Re: Plug-Ins and Radio Stations
- From: Reg Webb <reg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: winamp4theblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 17:26:32 +0000
Hi Sharonda
Sharonda Greenlaw <sbgreenlaw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>I really want to play Windows Media streams through Winamp. What should
I be doing?
Reg replies:
OK, as I said, and as the original poster says, this isn't just one push
of a button but if, as you say, you "Really want to play Windows Media
streams with Winamp", then here is Aman's account of how you do it.
Pasted text follows.
This isn't pretty, and I have no doubt there are better ways to
do it, but here's how I get the MMS stream URL from the CBC and other
WMP sites. The WMP URL display usually does not work, as it truncates
the URL.
I'll use CBC radio 1 as an example. Note that with CBC in
particular, you can skip steps 1 through 5, because they offer the URLs
to their ASX files on a separate page. Most sites don't do this,
however, so steps 1-5 are needed to find the URL. In the same way, many
sites use .asx files which are not embedded in a player window, so steps
1-5 may be bypassed by one press of enter to bring the ASX file up.
1. First, go to
http://www.cbc.ca/listen/index.html
and click, or hit enter on, the Toronto link. Here, a new window
opens with their embedded player in it, and the stream should start
playing.
2. Hit your right mouse button in this new window. One of the options in
the menu you bring up by doing so is "view source" which you can also
access by hitting v. Note that you can do this as soon as the window
opens, and I'd recommend this, as you don't want the stream to start
playing and to then have a screen reader which you can't hear due to the
stream.
3. Once you've selected "view source" from the context menu, you'll get
notepad opening with the source you've chosen to view. You can alt+tab
back to the player window and close that window now, and should probably
do so, since the stream will start, or has already started, and closing
the window will give your screen reader a quiet environment. Alt+tab
back to your source in notepad.
4. You don't need to bother with the HTML, just search for one of the
following strings. First, search for
mms://
If you find this, you've got your MMS URL, and can jump to step
10.
5. If you don't find this, which you won't in the CBC file, search for
http://
You will almost certainly find this string multiple times in the
file. The only URLs we're interested in end in the letters asx or asf.
For example, in the CBC file, you'll find the first occurrence of
http:// saying:
codebase=3D"http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/mplayer/en/nsmp
2inf. Needless to say, there is no .asf or .asx there. The second
occurrence is what we're looking for:
"http://origin.www.cbc.ca/mrl2/livemedia/cbcr1-toronto.asx";
6. Now that you've found that URL, enter it into the run dialogue of the
start menu or the open dialogue of Internet Explorer, without its
quotation marks. You will get a file to download called
cbcr1-toronto.asx
Save it where you usually save your downloaded files. Alternatively, if
you've skipped steps 1-5, you'll get the same dialogue, just much more
easily. Again, just save the .asx file.
7. Go to that file you've downloaded and rename it with a txt extension.
That is,
cbcr1-toronto.asx
becomes
cbcr1-toronto.asx.txt
8. Hit enter on the file. You'll be put into notepad with the file open.
Again, you need to look for either
MMS://
or
HTTP://
If you find a MMS://, skip to step 10. However, in this file, you should
find:
"http://mfile2.akamai.com/9617/live/reflector:36859.asx?bkup=3D36860";
9. Repeat steps 6-8 with this URL. Note that the CBC is unusual in
that they have multiple ASX files (usually, there's one ASX file which
leads straight to the MMS URL, which is what you want).
10. You should now have:
"mms://a860.l961736859.c9617.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/860/9617/v0001/refle
ctor:36859"
Again, we're only interested in the stuff between the quotation marks,
so remove those. Change the mms:// to http:// and add /.wma to the
end of the URL. This URL can be entered into Winamp and bookmarked
securely.
Hope that's somewhat helpful. Looking over it, I see that I've made it
sound more complicated than it is. It takes about two minutes to do, and
is easy enough once you get the hang of it. Sorry if I've made it more
complicated than it needs to be, and if anyone knows of a simpler or
faster way to get Winamp to play ASX files without tinkering or to get
URLs out of embedded players, indeed, if anyone knows of a simpler or
faster way to get any of this done, I'd love to hear of it.
Aman
--
Reg Webb
Website:
http://www.regwebb.com
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