen to through BlogMusik (you only have to search your computer's internet cache for .rbs files and rename them to .mp3) it remains to be seen if anyone will be inclined to do so considering the low bitrate of the music files made available.

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Real Player radio on demand

Earlier in the year I wrote a post explaining how to go about converting web-based, Real audio radio streams into a more portable format. Since then a new-ish Mac application has emerged to streamline (see what I did there?) the process even further.

In the spirit of granny-proof Mac software, Stream Recorder does everything for you without asking any complicated questions or pestering you with inane dialogue alerts and requires no ancillary software. There are no parametres to tweak before you begin recording; you simply drag 'listen again' links into the application window and leave it to generate an MP3 file, which can then be transferred to your not-necessarily-Apple-branded MP3 player.

There's a clue in the title of the app, but for anyone who hasn't yet had their first coffee of the day, Stream Recorder captures audio in real-time so it's prone to connection drop-outs unlike the Flashget / HiDownload / Net Transport / Mass Downloader plus NCH Switch method (which involves downloading .ra files via a resumable download manager before converting them locally).

That said, it performed flawlessly when I tested it with two three-hour, 32 kbps broadcasts. It could be that the application has some sort of built-in blip recovery gizmo in place, but as I haven't experienced any yet I can't be certain one way or the other. If not your recordings are no more susceptible to premature coma than they would be if recorded using better established software like Audio Hijacker - on several occasions whilst 'hijacking' BBC radio streams, Real Player has ceased transferring data and Audio Hijacker hasn't known how to pick up the ball again.

In each case Stream Recorder churned out a 163mb MP3 file encoded at 128 kbps. This seems to be the application's default - and unalterable - setting, though as you're unlikely to find web audio streams encoded at a superior bitrate I don't see it as a limitation. Well unless, at the other end of the spectrum, you're running low on flash memory capacity.

One feature I would like to see included in future releases is a timer to indicate how long a stream has been recording. Oh and it wouldn't hurt to drop the redundant, obligatory association with the iPod. Otherwise Stream Recorder gets a big thumbs up from yours truly.

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Mind-reading, spontaneously generated radio stations

Every time the internet goes through a stale period where I start to wonder if all the really ground-breaking ideas have already been implemented, a web service comes along to blow away the cobwebs, taking my breath away in the process.

Last.fm epitomises this cycle. It's a social 'music-marking' community web site for curious audiophiles. You begin by creating a profile and introducing your favourite audio player to the 'Audioscrobbler' plug-in. From then on, the artist names and track titles of whatever you listen to are transmitted to the Last.fm web site and stored under your profile.

The site's clever, back-end scripty stuff (sorry if the science behind this is going over your head) then compiles this data to establish a representative snapshot of your musical tastes. The algorithm doofer looks at other people's snapshots too and tries to identify correlations between their favourite artists and bands. For instance it has been demonstrated that many people who are fans of Ben Folds also enjoy listening to Belle and Sebastian, Radiohead and Weezer.

Yes, Amazon also has a "if you like this band you may also like blah de da" system, yet what Amazon can't do is introduce you to new music by streaming an around-the-clock, ad-free, chatter-free, bespoke radio station to your computer. That's precisely what the Last.fm Player does! All you are required to do to kick-start your personal playlist is type in the name of a band or artist you appreciate and poke the 'go' button. The player responds by generating a continuous stream of genre-related or 'taste-linked' media. There's no annoying DJ to tune out between tracks, each of which is identified as it plays - the artist, track and album names are displayed at all times.

Any tracks you'd rather not listen to can be skipped, and there are even options to give the thumbs up or down signal to tracks you either love or loathe. I assume the player reacts by 'spooling' more of the bands you give the nod of approval to, and banishes those you can't stand so you never have to suffer them again.

Last.fm don't keep an all-embracing database of music on their own servers. Instead, the music is streamed from member to member, radically reducing the bandwidth costs levied by the service operators. Unlike file-sharing, this is perfectly legal because the music is not being exchanged in the traditional sense, rather it is 'aired' and then it perishes. The player has no built-in facilities for storing the tracks it plays, though there's nothing to stop you recording the stream for delayed playback or replays. This of course would be totally immoral and surely buy you a one-way ticket to hell, once the RIAA had confiscated everything you own, your life's savings and the right to sell your family and pets into slavery.

The threat of eternal damnation aside, Last.fm easily gets my vote for web service of the year, if not the decade! I'm fortunate enough to work in a super-chilled out office where we're allowed to listen to music so I predict the Last.fm Player and I will soon become inseparable.

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How can I capture an audio stream?

If you're a Mac user, the simplest way to achieve this would be to use the original, free version of WireTap. Unfortunately, version 1.0 is no longer available from the official home page (oh look, they have a pro version for sale - could the two things be connected?), but can be found elsewhere on the web if you're prepared to scout around for it.

WireTap is an atypical stream-ripping tool in that it records any sounds emitted by your Mac within a given time-frame - it doesn't discriminate between applications - it will pick up system beeps, iTunes output, everything, so if you require a 'clean' recording, ensure that you mute the sound in all applications bar the target source before you begin 'tapping'.

The interface consists of three buttons - record, stop and pause. To save an audio stream you would click on the relevant link in your web browser to commence playback and then hit the record button in WireTap - the captured sound is saved to a folder of your choice as an AIFF file. If you wish to save streams in MP3 format you will have to upgrade to the pro version or use Audio Hijack instead. Incidentally, Audio Hijack will allow you to capture audio from specific applications, and additionally grants you much more control over the quality and format of captured sound files.

