Stream It. Record It. Keep It.
We’re just getting over our sugar hangovers and have finally tossed out those moldy scary pumpkins (they looked so good though!). So in remembrance of one of our favorite holidays, here’s a hilarious prank video featuring one of the best pet costumes that should only be used to terrify pedestrians. Enjoy your distraction for the day and if you have any funny Halloween pet costumes, we’d love to see them! Post them up on our Facebook or Twitter.
It’s the middle of summer. Sounds like a great time for a quick summer sale. But don’t delay! Just like summer, this sale will be gone in a flash. For the next 48 hours you can take $10 off our best stream recorder. Replay Media Catcher is the #1 tool for downloading online video and audio.
Use this coupon code at checkout: RMCBLOG
Hurry! Sale ends August 8, 2014
Keeping up with the constant changes in streaming protocols is just the job for Replay Media Catcher‘s Engineers. They like a challenge and frequently whip up very smart solutions to very tough problems. If you’ve installed the most recent version of Replay Media Catcher, you’ll see that we’ve made some great improvements. And if you like to download streams from YouTube, then you’ve likely seen the new prompt to install a CA certificate. So what’s that all about? Have no fear! We’re here to break it down for you. Let’s get nerdy, shall we?
YouTube and some other sites now stream their media over an HTTPS connection by default. So what is HTTPS? Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure is the secure version of http. Typically used when a secure connection is necessary. Like for ecommerce transactions and such. When you connect to a website that is using HTTPS, the session is encrypted with a Digital Certificate.
Let’s first look at how Replay Media Catcher downloads, then we’ll explain how installing the CA Certificate helps it to do it’s job better. When you switch on Replay Media Catcher, it starts sniffing the network traffic. Looking for media to download. As you come across streaming video or music, Replay Media Catcher decodes that network traffic and if it understands what it is seeing on the network, it tries to detect and download the media based on intelligence we’ve written for that protocol. Pretty slick, right? That’s how Replay Media Catcher can download so much more without browser plugins. It simply does not need them. It only listens to the network.
Let’s say you’ve switched on Replay Media Catcher’s monitoring and you’re happily browsing along and decide to download the latest viral video on YouTube. Remember we said that YouTube is now streaming their media over an HTTPS connection.. SSL is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. When you see HTTPS in the URL, you are using the SSL/TLS protocol to speak to that website. Replay Media Catcher will then not understand that traffic and disregard it. That sounds like bad news, right? Nope! Read on…
If you’re running Replay Media Catcher version 5.0.1.46 or later, you’ll notice a new prompt when it first sees media from a site that is streaming over HTTPS. This prompt explains that in order for Replay Media Catcher to scan for media that is streamed over HTTPS, a CA certificate is required to be created. A CA (Certificate Authority) is an authority in a network that issues and manages security credentials.
You can choose to allow HTTPS scanning or not. If you choose no, Replay Media Catcher will ignore any HTTPS streaming and you’ll be sad. That breaks my heart. Say YES!
If you choose YES, (and we recommend you do) then Windows will prompt you to install the CA certificate. Windows presents you with this:
The title of the window says “Security Warning”. Yeah, well…it’s not a problem. Windows is just letting you know that a certificate is about to be installed. Windows says that it cannot validate the certificate as actually being from Replay Media Catcher, but have no fear. We have created a certificate called Replay Media Catcher 5 SSL Scanner Root. Essentially, it allows Replay Media Catcher to scan HTTPS traffic like that being served by YouTube for downloadable media. It is absolutely safe. And you are not putting yourself or your computer in any danger by installing it.
Don’t miss out on all the great streaming goodness that Replay Media Catcher can download. It’s waaay smarter than any other streaming media downloader. Guaranteed!
Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions!
Today, we are doing SCIENCE! Did a parent ever warn you not to stick a soda in the freezer? Sure, that may have been a rhetorical question, but what about sticking a can of soda in liquid nitrogen? NurdRage on YouTube does all kinds of science experiments … and you should probably let him do them instead of trying yourself.
Oh, and if you are having trouble downloading YouTube videos with Replay Media Catcher 5, make sure that secure http (https) is not being used. See here for more information.
