Plugin: Web Radio and TV Encoder for SageTV V7

[j1mb0b]

Interesting. Looking in the webencoder/tmp directory I see that VLC is creating the video file correctly. It continues to grow even after I have lost the sound. If I stop the test, the mpg file remains and I can play it fine using VLC. So I'm really confused. The stream is being encoded correctly, I can play a few seconds while it is being streamed or play the whole file after stopping streaming.

Someone help please!!!

[Tiki]

Does anyone know if this plugin is still supported? I noticed a few references in the forums to a User Guide, but the links all appear to be broken. I tried installing the plugin via the SagePlugin Manager the other day and got several warnings that various files could not be found.

I've seen it mentioned that you must use a web interface to do the actual configuration, but haven't seen anything that tells you the URL for the web interface.

I've seen it mentioned that an old version of VLC is required (1.05 I think) - is this still the case?

Any help or other pointers would be appreciated. I would like to use this with an IP webcam using RTSP.

Thanks

[Tiki]

Well after some experimenting and searching these forums, I found answers to some of my questions.

1. Apparently, the 3 warnings about missing files can be ignored (see this post: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...2&postcount=96).
2. Apparently, VLC version 1.05 is still recommended for most things (particularly web radio), but in some cases a newer version may be necessary (see this post: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...8&postcount=89).
3. There is a user guide (PDF) that gets installed when you install the plugin. Look for a "webfeedencoder" folder inside your Sage installation folder. Then look for a "docs" folder inside this one.
4. After you install the plugin, you should go to the Plugin Configuration screen inside Sage. There are a bunch of ports defined in this screen. There is one that defaults to 8888 (unless you change it). This is the one you need to know to actually configure your WFE channels. Just open a browser and type your IP address followed by :8888 (or whatever you changed it to) to get to the configuration tool.

[mkanet]

I just installed the plugin. Very straightforward. I think I have it all setup. The only thing I'm having problems with is figuring out how to extract the full URL to the video/audio stream for each TV station.

I noticed there's a webharvest tab. I vaguely remember webharvest is used to scraping the video/audio stream URL from a webpage player.

Can someone please be kind enough to help me figure out how to identify stream urls from the TV stations below?

http://www.haykakantv.com/

http://haytv.webs.com/

[mkanet]

Okay, I figured out how to scrape full URL to video streams.

However, not sure what syntax to specify in the URL portion of the webfeedencoder for rtmp/swf streams. It seems that just recently VLC started supporting native input of such streams (without needing rtmpDump).

I am able to sniff out the URLs to both the SWF file and ftmp stream; but not sure how to put them together in one contiguous URL for VLC to process. I can't find any good examples anywhere doing google searches.

Hopefully someone here knows how to do this.

[michaeldjcox]

Hi,

Firstly, very sorry to have been able to provide so very little support on this forum for something I dedicated so much time to. Life has taken many turns in the last few years.

My enthusiasm has been further drained by the google acquisition (My wife doesn't want to move to Kansas so we can get googlefibre), tuners dying, and also loosing my primary copy and most up to date backup of the source code.

There is unlikely to be any further development.

To your query - you are on the right track.

You need to use an old version of VLC not the latest. The version to use is documented in user guide. VLC seems to have a habit of breaking stuff every release.

With web TV where there is some kind of flash player we are not interested in the URL for the flash but the underlying stream that this connects to. If that underlying stream is something VLC can play then it should work.

Paste that URL into VLC and see if it works.

The challenging part is finding out what the underlying stream is. I ended up using sniffers to try and see which URLs where being requested.

I made most progress where someone had already done the hard work and published the stream address on the web. Worth searching the web a bit to see if that exists.

There are lots of issues with web TV type content and most of the content out there is probably inaccessible.

I started looking at the way things like TVersity managed to offer BBC Iplayer - which seem to be internally bringing up a browser (berkirilium) and effectively "filming" the browser display and relaying that onto a stream.

Good luck,

Michael

[mkanet]

Michael, luckily Web Feed Encoder code does what it needs to; and, just depends on VLC to work correctly. Do you know of ANY VLC version at all that can handle live rtmp streams? In your PDF, it recommends anything between version 1.0.5 - 1.1. The closest I can get it to playing back is it crashes (possibly because of a timing/buffering issue)?

I know that RTMPdump.exe command line utility can act as an intermediary between the incoming stream and VLC to make it work. Is there some way to get RTMPdump.exe+ VLC to work with Web Feed Encoder? Surely, someone has attempted to playback RTMP live streams when Web Feed Encoder was very popular.

[mkanet]

Also, Im not sure what I did; but now the VLC tab is missing when I try to test the stream. Ive tried reinstalling both VLC and WebFeedEncoder. Still the missing tab.

