fIcy

fIcy is a powerful command-line program designed for grabbing icecast and shoutcast audio streams. The software suite is specifically crafted to work under shell environments, making it easy to use and manage. Its primary goal is to capture a stream and automatically rip it into user-customizable files for later playback.

One of fIcy's standout features is its ability to work with ICY-compatible streams. This capability means that users can save a stream to disk, pipe the output to a media player, or both. Additionally, fIcy is ideal for batch or unattended recording of radio programs and stream debugging.

The fIcy package includes several essential components, including the fIcy program itself and a stream separator/multiplexer. Other components include fResync, a fast MPEG-resyncing utility, and fPls, a playlist frontend for fIcy.

Using fIcy is straightforward. To get started, enter the following command on your terminal: fIcy [options] < server [port [path]]|url >. This command launches the main program, and you can enter the URL of the audio stream you want to grab. Once you specify the output file and other settings, fIcy will start capturing the audio stream.

For managing playlists, you can use fPls. This program reads a playlist, either local or remote, and manages your fIcy retries, timeouts, and errors. You can also forward specified flags to fIcy for more robust stream grabbing.

Finally, fResync is a crucial tool for MPEG resyncing. It realigns head frame headers on dumped or broken files, which is often necessary for embedded hardware decoders or editing software.

fIcy boasts several new features in its latest release. Timeout support is refined, and HTTP 301 redirects are now honored. Additionally, fPls now automatically forwards more flags to fIcy, and the GNU sed requirement is removed in favor of a customizable coprocessor. Finally, a Mac OS X HFS+ encoding limitation work-around has been implemented.

Overall, fIcy is an essential tool for anyone looking to grab audio streams quickly and easily. Whether you're recording a favorite radio program or debugging an audio stream, fIcy's features make it easy to use and manage.