Obviously Replay Media Catcher is the bomb when it comes to downloading streaming media. But with millions of online streams and dozens of ever-changing protocols, we decided to offer up some special help for owners of Replay Media Catcher.
Don’t fret. We got your back. Shooting up some trouble! We find that no fuss self-help is appreciated by our customers. Sure, we still have our fabulously handsome support team ready to assist. But sometimes, when you’re stuck, you just want to help yourself to some answers.
Next time you find yourself unable to download some streaming media goodness, or you’ve lost your activation code, give our new Replay Media Catcher Troubleshooter a whirl.
For the last couple of Fridays, YouTube has changed how they are delivering videos, which has broken our downloading software (as well as all of our competitors). In particular, the Vevo branded music videos seem to be the ones that get the new technology first. Nevertheless, we are on top of it, and have managed to get new releases ready within a day or two of the changes. The bad news is that our engineering team is starting to loathe the end of the week.
The latest format is called MPEG-DASH — according to our alpha geek. We are having to do a little extra work to turn this format into a playable file, but the end result is as good as ever.
If you’re an avid YouTube downloader, you might consider trying Replay Video Capture for Video, and Replay Music for Music if you don’t want any downtime. Both of these products take an “analog” approach to recording, and will record video and music in high quality no matter what YouTube does behind the scenes.
Replay Media Catcher is still the fastest way to download from most video and music sites, and it makes a perfect digital copy of the original file. So no matter what changes happen in the future, we’ve got you covered!
Every other month or so I put together a list of sites that are great for streaming audio or video and publish the list in our newsletter. Here are five sites that were featured in the March newsletter:
I like having 1.FM on while I am at work. I am a total fan of the 70’s pop station. The songs crack me up.
1.FM
Band of the Day is an adventure – you never know what kind of music you’re going to hear. And if you miss a day – no big deal – they recap the bands they’ve chosen from earlier days at the bottom of the home page.
Band of the Day
I confess I haven’t set up my own station with earbits – instead I like the editors’ picks – always a good listen.
Earbits
8 tracks is my absolute favorite for discovering new music and new bands!
8 Tracks
Thanks to Mixcloud I now have a few DJ favorites that I like to listen to and follow. Always great for livening up my afternoon at work.
mixcloud
And of course all these sites work fabulously with Replay Music. 🙂
What are some of your favorite sites for discovering new music?
I just discovered Reddit’s Explain Like I’m Five Video Series (okay so I am a little behind in my reading ) – You can see an example of one here.
It’s a fabulous series for two reasons – 1.) It brings to video their already popular text series ELI5 – and who wouldn’t rather watch a video than read a web page? 2.) It takes the concept literally – and actually tries to explain complex concepts to five year olds. Their reactions are great.
Of course I used Replay Media Catcher to download my favorites – put them on my phone – and showed to anyone who seemed mildly interested. 🙂
I’m at a SEO conference today, and one of the best presentations was by a group of Google employees on some of the moral and ethical challenges of running a search engine. Matt Cutts – the Google official SEO blogger – was on the panel, as well as a couple of other people.
I was amazed at how a lot of issues come up with how to handle certain Google search results. Some of the panel’s examples were interesting. Should a suicide note left on a web site come up when searching for the victim’s name? Should a white supremacist hate site about Martin Luther King come up in the search results for MLK? Should posts warning about the dangers of vaccinations come up when searching about the safety of vaccines appear – in spite of sound scientific evidence against and the fact that misinformation could cost lives? And in some cases, Google execs in foreign lands have been arrested for videos appearing on YouTube – what does Google do about that? I had no idea.
Another fun aspect of this debate was the search suggestions that Google provides. These mirror what people are actually entering, and aren’t censored or edited at all – in spite of the fact they can be offensive to some. Try entering “asians are b” or “americans are f” and see what Google expects you to type next. It’s both funny and horrifying.
At our family dinner table, I shared this with the kids, and we tried the Search Suggestion game on their names. We tried “Bryce is” and “Laurel is”, and got some hilarious results – both complementary and insulting. Try this with your own kids names for fun!