A small script to make recording http live streams ( HLS ) on a Linux. Script records the stream for a defined period of time and sends the user notifications if anything goes wrong and once it's done.

BBC_HLS_RECORD.sh

#!/bin/bash
# required: ffmpeg notify-send or zenity ;)
# you can schedule this with launchd to run e.g. weekly

# Specify in seconds how long the script should record (default here is 1 hour).
seconds=3600
#Specify in miliseconds notify timeout
notify=3000

# Date format for the recording file name
DATE=`date "+%d-%m-%Y_%H-%M"`

# start ffmpeg recording
ffmpeg -re -i http://website.com/playlist.m3u8 -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc recording_$DATE.mp4 &

# notification that recording has started
if [ "$(pgrep -P $$ 'ffmpeg')" ]
then
	notify-send   -t "$notify"  "is recording now"
else
	notify-send   -t "$notify"  "is not recording!" 
	exit 42
fi

# check every 30 seconds for $seconds to make sure ffmpeg is still running
START=`date +%s`
while [ $(( $(date +%s) - $seconds )) -lt $START ]; do
	if [ -z "$(pgrep -P $$ 'ffmpeg')" ]
    	then
       		notify-send   -t "$notify" "is no longer running"
  	fi
	sleep 30
done

# notification when time is up
notify-send   -t "$notify" "recording finished" 

# stop ffmpeg (using this because stopping ffmpeg via -t for duration turned out to be extremely unreliable)
kill $(pgrep -P $$ 'ffmpeg')