Video Ripping?

My wife told me today that she was able to rip a video from Facebook using the same techniques shown here.  I was interested, so I went ahead and checked it out.  Sure enough, it looks like you can download video clips off Facebook; just follow the steps in my Slacker.com Tutorial and instead look for the ".mp4" file.  Double-click to download it, and you are set.

I wonder what other video sites you can rip from this way...

-The Rip Tutor

Rip Tutorial: AOL Music

I went over to AOL Music (http://music.aol.com) this morning, and was surprised to see the big "Powered by Slacker" icon.  After a little tinkering, I have confirmed that the process for ripping is the same here as it was for Slacker.com.

Check out the Slacker.com Tutorial for the steps.

-The Rip Tutor

Rip Tutorial: Last.FM

A friend of mine requested that I take a look at www.last.fm, another free internet radio service, so went on over and played around for a bit.  Last.FM requires an account, so you have to do that before you can start listening. Once you've picked a few artists and started listening, go ahead and do the following (remember to use Chrome!):

1. Press [Ctrl]+[Shift]+i to launch the Developer Console
2. Go to the "Network" tab and click "Size" twice to put the largest files at top
3. A file named "128.mp3" should float to the top after a bit; this is the file you want.
4. Double-click the file and Chrome will open it in a new tab
• note: If the new tab appears to "hang" while opening, it is because last.fm is still accessing this file on their player. Close the tab with last.fm in it and the new tab with your mp3 file should load.
5. Hit [Ctrl]+S to save the file, name it something good (like the song title, for example), and you are on your way...
• ...really, really slowly.  It looks like Last.FM throttles your streaming rate so that you can only download songs at about the same speed they play.  This is a really smart move on their part, at it saves them the bandwidth of pre-loading songs.  Also, it makes it very awkward to download music manually, as a 4-minute song generally shouldn't take 4 minutes to download.

In conclusion, Last.FM is probably the least convenient method of downloading music, as the downloads themselves are very slow, and on top of that, you may need to close and re-open the last.fm window every time you want to save a song.

Anyway, let me know if you find any shortcuts or time savers with this one (or any problems), and I'll move on to the next site.

-The Rip Tutor

Rip Tutorial: Slacker

Slacker is another free "internet radio" service, and seems to work pretty well.  I think I prefer Pandora, just because Slacker has three separate ad bars, all of which can contain Flash content; on my humble 2.9 Ghz dual-core, this keeps my CPU between 30% and 60% the whole time.  Also, the links on Slacker are time-sensitive, meaning you can't just let your favorite station play for an hour, then come back and grab all the files later; you have to baby-sit it.

Anyway, the steps for locating and saving the music are thus:

1. Open a new tab in Google Chrome
2. Launch the Developer Console ([Ctrl]+[Shift]+i)
3. Click the "Network" tab
4. Go to http://www.slacker.com
5. As files start loading into the Dev Console, click the column labeled "Size" twice, so the biggest files go to the top.
6. Shortly thereafter, you should see an MP3 file rise quickly to the top of the list; quickly double-click this item to open it in a new tab.
• note: As I said before, these files are time-sensitive.  You need to double-click the song within the first ~5 seconds that it is playing, otherwise you won't be able to get it.  Hit Refresh ([F5]) if you missed the file; this will cause the player to re-download it.
7. Press [Ctrl]+S to save it to your computer.  Oh, and don't forget to rename the file to something that makes more sense than "09472-etc.mp3".

Now you have your tunes.  As always, please let me know if this doesn't work for you, and keep an eye out for more tutorials here.

-The Rip Tutor

Rip Tutorial: Pandora

I am sure many of you are familiar with www.pandora.com, as it is a great free-to-listen music service, with a low-cost paid alternative (to get rid of ads and the "are you still listening?" time-out).  To start, go ahead and open another tab in your Chrome browser (if you aren't using Chrome, then start using it; all my tutorials are done with Chrome), then do the following:

1. Hit [Ctrl]+[Shift]+i to open the Developer Console
2. Click the "Resources" tab
3. Open your new tab and go to "www.pandora.com"
4. If it doesn't automatically, start playing your favorite channel
5. Switch to the developer tools again
6. In the left-hand tab, navigate to "Frames" > "http://www.pandora.com/" > "Other"
7. Look for an item that starts with "audio"
   
8. Double-click to open it in another tab
9. Chrome should start playing the song automatically; make sure it is the one you want to download.
10. Press [Ctrl]+S to save the song, and name it something you will recognize (like "Queen-BohemianRhapsody.m4a"), just make SURE you include the ".m4a" at the end, otherwise nothing will recognize the file as a song.
11. Now, try playing the song with your favorite music player.  Depending on the codecs, Windows Media Player may not work, so I'd recommend using something better (like Media Player Classic)

And there you have it.  Please feel free to drop a comment if this didn't work for you, and stay tuned for my next post.

-The Rip Tutor