How to cite a video stream

Posted on November 27, 2002 @ 11:52 in Research

Academics are used to citing eachother's work, quoting their interviewees, and in general referencing a wide variety of sources. As long as you attribute the material you cite correctly and as long as you don't use unnecessary large portions of the original work, then the fair use clauses of copyright law make citing the original work perfectly accepted and legal.

What happens though, if you want to cite a protected Real video stream? This video stream opens your Real player, you can watch it as it is being streamed to your computer, but it is (as far as I have been able to ascertain) not saved to your harddisk, nor is it possible to "Save As", exactly because the stream is protected. However, if I feel the material contained in the stream is important for my academic research, I would like to keep a personal copy of the video stream for future reference, so I can cite from it in visual form (as a screenshot), and I think that under fair use I should be able to. The technical solution to capturing and saving a Real video stream however doesn't seem all that legal, so there will be no links in this post, but remember, Google is your friend!

A bit of searching learned that there is an application called StreamBox VCR that will record various types of streamed media. It is however no longer available from the website of the company that made it, because the software was discontinued after a long legal battle with Real Networks. The program however keeps floating around cyberspace, so you should be able to track it down. To get Streambox VCR working on your computer, you will need the Flying Raichu patch to get rid of the registration and phone home features of the program. Next you need to apply the Stealth Mulder Fix to get the software to identify itself not as Streambox, but spoof the Real Player identification string. And last, you need to apply the SMF+ patch to be able to also capture the new Helix video streams.

If everything is installed, you need to find the link to the actual video stream, usually a link to a .rm file (which launches the Real Player) and it is usually preceded by the Real Time Streaming Protocol prefix: rtsp://. This link may be hidden behind some Javascript, in which case the included Intercept program will help you discover it. If, however, the link to the video stream is indirect and opens a new window in which the player is embedded, you will have look at the source of the pop-up window to find the link. Instead of finding the rtsp:// link, you may find a http:// link to a .rpm file. Copy-paste that link into the address bar and instead of choosing to open it, save it to the desktop. Next open that .rpm file with a text editor and viola, there is your rtsp:// link. Now copy that link and in Streambox choose Edit > Paste Link. Before clicking okay, go to the Connection tab and set the connection speed as high as possible. You're not viewing the stream, just downloading, so you want the best possible quality. Now click okay and the stream is being saved to your harddisk.

If you're happy with just having the Real media file, then you're done. However, if you want to convert it to another format, you will need a converter that takes the Real media file and encodes it to another format. A little program called Real7ime Converter (currently V1.1) does a nice job of that (but there are many others). One of the nice things of the Real7ime Converter is that it will even take a rtsp:// link and encode the stream direct from the internet. This is a much quicker way to capture the stream, as it doesn't involve all the installing that you have to do for StreamBox, but it doesn't (appear?) to allow you to save the stream in Real media format. For Real7ime Converter to be able to decode the Real video stream you will either have to install the Real Player or the I420 codecs.

As stated above, the legal status of this procedure is somewhat unclear, although personally I feel that it should be just fine under fair use. The above mentioned procedure then is strictly for educational purposes.

Comments and Trackbacks

  1. Thanks for the tips!

    Posted by Mark Pollack on June 11, 2003 @ 15:06

  2. Hi
    it is very intersting for me but i have a problem use of streambox .
    I want to know where can i download real7ime ?
    thanks for your help
    Arash

    Posted by Arash on August 05, 2003 @ 15:41

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