Old Time Radio Show Downloader

[Robert]

Here is a free gem, OTRDownloader, if you download any shows from the Internet Archive. I have been playing around with it, and it works like a top. Would be great for new collectors of OTR, as well as old, and especially those who are not internet savvy. It was written by Hal Vaughan, a lover of Old Time Radio. He also has a blog at http://halblog.com/wordpress/ Quote from web site: "The Internet Archive has a special section, under Old Time Radio, that is an archive containing, by my conservative estimate, well over 10,000 different episodes of different shows freely available for downloading. The shows are easily catagorized for searching and they are easily downloaded. There are, though, a few problems with downloading these files through a browser. It's hard to line up files so you can have your files downloaded when you're asleep or otherwise not using your computer. Last night I downloaded hundrededs, literally, hundreds of episodes from this site using my program, the Old Time Radio Show Downloader, or OTRDownloader. Another issue with downloading shows straight from the web is that they don't have tags in them. Most of the radio shows on the Internet Archive are in MP3 format, but some are in Ogg Vorbis or FLAC formats (both of which are superior to MP3 files!). Just as with MP3s, Ogg and FLAC files can be tagged for classification with a title, artist, album, genre, and so on. If you download files from the Archive with a browser and want to tag them so you can easily sort through them on an MP3 player or with a juke box program, you have to take each file by hand. When I set OTRDownloader last night to download well over 500 files, I could never have managed to tag that many files by hand! The OTRDownloader has a tag editor and title filters that make it easy to set tags for each radio show. The title editor takes the name of an episode from the filename and converts it into something readable. It's possible to use both the tag editor and title filters to have downloaded files tagged automatically. The OTRDownloader is free to download and use. I do ask that you please email me if you find it useful. I won't pester you or ask for money, but it took over 100 hours to write this program, so it'd be nice to know about people that are using it. Let me know what city you live in or what kind of OTR shows you like or anything else interesting about yourself. To use the OTRDownloader, you'll need Java, which you can download for free from Java.com."

Download It Here

Download the OTRDownloader for both Linux and Windows here. Visit web site

[Mike]

I feel like I am using a computer for the first time, although I have three at home and have been using and adding/replacing hardware for over 20 years. I continue to be baffled by this program. When I download it, from this site or the original, I am offered the opportunity to run, save, or cancel. When I either run or save, I get a file with nine folders; com, img, langpaks, META-INF, native, net, org, packs and res, plus 12 text files. Then nothing happens. If I extract the zipped files I get the same seven folders, but only 7 text files. I cannot find the OTRinstall.jar file in any of the folders and have not been able to install the program. This is true on two different computers. Please help a poor frustrated soul!!! Mike

[Robert]

Try this. Save it to your computer, then run it. Should open up install program. Give it time for loading since it uses java. I created a folder in Program Files called Old Time Radio to install to.

OTRInstall.jar

[Mike]

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. With the .jar file you sent I finally got the program to load. Tomorrow I will play with it. Does it work on anything other than "Archives?" Everything leads me to believe that it can't be used on other sites, like blubrry or wizzard.

Thanks again,

Mike

[Robert]

No, it is just for the archive, but it is open source code if you know any programmers. You can get the code on the blog.
It is still new to me also, have not played around any with the advance features yet. Let us know what you think after play with it awhile.

[Mike]

Please tell me what I am doing wrong with Downloader. I have twice downloaded it into different locations, unzipped the files and-----nothing. There is nothing to tell me what I need to open the program, nothing to indicate that there is an .exe file. Nothing.

I have umpteen versions of Java on my computer.

Please tell me what I am overlooking, or is missing from my file?

Thank you.

Mike

[Robert]

Mike,

The executable file is OTRInstall.jar

There is not a .exe extension, uses the .jar extension

After install, their should be icon on desktop. Also the file that opens the program is OTRDownloader.bat

[29bvlul9g3cxg]

I just dled it. Let it "run as. In a short while it will bring up the installer, then treat it as a standard install ie default is install to program files etc. By the way you only need the latest version of java on your machine. Multiple versions can cause problems. I would uninstall all but the latest version.
Also I would create a file on the desktop and name it something like archive, then when it prompts you to create a directoyt just point it to that folder.

[29bvlul9g3cxg]

A big thumbs up on OTR downloader. Works as advertised!!