Tools for Thought

Video can make learning more efficient than written instruction, but sometimes even video is a but much. Many of the lectures and interviews I come across are recorded on video for no apparent reason — visual aides are minimal or nonexistent. It would be more convenient to have them in a portable audio format to listen to in the living room, kitchen or car.

So go find a streaming video of a talk you’d like to download convert to an MP3, and let’s make the conversion.

Download Live HTTP Headers

Live HTTP Headers is described on the Firefox Add-ons page blandly: “View HTTP headers of a page while browsing.” It’s a little more capable than that. If you launch your video, then open Live HTTP Headers from the Tools menu, you’ll see the stream of recently opened urls under the Headers tab. If the window is blank, it may take up to half a minute or more for the information to appear.

You’ll notice underneath the window that the “Capture” option is checked on by default, which is the setting you want. Scroll through the headers in the window and locate the long url with the appropriate file format, typically .flv or .avi, somewhere inside of it. This can take a bit of scrutiny, since there might be more than one url with the same file format. If that’s the case, look for the url with the relevant keywords (”jacques” and “derrida” embedded in the long url for an interview with Jacques Derrida).

Highlight this url then click the “Replay . . .” button, bringing up the dialog box with the “Save File” option. Save the file to the appropriate directory and let the file download. That’s all there is to it. This technique also works for downloading streaming audios.

In one of my early posts I recommended a similar procedure using the application FreeMusicZilla. Despite the open source connotations of that app’s name, I quickly realized that it’s proprietary freeware that limits the number of downloads per session — a limitation designed to compel the user to upgrade to a non-free “Pro” version. The Live HTTP Headers approach is more efficient and less restrictive.

Convert to audio with MediaCoder

Next, you’ll need to transcode your video into an audio-only format. Download MediaCoder Audio Edition. When launching MediaCoder for the first time, you’ll notice that it opens a page on the MediaCoder website prior to displaying the applications. MediaCoder does this by default each time it launches to check for updates, so if you’d rather not go through that, check the “Do not show this page on next startup” option on the bottom of the page prior to clicking the “Start MediaCoder” button.

Once the app is open, click the “Add . . .” button to add the video file, click the file in the window to highlight and select it, then from the menu select Transcode | Transcode Audio Only, then sit back and let MediaCoder work its magic. An hour-long video might take 10 minutes to convert. Depending on the original file’s compression rate, the reduction in file size after converting it to audio will probably be 7-10x.

You can actually skip using HTTP Live Headers by adding the stream’s url and transcoding it directly in MediaCoder instead of transcoding the separately downloaded file, but I find that the two-stage approach takes about half the time. If you don’t mind the extra wait, the MediaCoder-only approach is one less thing to monitor.

(Photo credit: hansdorsch)

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