[wayner]

I am just going to take another look at this, primarily for streaming IP cameras. Does anyone have any advice on which version of VLC to start with? Should I start with 1.05 and go from there? They are now on v 2.05 or so.

[mkanet]

I've been spending a lot of time playing with this. I still can't believe I overlooked this gem. The author left it in a way where it's pretty much futureproof. You can customize it to do practically anything.

If you're just using basic/common video/audio streams, I think 1.0.5 might be best version. I have a couple of live TV RTMP streams that seem to only work with the absolutely latest nightlys... version 2.1.0.xxxx

Im using WFE for adding a couple of live TV channels to SageTV (which are only available via embedded media players on websites. On sageTV, it looks like just any other TV channel!

BTW: I haven't found a 64bit version that works with WFE though.

Let me know if you find out anything new on it.

[wayner]

I was playing around with this last night and getting reminded why VLC if frustrating.

I am trying to get my IP cams to stream into WFE. I have two Foscam IP cams and three Trendnet 651WI cams.

The Foscam units will stream in VLC 0.86 with the videostream.asf filename in the URL, just like larryf describes above. But they won't stream in later versions of VLC, at least I don't see any picture in VLC.

I can't get the Trendnet cams to work with any version of VLC that I have tried, which is 0.86, 0.96, 1.05,1.15 and 2.05. However the camera will stream properly to Google Chrome if you open up http://192.168.1.34/video.cgi. But it won't work in other browsers or in WMP or MPC=HC.

I tried pointing WFE to VLC0.86 but WFE is not working for me.

@Michael - Do you know if VLC 0.86 works with WFE? When you change the path to VLC in the configure plugin screens do you have to restart Sage or anything else? Is there any way to see the exact vlc call (i.e "c:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC0.86\vlc.exe -vvv http://192.168.1.34/video.cgi") is being used in the process? I am wondering if the wrong version of VLC is being called - note that I now have several versions of VLC installed on my Sage server but they are in different folders named by version.

Anyone else have any pointers?

WFE looks really useful, but the video streaming infrastructure you need to support it seems very flaky. Is there anything else other than VLC? At one time MS had something called Windows Media Encoder that would allow you to stream content, but they abandoned that a long time ago.

[mkanet]

I haven't tried any vlc versions prior to 1.0.5. I'm already using 2.1.x.

Im finding out that while WFE is build very well; allowing us to do just about anything... it's weakpoint is VLC.

VLC seems to be the buggiest player I've ever used; where, when one feature gets added, another one breaks... and the contributing developers seem to leave them broken indefinitely.

Im looking into using another app to take the place of VLC for WFE. Its relatively easy to replace VLC with something else.

Potplayer seems to handle even the weirdest streams I throw at it; but, doesnt offer any command-line options to automatically stream.

Ill post here once I find a better player to replace vlc.... you would be able to use it too.

If you find any players that can playback your network asf stream, please post it here.

Originally Posted by wayner

I was playing around with this last night and getting reminded why VLC if frustrating.

I am trying to get my IP cams to stream into WFE. I have two Foscam IP cams and three Trendnet 651WI cams.

The Foscam units will stream in VLC 0.86 with the videostream.asf filename in the URL, just like larryf describes above. But they won't stream in later versions of VLC, at least I don't see any picture in VLC.

I can't get the Trendnet cams to work with any version of VLC that I have tried, which is 0.86, 0.96, 1.05,1.15 and 2.05. However the camera will stream properly to Google Chrome if you open up http://192.168.1.34/video.cgi. But it won't work in other browsers or in WMP or MPC=HC.

I tried pointing WFE to VLC0.86 but WFE is not working for me.

@Michael - Do you know if VLC 0.86 works with WFE? When you change the path to VLC in the configure plugin screens do you have to restart Sage or anything else? Is there any way to see the exact vlc call (i.e "c:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC0.86\vlc.exe -vvv http://192.168.1.34/video.cgi") is being used in the process? I am wondering if the wrong version of VLC is being called - note that I now have several versions of VLC installed on my Sage server but they are in different folders named by version.

Anyone else have any pointers?

WFE looks really useful, but the video streaming infrastructure you need to support it seems very flaky. Is there anything else other than VLC? At one time MS had something called Windows Media Encoder that would allow you to stream content, but they abandoned that a long time ago.

[wayner]

I haven't tried it but have you looked at Microsoft Expression Encoder? I imagine it is Windows only which may be an issue for some. The basic version appears to be free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microso...ession_Encoder

[mkanet]

Do you know if SageTV clients can handle ASF file format? If so, we may be able to do a raw file dump; and, have sageTV read it. The video quality would look much better since it wouldn't have to be re-encoded.

