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As you may have noticed, a number of national and international tv stations are beginning to offer their products in the form of high-definition mp4 live video streams. Long gone are the days when streaming meant crappy realmedia video. Let’s hope they never return.

A natural question that arises is how to record and store such streams for future viewing. In this part one of our feature on recording with VLC we will look at how to save a tv stream to the hard disk. Read on for more…

Prerequisites
Before we begin, we have to install a couple of things. First, lets get VLC

apt-get install vlc

Next, we have to locate a couple of tv stream urls. At the bottom of this page, I have listed a few for you to try out. The one we will work with is

mms://wm1.streamzilla.jet-stream.nl/demo=fireplaceHD

which is in fact not a tv station, but a HD fireplace. Nice and comfy.
Viewing a stream
To view the fireplace in action, open a console and type

vlc mms://wm1.streamzilla.jet-stream.nl/demo=fireplaceHD

Saving a stream to the hard disk
To save the stream to you hard disk execute the following command (in one line)

cvlc mms://wm1.streamzilla.jet-stream.nl/demo=fireplaceHD --sout
"#transcode{vcodec=mp1v,vb=800,scale=1,acodec=mp3,ab=256,channels=2}
:duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=ts,dst=/home/user/Fireplace.mpg}}"

Remember to replace the “user” in the “dst=” part with your username.
Playing with video codecs
To encode to another video format, use one of the following “names” part in your vcodec=… command

Name Description
mp1v MPEG-1 Video - recommended for portability
mp2v MPEG-2 Video - used in DVDs
mp4v MPEG-4 Video
SVQ1 Sorenson Video v1
SVQ3 Sorenson Video v3
WMV1 Windows Media Video v1
WMV2 Windows Media Video v2
WMV3 Windows Media Video v3, also called Windows Media 9 (unsupported)
DVSD Digital Video
MJPG MJPEG
H263 H263
h264 H264
theo Theora
IV20 Indeo Video
IV40 Indeo Video version 4 or later (unsupported)
RV10 Real Media Video
cvid Cinepak
VP31 On2 VP
FLV1 Flash Video
CYUV Creative YUV
HFYU Huffman YUV
MSVC Microsoft Video v1
MRLE Microsoft RLE Video
AASC Autodesc RLE Video
FLIC FLIC video
QPEG QPEG Video

List of tv stations

DR1 rtsp://streamer-01.dr.nordija.dk/dr1high
DR2 rtsp://streamer-01.dr.nordija.dk/dr2high
MADFACE mms://72.29.72.109/madfacetv
Ministry of Sound http://a745.l2645830502.c26458.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/745/26458/v0001/reflector:30502
Music Plus TV mms://musicplus-musicplustv.wm.llnwd.net/musicplus_musicplustv
SCC mms://media.scctv.net/SCCtv%20Broadband
SportBox mms://s-lon-01b.global-mix.net/itb
FRANCE 24 mms://live.france24.com/france24_fr.wsx
ZDF mms://ms.mdcs.dtag.de/encoder.zdf.zdf_h
SKY TG24 mms://live.skylife.it/SkyTg24
NRK Nyheter mms://media00.nrk.no/mms2/nydi/AutoEnc/mn1840.wmv
TV Visjon http://wm-live.crossnet.net/Visjonnorge
SONY Japan mms://morrich.gekimedia.net/MainStream500
BBC WORLD mms://tv.lzu.edu.cn/tv1
FOX 5 mms://a1729.l2168647534.c21686.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/1729/21687/v0001/reflector:30206
FOX 8 mms://a1090.l1814050135.c18140.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/1090/18140/v0001/reflector:50135
ABC mms://wmslive.stream.aol.com/live/abc/now
KARE 11 mms://a1100.l2234351369.c22343.n.lm.akamaistream.net/D/1100/22343/v0001/reflector:51369
MSNBC mms://msnbc.wmod.llnwd.net/a275/e1/video/100/vh.asf
SKY news mms://live1.wm.skynews.servecast.net/skynews_wmlz_live300k
FTV mms://88.191.27.137/paid%5Cfashiontv
CNN mms://a466.l3760651364.c37606.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/466/37606/v0001/reflector:51364mms://a466.l3760651364.c37606.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/466/37606/v0001