Partial files, unknown length

[crazynightowl]

I'm new to this but wanted to capture a live video feed of a sporting event and, after a little searching, I decided to buy a copy of RMCatcher. The event was broadcast during the night so I started recording and opened the browser to the feed. In the morinig I found I had about 20 files. Some were 'failed saves', some were 'partial saves' and some appeared to be complete. In viewing these files I found many were just sections of the event and many overlapped others and only contained a slight bit more at the beginning or end. Most loaded into the player and were of unknown length so finding the correct pieces was tiresome and very time consuming. I did find I could scroll faster with the scroll wheel and/or page buttons on my mouse but it was still frustrating because some files had dropouts and the scrolling would stop the player and when I pressed play it started over from the beginning. Anyway I did manage to find all the pieces but wondered if this is normal behavior or maybe user error. For the most part this wouldn't be so bad if at least the length was defined and you could user the position bar in the player to locate things.

Here are a few other things I noticed:

1- If I converted the unknown length files (partial or complete) to another format the length was resolved and they would play correctly in their respective players (WMP, QT Player, etc.). All the converted files were about 4 times larger than the original.

2- If I converted the captured .flv file to another .flv file the length was resolved but the size was again increased by about a factor of 4 or so. Why would that happen?

3- Only the relatively short files (<100MB) had a known duration. All the files larger than that (some up to 1.7GB) had unknown durarion and were quite painful to 'search'.

4- Even though I was viewing only one stream I noticed there were often 3 or 4 files being recorded simultaneously and these ended at various places and sizes. Maybe it's a stream thing I don't understand.

Anyway I'd like some help with this if anyone cares to comment. Perhaps I would be better off with the RMCapture for my needs and maybe I could do a swap or something. I wonder if the quality would be as good though since I take it you select a part of the screen to capture rather than the stream itself. Maybe someone has experiences with both programs they would care to share.

Thanks,

CNO

[crazynightowl]

Just to add that on the second attempt the results were about the same as the first time (original post). I found 15-20 files of which about half were 'unable to save' and the rest a mixture of 'partial' and 'complete' files. All the 'complete' files were some canned interviews or ads so only the 'partial' files contained any of the event itself (streamed live). Once again these files contained pieces and had to watched in their entirety or scroll-scanned to find the points where one ended and the next picked back up. Quite a bit more time and trouble than I was expecting I guess.

Maybe the Capture version would have worked better but that approach seems to have drawbacks as well so I'm not sure where to go from here. Unless there is something I can possibly do to correct this I might be better off just waiting to watch the replays on sites such as ESPN360.

Thanks again,

CNO