How to time shift a live stream?

[yalag]

I have a live stream that I would like to watch 12 hours behind. It's a HTTP live stream. How to time shift a live stream? What programs do I need? Thanks!

[AlanHK]

What you want to do is "stream capture".

There are several tools here: https://www.videohelp.com/tools?toolsearch=stream

How you do it depends on the source. Some are simple, some are obfuscated to deliberately make it hard.

You might use a "sniffer" like Stream Transport to find the actual address of a stream, which you can then capture.

[yalag]

I already have the stream address it's http://somedomain:port in that case, is it still stream capture?

I currently use VLC to open that http stream and it plays fine, but I just need to time shift it by 12 hours as it's a hong kong stream.

[AlanHK]

In VLC, just click the red "record" button.

Just give the complete URL, unless you have some reason not to.

[yalag]

In VLC, just click the red "record" button.

Just give the complete URL, unless you have some reason not to.

I don't understand, I don't think "record" would help me. I can't post the stream because it's my company's stream. But what I need is a program that can continuously shift the stream by 12 hours. Does that makes sense? So if I open the stream at 11am my time right now, it would show the content from 11pm last night. The program should continuously cycle through the data and only keep a cache of the past 12 hours on disk and nothing more. Record will just dump everything to a big file, I don't see how that can help me.

Thank you again for your help.

[AlanHK]

I don't understand, I don't think "record" would help me. I can't post the stream because it's my company's stream. But what I need is a program that can continuously shift the stream by 12 hours. Does that makes sense? So if I open the stream at 11am my time right now, it would show the content from 11pm last night. The program should continuously cycle through the data and only keep a cache of the past 12 hours on disk and nothing more. Record will just dump everything to a big file, I don't see how that can help me.

Thank you again for your help.

Obviously, you do have to record the stream to play it back,
I don't know of any app that will do exactly what you want though.

Just look at the apps under https://www.videohelp.com/tools?toolsearch=stream and find ones that can do scheduled recordings. Then you can open that and play it back 12 hours later.

And why is your company's stream secret?
If it's online, its hardly confidential.
No one can experiment with it if you don't want to give the URL.
If it's your company, ask the web guy to mirror it with a 12 hour delay. Trivial for him to do that.

[yalag]

I don't understand, I don't think "record" would help me. I can't post the stream because it's my company's stream. But what I need is a program that can continuously shift the stream by 12 hours. Does that makes sense? So if I open the stream at 11am my time right now, it would show the content from 11pm last night. The program should continuously cycle through the data and only keep a cache of the past 12 hours on disk and nothing more. Record will just dump everything to a big file, I don't see how that can help me.

Thank you again for your help.

Obviously, you do have to record the stream to play it back,
I don't know of any app that will do exactly what you want though.

Just look at the apps under https://www.videohelp.com/tools?toolsearch=stream and find ones that can do scheduled recordings. Then you can open that and play it back 12 hours later.

And why is your company's stream secret?
If it's online, its hardly confidential.
No one can experiment with it if you don't want to give the URL.
If it's your company, ask the web guy to mirror it with a 12 hour delay. Trivial for him to do that.

Do you have any that you recommend? I've downloaded three from that links and all of them attempts to download/capture streams that are on the web (like youtube etc) not a HTTP stream. Is there one that captures streams and can schedule?

Thanks!!

[yalag]

Sorry can I seriously get some help here please? I thought time shift is a pretty common feature...I'm not asking for anything complicated here....

[poisondeathray]

did you search for scheduling recording with vlc? search for terms like using a "batch file" with "windows scheduler"

[guns1inger]

Time-shifting is done by recording and playing back at a later date. There is no other way to do it. Even PVRs that timeshift use this method. They record to a section of the hard drive as a buffer which allows you to shift by a few minutes. If you want to timeshift longer then you have to record and play it back later. The same goes for your stream. You can't simply tell a program to go back in time and play an old stream. Unless the company has the stream available for on-demand viewing, you have to grab it to your hard drive and watch it later.

[yalag]

Time-shifting is done by recording and playing back at a later date. There is no other way to do it. Even PVRs that timeshift use this method. They record to a section of the hard drive as a buffer which allows you to shift by a few minutes. If you want to timeshift longer then you have to record and play it back later. The same goes for your stream. You can't simply tell a program to go back in time and play an old stream. Unless the company has the stream available for on-demand viewing, you have to grab it to your hard drive and watch it later.

I don't mind recording it at all, in fact that's exactly what I wanted to do. However I've set to find any program that can record a HTTP stream. All of them tries to record some flash video or something...

Also the recording probably needs to happen in chunks otherwise it'll be a forever growing file. For example, VLC allows me to save the stream as a file (I already know how to do that) but that wouldn't help in my case, again, because an ever growing file would not work.

[AlanHK]

I don't mind recording it at all, in fact that's exactly what I wanted to do. However I've set to find any program that can record a HTTP stream. All of them tries to record some flash video or something...

Also the recording probably needs to happen in chunks otherwise it'll be a forever growing file. For example, VLC allows me to save the stream as a file (I already know how to do that) but that wouldn't help in my case, again, because an ever growing file would not work.

If what they record is a Flash video, that's what is being broadcast.

Can be anything inside that, which you can probably convert it to a different container without reencoding.
(Though why not just play it as Flash?)

Anyway, if you can't give the URL you want to record, you can't get more specific advice.

[TreeTops]

You said: "it'll be a forever growing file." I'm afraid you will have that problem with any HTTP stream recording software/hardware (if it even exists) unless you sit there constantly and monitor it.

[petran63]

Hi guys, did you sort this one out? I have a similar problem, and have yet to find an answer.
I want to time shift a camcorder which I have connected to my PC, or simply it's built in web cam.
I'm perfectly ok with the fact that it must record, but I want to continously playback with say 15 sec dealy. Can one do this with VLC?
/P