Using Ubustream with MediaMVPs

[ubu]

My concern wasn't GB-PVR, but whether MVP could play it.

My assumption has always been that, if a stream will play OK with GB-PVR in timeshift mode then, theoretically, it ought to play via the MVP dongle (since the MVP is viewing the same transcodeded MPEG2 file). So, if a stream works in timeshift mode but not with the MVP, then I would suspect that the MVP settings (or network issues) rather than the transcoding process would be the culprit. But this is pretty much conjecture on my part since I don't have access to the details of GB-PVR's internals.

It does, and is much more stable. Sticky will be updated to show acodec=mpga.

Excellent!

[groover km]

BTW - I see from the "avatar" thread that you're another ex-pat brit living in the "land of the free". I'd already noticed your Sex Pistols avatar. We clearly have much in common.

Yep; been here for 6 years, and the mother-in-law sends me rich tea biscuits and cadbury's chocolate. Life is good.

[ubu]

Yep; been here for 6 years, and the mother-in-law sends me rich tea biscuits and cadbury's chocolate. Life is good.

It's the cheese that I miss - cheese that tastes of something; cheese that doesn't bounce when you drop it. Oh, and real double cream and Weetabix.

[pz1]

[*]RealVideo streams will never be supported since VLC refuses to support it until the codec internals are made public (which is never). VLC does support some RealAudio streams but I haven't actually tried it.

Would the new WM Recorder 11 be an alternative for VLC? It is not free I am aware of that, but it seems to support both WMP and RM. Has anyone tried this yet. In the past it was suggested as a solution. I did not find a report of succesfull implementation here.

[jbyram2]

MY guess is that it probably would work if WMrecorder can record internet streams from a command line interface of the form:

c:\path\WMrecorder.exe mms://www.someserver.com/stream parameters..

that is, the stream you want is the first parameter in the command
and can be made to exit cleanly. I don't have it though, so I can't begin to help with what the command line looks like. Good luck with it.

[pz1]

MY guess is that it probably would work if WMrecorder can record internet streams from a command line interface of the form:

c:\path\WMrecorder.exe mms://www.someserver.com/stream parameters..

that is, the stream you want is the first parameter in the command
and can be made to exit cleanly. I don't have it though, so I can't begin to help with what the command line looks like. Good luck with it.

I was just curious if anybody had done it. I try to run things through VLC only. I have selected Annenberg TV, NASA TV, BBC 4 radio and BBC World service for EPG (and hence for my channels) I only get a very low quality image and badly synchronised sound on NASA TV. The other channels just don't play, neither on PC nor on MVP.
So I am not really in the mood for a 50$ venture on the WM Recorder.

[ubu]

I was just curious if anybody had done it.

I've wondered if WMRecorder would work too. Basically, what jbyram2 said is exactly right, so if it can be invoked from the command line it might work. But there are some recorders out there (not that WMRecorder is neccessarily one of them) that don't actually record the stream but simply record the contents of a window on your desktop (like you would use to record an "animated" software demo). Those recorders definitely wouldn't work (and probably produce pretty poor quality video).

I try to run things through VLC only. I have selected Annenberg TV, NASA TV, BBC 4 radio and BBC World service for EPG (and hence for my channels) I only get a very low quality image and badly synchronised sound on NASA TV. The other channels just don't play, neither on PC nor on MVP.
So I am not really in the mood for a 50$ venture on the WM Recorder.

While working on the "MVP support for list mode" feature, I've discovered a few of the things that stop some streams from working when transcoded by VLC. When I have fixes in for list mode, I'll try to retrofit them for channel mode as well.

In the meanwhile: try using this url for Annenberg:

http://168.156.127.30:80/Annenberg%20Broadband?MSWMExt=.asf

VLC sometimes has problems with asx files. The "published" Annenberg URL is an asx which points to yet another asx. This is what you end up with.

The NASA url does a similar trick but you wind up with two alternate URLs:

mms://209.73.191.67/bcenc202228?StreamID=31161500&b=bvkt11l1t94b0458e4bbb&Segment=149773&CG_ID=1369080
and
mms://209.73.191.105/bcenc202228?StreamID=31161502&b=bvkt11l1t94b0458e4bbb&Segment=149773&CG_ID=136908

Sometimes one works better than the other.
For both NASA and Annenberg, make sure you've changed acodec=mp2a to acodec=mpga in your Recording Parameters.

