CAPTURE EVERYTHING YOUR COMPUTER SEES AND HEARS
Something is playing on your computer yet you can't save it to
disc so you can play it again anytime you like. It's a frustrating
experience when you see something playing on your computer and yet
you can't truly own it. When you have something saved to your hard
drive, you don't have to worry about the streaming video becoming
unavailable later on. The ability to capture media to disc insures
you will always have it available to you. But unfortunately too many
online resources that offer up streaming video and audio such as
YouTube and Hulu offer no way to save their content to your hard
drive. As long as these sites offer their content, you can watch it.
But when they're gone, they're gone. It would really be nice to have
the ability to save these media streams to disc and fortunately
Applian Technologies offers a product that lets you do exactly that.
Replay Media Capture is a streaming video and audio downloader that
lets you capture an exact digital copy of what you are seeing and
hearing to your computer's hard disk drive. This is not to be
confused with similar products that screen capture what is being
displayed on your computer's monitor. In fact, Applian actually does
offer a media screen capture product called Replay Video Capture
that copies the digital information within your computer's video
memory. But Replay Media Capture works in a totally different way.
When you watch a YouTube video for example, a server at the other
end begins to deliver the digital information to your computer.
According to Applian, their Replay Media Catcher is able to access
those servers and intercept the live stream directly. This process
allows you to make an exact digital copy of the streaming media
unlike screen capture products that usually yield a capture result
that's inferior in quality to the original stream.
According to Applian, Replay Media Capture supports more streaming
protocols than any other media capture programs and they continue to
expand the number of supported websites that deliver various types
of streaming media. Applian's website maintains a listing of
hundreds of currently supported media streaming website locations.
Check it out to see if what you want to capture is on a supported
website service.
Once captured, Replay Media Capture stores the media data as an FLV
file that can be watched on the included media player. If you want
to convert these files into other formats, Replay Media Capture
offers conversion to most of the popular media formats such as WMV,
MPEG, MP3, MP4 and 3GP. A special included converter lets you modify
these files so that they can be played on an iPod and iPhone. If
there's embedded naming information within the streaming data,
Replay Media Capture will automatically name and tag the files for
you.
Recording takes place in real time so plan to spend some time when
using Replay Media Capture. If you know in advance what you wish to
record, you can begin the viewing process and work on something else
or just go away until the download is complete. Replay Media Capture
has the ability to capture several media streams simultaneously
making the unattended capture process even easier.
So if you've ever watched something on your computer and have it
disappear from the website on which you viewed it, now you can
capture what you see and hear to your hard disk to be played
whenever you like, even without an Internet connection. Replay Media
Capture sells for $39.95 and is available only for Windows.
www.applian.com
| Craig Crossman is
a McClatchy-Tribune newspaper columnist writing about computers and
technology. He also hosts the nation's longest running nationally syndicated radio talk show on
computers and technology, Computer America, heard on both the Business TalkRadio
Network® and the Lifestyle TalkRadio Network®, weeknights at 10PM Eastern
time. Visit his website at http://www.computeramerica.com |
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