Virtuous Hacking challenge

[Roedy Green]

I volunteered to transcribe a lecture by Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon posted
on CPAC the Canadian Affairs Channel. It is about global warming and
related issues.


http://www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&pagetype=vod&lang=e&clipID=1748

My job is to transcribe by keyboard to HTML and he will insert the
slide images.

I need to convert the video to an audio file of some sort for the
transcription software. Thought I would just download the video and
find some conversion program.

This turned out to be much more difficult than I thought. The CPAC
people refused to let me download saying have deliberated protected
the site from downloads.

I tried various programs advertised to download videos, but none
worked. I suspect CPAC is not a high priority as a site to be
cracked.

Using wireshark, Opera and my little browser utitily , hacked through
the layers of JavaScript to discover what I essentially need to do is
down load

mms://video.cpac.ca/cpac/20/AR_CPAC3E6480.asf

If try to use HTTP it gives me a useless small text file. It wants me
to talk mms streaming protocol.



So:

1. is there some way in Java to read that stream and store it as a
file?

2. is there some utility what will do it?

3. If I simply played the video on-line I could in theory put a little
tape recorder on the speaker port, and later play back as if coming
from a microphone and capture it. It seems there should be some sort
of internal electronic loop back plug that would let me do it without
loss of fidelity. Is there something you can do in Java with JMF or
the like? I don't need the video, just the sound.

At this point, the most promising approach is a patch cord from the
sound card output back into the input using GoldWave to record the
sound.

I am also writing the problem up for the general public, so in the end
I would like a simple proper solution, not just a kludge to get me
over my personal hump.

 

[Philipp]

Using wireshark, Opera and my little browser utitily , hacked through
the layers of JavaScript to discover what I essentially need to do is
down load

mms://video.cpac.ca/cpac/20/AR_CPAC3E6480.asf

If try to use HTTP it gives me a useless small text file. It wants me
to talk mms streaming protocol.

Have you tried NetTransport?
http://www.xi-soft.com/

HTH Phil

 

[Gordon Beaton]

2. is there some utility what will do it?

"With most Windows and Linux audio devices, it is possible to record
whatever sound the computer is currently playing, including internet
radio streams."

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=recording&i=streaming

See also:
http://all-streaming-media.com/streaming-media-faq/faq-record-real-audio-to-mp3.htm
http://all-streaming-media.com/record-video-stream/

/gordon


--

 

[Wojtek]

Roedy Green wrote :

I volunteered to transcribe a lecture by Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon posted
on CPAC the Canadian Affairs Channel. It is about global warming and
related issues.

2. is there some utility what will do it?

Try VLC http://www.videolan.org/

It seems to read just about every protocol available

 

[Roedy Green]

I need to convert the video to an audio file of some sort for the
transcription software. Thought I would just download the video and
find some conversion program.

I have documented what I have learned so far at
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/downloadingvideo.html

Thanks very much for your input. I think I have all the pieces I need
now to crack this.

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

I volunteered to transcribe a lecture by Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon posted
on CPAC the Canadian Affairs Channel. It is about global warming and
related issues.

Wow, *some* job you volunteered for. I've been watching the video
for a while ... about ten minutes ... and this guy isn't really
talking slowly. Extrapolating from the position-slider, I'd guess
the talk is at least an hour...

My job is to transcribe by keyboard to HTML and he will insert the
slide images.

Whoever handed you the job and will extract the slides, why doesn't
he give you the material you need for this job?
Or isn't he from cpac, either?

I tried various programs advertised to download videos, but none
worked.

They probably all suffer from the big impediment of being
(at least to some degree) legal ;-) (or the opposite:
they are just trojans falsely promising to do anything useful,
while sending out credit card numbers, spam, etc...)

I suspect CPAC is not a high priority as a site to be
cracked.

