How to Use Audio Hijack to Record a RealPlayer Stream

1. Download RealPlayer for OS X from here. Install it, let it quit open browsers to configure them, etc.

2. Download and Install Audio Hijack trial version.

3. Download the RAM file for some show.

4. Drag that RAM file into Audio Hijack's main window (the window with "DVD Player Session", "iTunes Session", etc. in it). A new entry appears: "RealPlayer Session".

5. Select that, and click the "Hijack" button. It may say it needs to quit and relaunch RealPlayer in order to complete the operation -- let it.

6. Then, immediately click the "Record" button. You should hear the show start to play, and a file called "RealPlayer Session 20070607 1248.aiff" (that string will differ slightly -- it's today's date and time) appears either on the Desktop or inside your home folder's Music folder, in a subfolder called "Audio Hijack."

Now, once the show ends, I'm not sure whether it would automatically quit recording and finish the file or whether I would have to stop it manually -- the non-pro version will add noise after 10 minutes so I'm not going to get to find out. You will, when you unlock it by registering.

Anyway, once it's finished in whatever way, I recommend you delete the "Realplayer Session" entry from Audio Hijack, so that next time you do this, you won't confuse yourself with two identical entries. Then, drag the recording file into your iTunes Library; it will import.

Note that it is an AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) which is uncompressed, full-CD-quality, and therefore huge (like 10MB per minute). You can convert it to mp3 in iTunes:

1. Open iTunes preferences and go to Advanced, then choose the Importing tab. Make sure that it is set to "Import Using MP3 Encoder". You can pick the quality you like -- for mostly spoken-word radio shows, you don't need to go for a super-high-quality recording, so 128kbps is probably fine. Close the preferences window.

2. Find and select the recording file you dragged into the Library, and right-click (or control-click) on it. From the popup menu, select "Convert to MP3".

3. When it's finished, you can delete the AIFF version. If you can't tell which one it is (because they will both have the same name), go to the View menu and select View Options, and check the box marked "Kind" (second column, about halfway down). Then you will have a "Kind" column showing in iTunes; select the AIFF version and delete it.