I had been wondering how to set up an automatic scheduled recording of my favorite radio talk show. I was even more encouraged when I found it streaming live on the net. So I started looking for a way to do this when I came across this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=305858 . It is just what I had been looking for! I set it up close to the instructions. I ran a test and everything seemed to be going great. Firefox opened up to the correct link and I could hear the audio, next a new file appeared on my desktop as I was expecting/hoping. Well, the show ended and Firefox shutdown and the file on my desktop had been renamed as per the script. I was ecstatic!
So I went to check out the quality of the audio and was disappointed to find that no audio was playing as far as I could tell. I checked the files properties to find that it was a hefty 477.9 MB. About right for what I set up. So then I opened it in Audacity to check the waveform: http://i1178.photobucket.com/albums/...Screenshot.png . I tried amplifying the track, but all I got was dead air with a few crackles. I tried posting this in ubuntuforums, but so far I haven't gotten any good leads. So I figured maybe someone here might be able to help.

This is my settings for this task;

crontab is setup as so:
# m h dom mon dow command
#Record the radio show everyday
#Open firefox and load the audio stream
03 11 * * 1,2,3,4,5 export DISPLAY=:0 && firefox http://player.streamtheworld.com/_pl...d=826&nid=2920
#Record every day from 11:06am for 2 hours and 54 minutes
05 11 * * 1,2,3,4,5 arecord -d10440 -r24000 -c2 /home/zer0/Desktop/radio-show.wav
#Rename the audio file by placing a time stamp on it
01 14 * * 1,2,3,4,5 /home/zer0/rename-radio-file
#close all instances of firefox
01 14 * * 1,2,3,4,5 killall -q firefox-bin

The bash script is:
#!/bin/bash
#Program to rename a file with a date stamp.

mv /home/zer0/Desktop/radio-show.wav /home/zer0/Desktop/rshlmbgh-$(date +%Y%m%d).wav

Once I can get the audio issues worked out, I would like to have it automatically convert the .wav file to a .mp3.
Also, I'd like the shutdown of Firefox to be more specific instead of killing ALL instances of FF.
Any assistance is greatly appreciated!

For what I know, arecord will record from your sound-card input...
Use VLC for this purpose with something like "vlc rtsp://$STREAM_URL --sout ???:$FILE"
And the good point is that I'm quite sure vlc can encode the file on the fly. If not automatically converting a wav into ogg is straightforward, use "oggenc", and if you really prefer mp3, use "lame"

Thanks so much for the advice! I will definitely look into this. .ogg is fine with me as well, and I already have lame...either way. The last "help" I got suggested Audacity, but the timed recording options were very limited. Another suggested nMacro running under Wine. I'm not sure how well that would work, but I really want all this to happen from the command line instead of a GUI. I'm trying to get more experience with doing things from the CLI. This is my first experience with cron. Lol

Now if I can kill Firefox more specifically...

vlc rtsp://$STREAM_URL --sout ???:$FILE

I hate to ask, but could you please elaborate on this command?
I understand "$STREAM_URL" but the rest is a little cryptic to me.
I am assuming "--sout" is "sound output", the "???" eludes me and "$FILE" is the name of the file, correct? Will naming the file with an extension like xxx.ogg or xxx.mp3 enact the conversion process?

these might get you more mileage:
http://linux.byexamples.com/archives...online-stream/