Huh? You cracked the CPAC-part already, yourself:

mms://video.cpac.ca/cpac/20/AR_CPAC3E6480.asf

What remains is "cracking" the mms-protocol, so you can
intercept the data. You can bet on that this has
already been done.

2. is there some utility what will do it?
I am also writing the problem up for the general public, so in the end
I would like a simple proper solution, not just a kludge to get me
over my personal hump.

Even if there is one, it might be unwise to publish it.
Even if you're not an US-citizen, you may some day want
to attend a conference in the US, and not suffer the same
fate as some employee of some russian software company.

 

[Roedy Green]

Whoever handed you the job and will extract the slides, why doesn't
he give you the material you need for this job?
Or isn't he from cpac, either?

Homer-Dixon used what looks like a powerpoint presentation in his
talk. CPAC filmed it and posted it on their website but did not give
Homer-Dixon a copy. Further they refuse to give me a copy. Homer
Dixon wants to edit my transcription. He wants to be responsible for
the wording( perhaps tidied up a bit from the informal speech), to add
links and images. He will do that work. My job is just to get the
speech into basic formatted HTML.

I am disturbed by this de-literification of the net, the profusion of
on-line video without accompanying transcripts.

1. talks can't be indexed and spidered.

2. it is hard to quote someone.

3. you can't find something in a talk quickly even when you know
roughly when and what the speaker said.

4. There is no way to preserve something you link to in case it is
retracted.

 

[Roedy Green]

Even if there is one, it might be unwise to publish it.
Even if you're not an US-citizen, you may some day want
to attend a conference in the US, and not suffer the same
fate as some employee of some russian software company.

Because of my political beliefs I am likely on the no-fly list if not
a registered terrorist. See http://mindprod.com/politics.html
I don't want to tempt them to offer me a room at the hotel Gitmo and
not tell anyone where I disappeared.

So there is very little chance I would ever attempt to visit the USA.
However you are right. I am focused on my legitimate need to get the
information, and what I consider CPAC's unrealistic improper
reluctance to co-operate in their own self interest, since they too
could post the transcript. Others using what I discover could use it
to quite different ends.

 

[Gordon Beaton]

4. There is no way to preserve something you link to in case it is
retracted.

http://web.archive.org

e.g.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mindprod.com

/gordon

--

 

[Roedy Green]

Because of my political beliefs I am likely on the no-fly list if not
a registered terrorist. See http://mindprod.com/politics.html

oops. http://mindprod.com/politics/politics.html

 

[Tom Anderson]

I am disturbed by this de-literification of the net, the profusion of
on-line video without accompanying transcripts.

1. talks can't be indexed and spidered.
2. it is hard to quote someone.
3. you can't find something in a talk quickly even when you know
roughly when and what the speaker said.
4. There is no way to preserve something you link to in case it is
retracted.

I'm with you on this. Online video and audio are great for some things,
but they're too often used for things where text would be better, for the
reasons you give. Video lectures are part of this, and so are podcasts.

tom

 

[Casey Hawthorne]

Because of my political beliefs I am likely on the no-fly list if not
a registered terrorist. See http://mindprod.com/politics.html
I don't want to tempt them to offer me a room at the hotel Gitmo and
not tell anyone where I disappeared.

Maybe their next president won't send you off to the Baracks!

 

[Roedy Green]

Maybe their next president won't send you off to the Baracks!

He should be better, but he wants to escalate the Afghan war as a sop
to Halliburton and friends.

According to international law, if you participate in an aggressive
(i.e. attack first) war, you are a war criminal guity of a capital
crime. I think Obama will continue to shield US war criminals from
prosecution at the world court. He thinks the soldiers who
participated in the two aggressive wars are heroes, fighting for
freedom ...

Nader points out that there will never be that much difference between
the candidates in two party system.

 

[Lew]

O> Nader points out that there will never be that much difference between
the candidates in two party system.

Which is why it's a Good Thing that not just Sun, but IBM, BEA, Oracle
and others provide Java implementations.