The handful of PC users amongst us *wink* might like to try Stream Ripper instead. This being a more traditional stream capturing tool, it records audio streams directly, ignoring any extraneous background system noise. It can't interpret Windows Media or Real Audio streams, but pretty much anything else is fair game.

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Common movie/audio encoding formats defined

ASF is yet another video format to receive the MPEG4 codec treatment. It stands for Advanced Streaming Format because it was designed to be watched while being transferred from the internet (or to be 'streamed' if you want to use the correct lingo). The quality is nowhere near as good as MPG, DivX or VCD, but is still acceptable for most purposes while maintaining a comparatively favourable size to quality ratio.

AVI is an acronym for Audio Video Interleave. Technically it is a container rather than an encoding format in its own right in that it specifies how audio and video data is structured within the file. The DivX codec is one notable example of an encoding format which makes use of the AVI wrapper.
AVI files contain a four-digit code which is recognised by movie playback tools such as Media Player or VLC, allowing them to determine how to decode the movie.

DivX is the name of the encoding process used to convert DVD, VHS etc movies into a very high-quality AVI video format. This is carried out using a combination of the MP3 format for audio compression and a hacked version of Microsoft's MPEG4 codec for video compression.
A typical DivX movie will fill a standard 650mb CD-R and can be played back using nothing more than Microsoft's trusty (ha!) Media Player providing you have the DivX codec installed (see my movie links page).

The MPEG format was devised by the Motion Picture Experts Group, hence the abbreviation and its variations (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and so on) form the basis for many other formats (see previous definitions). It combines very high-quality video playback with large file sizes.
Once again keep the VLC Media Player handy.

Musepack is a lossy audio compression format much like MP3 though distinguished by its .mpc extension. The most notable benefits of the MPC format are:- - Superior quality audio at medium to high bit rates - Very fast encoding and decoding - 100% transparency i.e. MPC music tracks sound identical to their CD counterparts Despite the high-quality audio output rendered by Musepack, the format is not widely used because most media players do not support it natively i.e. a plugin is required. Currently the only media player which can handle MPC files 'out of the box' is Foobar.

Also to it's detriment, very few hardware audio players make provisions for MPC playback. In effect, to listen to MPC music on the go, the files first have to be converted. As this entails switching from one lossy format to another, inevitably the quality will deteriorate in the process. Ideally, if you wish to use MPC files in such a way, you would be best advised to re-encode them directly to the destination format, though if this isn't possible you might like to let either the Alive MP3 Wav Converter or 4U WMA MP3 Converter go to work on them.

Burning MPC files directly to CD enabling you to play them in the usual manner is less problematic. To do this using Nero you will need to install Mausau's MPC plugin. Alternatively, you could use the freeware audio CD writing tool, Burrrn, which supports the MPC format by default.

More detailed information relating to the Musepack audio compression format can be found at the official home page.

nAVI is a non-streamable hybrid of the ASF format, which boasts better quality playback due to its adoption of much-improved frame rates.

Ogg Vorbis is a completely free, streamable, open-source audio encoding format. Compared to the more widely known MP3 format, Ogg Vorbis files provide superior sound quality and smaller file size. Since the format is patent-free, software vendors do not need to pay licensing fees to implement the encoding of Ogg Vorbis files into their software. Effectively this means that a greater variety of encoding software will be available for the Ogg Vorbis format.

QuickTime format was conceived by Apple and therefore it is not surprising that these type of movies first appeared on Macintosh computers before being ported to the PC. They comprise high-quality playback and the ability to be streamed over the internet. Many Mac-friendly web sites favour this encoding method, largely due to its association with Apple I don't doubt.

What is most annoying about proprietary codecs is that the authors will have you believe you need to use a specialist tool to play them back - in this case, Apple's QuickTime Player (who'd have thunk it?). A waste of perfectly good hard disk space if you ask me! Use VLC instead.

Real Media is a proprietary, MPEG-2 based streamable format used to encode audio and video data. Small file sizes mean you won't have long to wait for content to begin streaming, or finish downloading if you are transferring the complete .ra or .rm files before attempting to play them back, but quality can leave a lot to be desired. Real Media movies and audio can be played back using Real Network's free RealPlayer application or Real Alternative. Real Media movie clips are very common on mainstream news sites that don't know any better, bless 'em.

VCD stands for Video Compact Disc. These are CD-Roms containing full-motion video encoded using the MPEG1 codec. Because they consist of high-quality stereo sound coupled with reasonable quality video playback (equivalent to the VHS format) you will often find that they occupy two CDs.
VCDs can be played back with Microsoft's Media Player, amongst a host of other more specialist programs simply by locating and opening their '.dat' files.

WMA is an acronym of Windows Media Audio; Microsoft's propriety audio format. WMA files provide CD-quality sound and are slightly more compact than their MP3 equivalents. Like MP3 files they are streamable.

WMV is an acronym of Windows Media Video; again one of Microsoft's propriety formats. WMV is used to encode movie data, which can contain both video and audio streams. Such files offer near broadcast-quality video, and as an added bonus, can be streamed over the internet.

The observant readers among you may have noticed that XviD spells DivX backwards. I would imagine this reflects the wish of its authors to highlight the similarities between the two codecs. Both are MPEG-4 based and are derived from source code written under Project Mayo.

The principal fork in the path can be traced back to their respective software licenses; DivX is commercial and closed source, whereas XviD is open source and released under the GPL license.
It's difficult to definitively answer the question, "which codec is better?" because there are so many factors which can affect the performance and quality of movies encoded using either codec. See www.xvid.org for downloads and further information.

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