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AOL has a huge library of music videos. The image is easily ripped; but the audio appears to have a lock on it; and won't work in iSquint or Handbrake. Anyone have any ideas how to convert these?

         

how do you access the AOL quicktime files from the above link? I remember seeing a few posts here for direct links to the .mov files at AOL's website. Or are they two separate things?

         

AOL music videos don't work well in firefox - so I use Safari. Click on a video - and then view source, look for the .mov file. Here's an example URL: Franz Ferdinand

         

Jey, you can try substituting bits into the Franz Ferdinand address cmarc22 posted. For example, I substituted in "lastgang" for "sony," "metric" for "franz ferdinand," and "monster hospital" for "doyouwantto" and was able to find the <a href="pdl.stream.aol.com" target="_blank"">Monster Hospital file. I haven't tried it on any others, but it's something to keep in mind.

         

I tried the source thing, but I don't think the video file is a quicktime file; the file name has a .wmv extension (Streaming? Windows Media). Is there another section where it plays only Quicktime? Or are all videos on the AOL site streaming WM?

         

Get QuickTime Pro--it will let you export to iPod-compatible video.

If you're running Windows and don't want to download the .MOV (or can't figure out how to, or if QTPro won't let you transcode them once downloaded), consider downloading FRAPS--a free screen capture tool that turns any DirectX or OpenGL content into a video file of your chosen FPS, size and compression. DirectX and OpenGL run pretty much any video and 3D stuff you might have--including Windows Media Player video or visualization, Winamp video or visualization, most of your computer games, etc.

Just watch the streaming video content while running FRAPS, load the recorded AVI into QuickTime Pro, and convert it into iPod-compliant video.

Here is an example M4V (video exported as iPod video format by QuickTime) that I made. I don't have an iPod and have no way of testing it--so let me know if it works. :) For benchmarking purposes: The file took about 20 minutes to export on an AMD Athlon 2100+ (1.73GHz) w/512 MB of RAM.

         

I'm not sure if this is the best way to go about it, but this is the way that I rip direct links from AOL using Windows.

1. Select desired clip (video will pop up in AOL media player)
2. Open up Windows Explorer and click on temporary internet files.
3. Look for a file that looks like this:

4. Right click on the file, select properties and highlight the link starting with /aol/ , right click and copy the link:

5. You should have an incomplete link such as /aol/us/aolmusic/artists/warp/autechre/autechre_secondbadvilbel
6. Now insert pdl.stream.aol.com at the beginning of the link and _dl.mov at the end of the link and you will have the downloadable link to the video pdl.stream.aol.com

This works for about 90% of the videos in the AOL archive. Some of the videos are in real format so the prefix for the file is demand1.stream.aol.com and the suffix is _bb8.rm

There are a few videos that I can't figure out such as this AliceCooper_FeedMyFrankenstein_V01278eev0101_1_1 Whenever they have the V01....._1_1 , I can't seem to figure out the direct link.

Like I said, there may be a better way to do this. I would definitely be interested to hear your suggestions.

         

get a mac.

1. use safari
2. once the video is playing, open the activity window
3. copy the link that runs to 3 or 4 mb
4. erm... that's it.

(if you want to download the video, open the download window and paste the link.)

(no idea how to get it to an ipod, but i'd be surprised qtpro couldn't do it in two or three steps...)

         

Hey progosk, do you have a solution to my V01....._1_1 problem?

         

There is a program called HAndbrake available on versiontracker.copm that will let you rip ipod movies straight from DVD.

         

handbrake is mac, beOS and linux only, sorry pc'ers...

         

the procedure for finding the aol direct links is pretty simple in firefox, too (and that's cross-platform). load the video, then check page info>media, and find the sizeable object. doesn't always work with embedded files, unfortunately (the link appears invisible).

         

othastar: that one's a qt stream. the direct link (to be found by looking for "mov" in the page source) is rtsp://real.stream.aol.com/aol/us/aolmusic/musicpartner/sony/alice_cooper/AliceCooper_FeedMyFrankenstein_V01278eev0101_1_1_414.mov

i haven't found a way to save these to disk. only viewing option seems to be to copy and paste into quicktime player's "open url" function...

         

one step easier in firefox (though AOL has some issues) - get the extension adblock (useful for it's original intention) - when the window loads, an adblock tab appears - click on that, and you've got your URL.

At any rate - grabbing the AOL URL is easy. Has anyone moved past this?

Here's my current ridiculous workflow - I guess it has to be a great, great clip:

1. decompress Quicktime to an Animation codec - about 800mb - no audio plays.
2. Using Audio Hijack, play the clip and rip the audio.
3. Take into FCP and sync up (can be hard).
4. export a quicktime, and compress using iSquint.

         

don't have an ipod but i'll give it a whirl, cap'n: what's it need to be: h264 with aac audio? fps? kbps? size?

what's a video you've tried (one that isn't us only, please)?

         

done, cap'n. here's your ticket: moviepod

i would have loved to have managed with vlc (as per these instructions; this might even have allowed downstreams straight into ipod video format...) but both 0.8.2 and 0.8.1 had audio problems.

apparently the best bet for pc's is videora.

let me know...