Download and install RealAlternative from http://www.codecguide.com/download_real.htm (this might not be necessary, but I have a pathological hatred of Real Player)
Download and install mPlayer from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html (I used the MPlayer SVN Windows with SMPlayer GUI option)
Using your browser of choice, open the video. For this example, I'm going to use the RTE news report available at http://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/2009/0403/1n_soccer1_av.html for the news report
When the video starts playing, hit Pause
Right click on the video and select "Play in Real Player"
This should open the report in Real Alternative
IMPORTANT - DO NOT CLOSE THE BROWSER
In Real Alternative, pause the video, and select File -> Save As and enter the filename you want to save to. Ensure the extension is ".txt"
IMPORTANT - DO NOT CLOSE THE REAL ALTERNATIVE WINDOW
This text file is not the video itself, it is an XML file with instructions for an application on how to open the video
Open the file in a text editor - I use TextPad, but NotePad is fine
In the text file, look for a link starting with "rtsp://"
Open a command line window and CD to the directory where you installed mPlayer.
If you used the one I listed above this is "C:\Program Files\SMPlayer\mplayer\"
enter the following command mplayer -noframedrop -dumpfile out.rm -dumpstream [link]
If you are using a proxy to connect to the internet, you will need to include proxy in the link. This changes the link URI to "http_proxy://[your proxy server[:[proxy port]/rtsp://....."
This saves the actual RealMedia file to the same directory as mplayer, named out.rm
When the download is complete, you can close the browser and Real Alternative
The rest of the instructions are not necessary, but I don't like working with RM files, so I converted the file to AVI
Download and install SUPER video converter from http://www.erightsoft.com/Superdc.html
Open the file in SUPER video converter
Use the tool to convert to AVI
In this case, the RM file is the entire news bulletin so I just clipped out the relevant section using AVI Splitter
