| REMOTE SHOUTCAST FILE | The URL which you will be using to access the Shoutcast or Live365 stream. You can drag and drop any link on the green box
and this will fill automatically. If you type in a URL, click on the green check  to validate the URL.
|
| TITLE | The title of the stream. You can edit this if you wish to whatever you want. |
| PATH TO SAVE MP3s TO / FILE TO SAVE MP3 TO | The path where you wish to save the MP3s to. By default, the MP3 file name will be equal to the title of the stream. It can also be a dated archive file name, or a single MP3 file (depending on which file option you select.)
If you click on the folder icon |
| RECORD | START RECORDING | Begin recording the stream immediately to disk. See the playback screen for further details. By default, you will be listening to the recording unless you have turned the "Listen to Recording" option off. The "listen to stream" option does not effect anything here. | ||
| LISTEN | Start the stream up in paused mode and listen to it without recording. See the playback screen for further details. | |||
| PRESETS | NEW | Clear the options screen and start creating a new recording or preset | ||
| LOAD | Loads a previously saved preset file | |||
| SAVE | Saves the currently configured MP3 VCR setupinto a preset file | |||
| PRESETS | Displays the preset management window. This is described more in this section.
| EXIT
| EXIT | Quit the MP3 VCR program.
| |
| STREAM MODE | This determines how the MP3 VCR saves the files that you capture. The MP3 VCR has three basic modes described
below. For a detailed explanation, click here. | |
| Capture as a single file | Select a single MP3 file to save. The entire recording will be saved to this stream. | |
| Capture as stream titles | Select a directory to save the MP3s in. As titlesstream into the player, the MP3 VCR will save the MP3s under the titles it receives. | |
| Capture as a dated archive | Select a directory to save the MP3s in. The MP3s will save the recording as a single file, with a header and date appended to the file. | |
| TIMED RECORDING | Sets up a recording that will only last
for a certain amount of minutes, automatically. Great for schedulers! Click here for more details on the options. For a tutorial that demonstrates using timed recording with a scheduler, click here. Your options for timed recording are: | |
| Time of Recording | The time of the recording in minutes. | |
| Exit when timed recording is finished | Close out of the program when you are finished recording the stream. | |
| DATE MODE OPTIONS | These only show up when you select
Capture as a dated archive as your stream option. For a detailed explanation, click here. | |
| Archive header | The header of the file that you will be saving. Dated archives always appear as Archive_Header_Name-mmddyyyy.mp3, where Archive_Header_Name is the name you type in here, mm is the month, dd is the day, and yyyy is the year. | |
| Delete archives after a specified time | If this option is turned on, the MP3 VCR will attempt to "clean up" old MP3s that it determines are older than a specified date. To do this, it looks at the mmddyyyy section of the file name -- so renaming a file will prevent the MP3 VCR from cleaning it up. When you select this option, please specify the date range of how many days worth of shows you wish to keep. Again, this is an option for the schedulers. | |
| OTHER OPTIONS | Listen to stream | Listen to the stream when recording. By default, this option is on. However, for use with schedulers - or just to record silently in the background - you may turn this option off. |
| Start paused | Start the recording paused. Normally, the recording will start immediately. With this option, the recording will not start until unpause the MP3VCR. This option is also handy for creating a way to start up Windows with your favorite radio station. | |
| OVERRIDE DEFAULT FILE FORMAT | For recordings where you select Capture as stream titles, this allows you to change the default file format which you save the stream as, for this station alone. By default, the MP3 VCR will save files in "Artist - Title" format. Several preconfigured formats are available to chose from; you can also create your own. See the section on custom file formats for more details. | |
APPEARANCE | |
| Skins | Change the appearance of the recording panel. The MP3VCR currently comes with two skins, "Default" and "Beta". For a look at the two skins, please see the skins page. For editing your own skins, please see the skin editing page. |
| Scroll Song titles | Toggle this menu option on and off if you want the song titles to scroll or not. |
LIVE365 | |
| Set login | Set or change the Live365 login and password for recording and playback. For more details, please see the section on Live365 logins. |
| Capture album names | If checked, captures the album names within the MP3 ID tag. If unchecked, a date code is captured instead. |
ADVANCED | |
| Show / Hide Advanced Options | Show or hide all of the advanced recording options. |
| Default stream title format | Set the default stream title format for all streams. (These formats may be overridden via the "Override Default File Format" described above.) See custom file formats for more information. |
| Link / Unlink web browser | Choose "link" to launch the MP3 VCR from the browser when you click on a Shoutcast / iTunes station. "Unlink" should return the MP3 VCR to launching radio stations in your MP3 player. Click here for more information. |
| Fake Internet Explorer as web agent | By default, the MP3 VCR simulates a Winamp engine. If for some reason (work firewalls, etc.) this becomes problematic, the MP3 VCR can also simulate an Internet Explorer browser. Please note that some radio stations will not work when an Internet Explorer browser is simulated. |
| Attempt to split songs based on silent points | There are two submenu items associated with this: a menu item that is unchecked or checked, and a menu item that allows you to adjust the silence byte size. This option is on by default. Shoutcast stations only send title information for songs every once in a while. Live365 song title synchronization in addition may not be quite in sync with the song that is played. This option attempts to correct some of the problems associated with this by detecting silence, and performing the file split on the silence, if such silence is found. This option will not correct every stream -- especially streams which employ crossfading -- but it will help some of them. Turn this option off if for some reason it interferes with the recording process. You can also play with the bytes of silence to detect by clicking on that particular menu item. This will allow you to adjust the level to a value that better fits the particular broadcaster you are recording, if applicable. |
| Generate command line for this preset | This menu
option will display a pop up windows with the command line used to launch this preset
for scheduled recording. You can copy this line to the clipboard. You can also write a batch file for use with schedulers. This makes using the MP3VCR with a scheduler program a little bit easier for those not used to the command line interface. By default, the MP3VCR will name the batch file the same name as the title listed, and place the batch file in the Scheduler directory. |
| Start at recording setup / start at preset window | If you mainly utilize the presets, this option will allow you to start the program up at the preset window instead of the standard recording setup screen. This menu option toggles back and forth between the two modes. |
| Initial connection retry manager | This allows you to specify the amount of retries, and the delay between each retry, in case MP3VCR times out. See the retry window documentation for more information. |
HELP | |
| Documentation | Show the documentation HTML included with the program |
| About | Display version and compile date information |
, you will get a nice dialog box that will allow you to select a folder. (When saving to a single file, click on the disk
icon 
instead. This will bring up a standard "save as..." file dialog box.)