I'm trying to currently apply the same concept with my RTMP streams. They are actually FLV files; which SageTV handles very well.

[wayner]

But wouldn't that then limit you to being able to use WFE for streams that are in a few specific formats which Sage can natively play? The beauty of VLC, at least theoretically, is that it can take almost any incoming stream and send it out in a standard MPEG-2 (or wahtever) stream. The problem is that it doesn't live up to its promise and every release seems to break things.

There are some similarities to stuff like Playon, Orb, etc where you are using a server to restream live video streams to clients. Maybe something like Playon is a potential solution as well since it essentially reencodes web TV content to serve up to clients and we can already get that into Sage. The advantage with Playon is that it can be used on lots of clients including game machines and mobile devices.

[mkanet]

All those apps you mentioned, including VLC seem to be based off of opensource ffmpeg encoding. SageTV's transcoder is also ffmpeg based. EDIT; each version though seem to be tweaked to serve a certain purpose. VLC unfortunately can't provide good support for all formats; which is why Im looking for other solutions.

The live web TV and radio streams I'm playing with all seem to be media formats that SageTV can already handle already... FLV, mpeg1/2/4, h.264, MP3, WMV, etc. On SageTV PC based clients, there's even more support, since you can add directshow filters added to support just about anything, including some rare quicktime formats.

Originally Posted by wayner

But wouldn't that then limit you to being able to use WFE for streams that are in a few specific formats which Sage can natively play? The beauty of VLC, at least theoretically, is that it can take almost any incoming stream and send it out in a standard MPEG-2 (or wahtever) stream. The problem is that it doesn't live up to its promise and every release seems to break things.

There are some similarities to stuff like Playon, Orb, etc where you are using a server to restream live video streams to clients. Maybe something like Playon is a potential solution as well since it essentially reencodes web TV content to serve up to clients and we can already get that into Sage. The advantage with Playon is that it can be used on lots of clients including game machines and mobile devices.

[mkanet]

Wayner: Okay... Im all setup; and, can do pretty much anything using WFE. I must admit, at first I thought it was going to be a bit clunky... but now these "channels" playback just like any other live TV channel.

What I've learned... you definitely want to play native, bit-perfect video streams in sageTV, not a second-gen, blurrier video. I think you'll have have a better chance at native stream playback in sageTV than transcoded. SageTV should be able to handle just about any common video format; including asf. This method doesnt waste any CPU cycles. You would still use VLC.. but bypass VLC's transcoding feature to avoid re-encoding the video unnecessarily and introducing more problems into the mix.

Just replace the contents in C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\webfeedencoder\commands\tune.tvsilent.windows.commands

with...

Exec C:\PROGRA~2\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe "%url%" --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=%video.mux%,
dst='"%recording%"'},dst=nodisplay}"

and replace the contents in C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\webfeedencoder\commands\detune.tvsilent.windows.commands

with...

Exec "taskkill /f /IM vlc.exe"

If you try the above, and it doesnt work, replace the text in blue color above with one of the mux options (without the percent sign).

• asf
• avi
• mpjpeg
• asfh

You can still use transcoded VLC streams using VLC; but the above is much less clunky.

I applied a similar technique, but using RTMPdump.exe for handling raw rtmp streams since VLC can't handle these stream properly.

[wayner]

OK, I finally got WFE working, at least some of the time, with the default settings.

What version of VLC are you using and what are you using as a test stream?

The changes you suggest - are these just temporary for testing? Because you seem to be hardcoding the VLC path (which is a bit different for me as I am on 32 bit Win7 and I have VLC paths for several versions) rather than using the path from the conf file.

I will try what you suggested with alterations for my path if I get a chance later on tonight.

[mkanet]

I'm currently use the latest nightly version built just a couple of days ago. It doesnt seem to have any problem with common media formats.

http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/win32/last/

The changes I have dont change the default behavior. It only affects the "TV-Silent" format that you can select from. I'm not sure which one you use. If you dont want to alter TV-silient, you can always make your own dedicated format for each site. So, you can have very specific, custom behavior for certain streams and a generic transcoder for weird formats that require VLC transcoding.

I wouldnt do any customizations until you get a chance to look at how the current default WFE engine works.

I've got everything working great; but still need to learn how to handle live youtube.com streams.

[SnyperBob]

Hi everyone,

Just wondering, has anyone tried to record uStream live broadcasts with this plugin? Those with experience with WFE, is this possible? There's a channel that broadcasts live at set times. I would like to be able to schedule Sage to record automatically for playback later.