Download and Convert live stream video

Question

I want to download live streaming video from some websites and it seems Internet Download Manager can handle the job. However, the video I want is just a small part of the live stream and the the stream itself never stops. Hence, IDM will just keep downloading all days and nights if I don't stop it myself.

The problem is, the downloaded file (stored in the temporary folder) is of .stream extension. Mediaplayer Classic can open it perfectly, but it'd be very inconvenient to have such extension since I don't think I can carry it around and play it on other computer.

I tried some video converters but all of them failed because the format is not supported.

So my questions are:

1. Is there a program specially made to download live rmtp video? IDM works, but the format is inconvenient.
2. How can I convert .stream file to other extension, say AVI?

Answer 1

Videohelp is always my first stop for questions like this. From their article answering this question:

"...use the command line tool RTMPDump. Download it to for example C:\temp and then start the Command Prompt(Start->Program->Accessories->Command Prompt) and in the command line type:

"C:\temp\rtmpdump.exe" -r "rtmpe://path/to/url" -o "c:\temp\video.flv"

More information on rtmpdump : http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu

This will let you save as flv, which is easily converted to any number of formats. I like WinFF. http://winff.org

Answer 2

I am sure VLC media player can stream RTMP/RTSP video protocol and then automatically convert it to avi or some other compressed format.

Another great tool is HandBrake which is an Open Source video transcoder.