Both the BBC stations play fine with VLC (even though they use RealAudio) but I'm not sure that UbuStream channel mode currently supports audio-only streams. I intend to support transcoding audio streams to mp3 for MVP support in the next release.

[pz1]

In the meanwhile: try using this url for Annenberg:

http://168.156.127.30:80/Annenberg%20Broadband?MSWMExt=.asf

VLC sometimes has problems with asx files. The "published" Annenberg URL is an asx which points to yet another asx. This is what you end up with.

This did the trick for viewing it on the MVP. However if I exit the program on the MVP, the GBPVR server still runs an orphaned VLC instance (also applies for trying the BBC stations and NASA TV)

For both NASA and Annenberg, make sure you've changed acodec=mp2a to acodec=mpga in your Recording Parameters.

Yes I have that as a standard parameter in ExternalRecorder. I did follow jbram2's instructions closely earlier this morning.

Both the BBC stations play fine with VLC (even though they use RealAudio) but I'm not sure that UbuStream channel mode currently supports audio-only streams. I intend to support transcoding audio streams to mp3 for MVP support in the next release.

In list mode on the server PC I get the following error in the messages window:

live555 error: Nothing to play for rtsp://rmlive.bbc.co.uk/bbc-rbs/rmlive/ev7/live24/radio4/live/r4_dsat_g2.ra
main warning: output date isn't PTS date, requesting resampling (-102012)
main warning: buffer is 102013 in advance, triggering downsampling

In this report the 'm' at the very end of the station URI seems to be missing.

[pz1]

What I should add as a general remark is that my main interest for this plugin comes from my desire to play Internet Radio via my MVP. The standard NETradio plugin is too limited with it's dedication to Shoutcast format only. On the Hauppauge server I easily included many mms-streams and some other formats.

Thanks for the help. I will try to follow this in the next few weeks, and provide you with further feedback. I am happy to try-out intermediate releases.

[ubu]

What I should add as a general remark is that my main interest for this plugin comes from my desire to play Internet Radio via my MVP. The standard NETradio plugin is too limited with it's dedication to Shoutcast format only. On the Hauppauge server I easily included many mms-streams and some other formats.

I intend to provide full support for as many audio formats as possible (by transcoding them to mp3 on the fly) for MVP users. I'm working on doing it for "timeshifted" list mode now, but I'll try to retrofit the same ideas back into channel mode later. I agree about NetRadio (one reason I wrote UbuStream in the first place). Now that VLC supports Shoutcast radio and TV as well, UbuStream should be able to provide you with "one-stop shopping" (and I can stop supporting Winamp users ).

This did the trick for viewing it on the MVP. However if I exit the program on the MVP, the GBPVR server still runs an orphaned VLC instance (also applies for trying the BBC stations and NASA TV)

Normally, the GBPVR video player would signal to External Recorder that you've stopped viewing the transcoded file and External Recorder would kill VLC. I don't have any control over that in channel mode. However, in the new timeshifted list mode I'm working hard to make sure no orphans will remain.

In list mode on the server PC I get the following error in the messages window:

live555 error: Nothing to play for rtsp://rmlive.bbc.co.uk/bbc-rbs/rmlive/ev7/live24/radio4/live/r4_dsat_g2.ra
main warning: output date isn't PTS date, requesting resampling (-102012)
main warning: buffer is 102013 in advance, triggering downsampling

In this report the 'm' at the very end of the station URI seems to be missing.

That looks like the correct URL. I'm assuming you used http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/realplayer/media/fmg2.ram
as the original URL in UbuStream. That ram file contains a playlist that contains the rtsp url VLC is actually connecting to (.ra extension means RealAudio). For me, it connects to that rtsp URL just fine. I'm using VLC 0.8.6 though. Can't remember if it worked with 0.8.5.

Thanks for the help. I will try to follow this in the next few weeks, and provide you with further feedback. I am happy to try-out intermediate releases.

You may live to regret having volunteered.
The feedback is very welcome.