MLB.TV in Linux

TheDevilWearsPravda · 04-10-2009, 08:47 PM

Thanks a bunch. Updated to rev 151 and the 4/9 KC@CHW works fine. Now if you could just produce a diff to remove Sidney Ponson from our rotation ;P

daftcat · 04-10-2009, 08:48 PM

SUPPORTED MATRIX:

Archives:
video (yes)
audio (yes)

Live games
video (no)
audio (yes)

Flash player is available through the 'f' key for any listing which is a nice convenience for both live games and sanity checking the availability of streams.

Other supported features:
bookmarks
f)lash key
mlblistings.py for displaying event-ids
soapevent.py (I should really rename this)
gamedayaudio.py
rtmpdump patch for live audio

WHAT DOESN'T WORK YET:

-Live video (It seems all rtmp downloaders were written for flv and I still can't find one that supports h.264. But, the developer for flazr has indicated that he plans h.264 support.) Live video likely won't be supported for awhile.

-Audio follow/video follow - the content-id's are present in the soap replies, but I don't see how the streams are keyed to the content-id's.

-Condensed games and highlights - waiting to see how mlb.com supports these themselves.

ROADMAP

- Fix a minor bug with player process falling out of mlbdvr.py control when recorder process completes. (probably this weekend)

- Make the rtmpdump requests more reliable which means you all have to report to me which streams are not working for you.

- video and audio follow , I'll have to study the soap and possibly other http requests more to figure this out

- Test flazr as a replacement for rtmpdump.

Please give this revision some more testing and let me know how we're doing. If live video and the follow's are all that's missing, I'd say we're doing pretty good. Keep reporting the errors and bad streams and let me know if you still have Requested Media Not Found errors after updating to this revision.

(P.S. I'm pretty excited to be watching yesterday's Dodgers game knowing it will download successfully without my intervention now. I'm even more excited that I'll be able to watch today's archived games when I get back from dancing tonight.)

daftcat · 04-10-2009, 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDevilWearsPravda

Thanks a bunch. Updated to rev 151 and the 4/9 KC@CHW works fine. Now if you could just produce a diff to remove Sidney Ponson from our rotation ;P

Sweet! Another Royals fan! I read on the mlb comments board, "proposal for a new rule: don't sign Yankees toss offs." If I could produce a diff to remove Ponson and Farnsworth-less (and fix up Hoch and Banny too), I'd feel a lot better about having the lawns removed from the Kauffman outfield. That beautiful park (though I've only been there once) made it a lot easier to endure so many losing seasons. Maybe the extra capacity and the new park smell will bring in enough revenues for better off-season deals next year. I'm still pretty optimistic though that we can produce a winning season this year.

TheDevilWearsPravda · 04-10-2009, 11:01 PM

Today, three games I've tested from 4/10 instantly return a "Command completed. Hope it worked!" and produce a 5B file. Rangers@Tigers, Cubs@Brewers, and Phillies@Rockies. All three play when using the awesome 'f' shortcut.

poorboywilly · 04-10-2009, 11:22 PM

Huge DUH moment. I compiled rtmpdump from source with patches, carefully checked that PyXML available from my distro was the newest version, but failed to do so with suds. Installed a newer version of suds, and my mystery errors suddenly went away. Funny how when you do it right it works.

Anyways, soapevent.py is much more successful now. I forgot to save the output and now MLB has me locked out for "signing in too often" or some nonsense. I'll update you when I can get back on.

daftcat · 04-10-2009, 11:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDevilWearsPravda

Today, three games I've tested from 4/10 instantly return a "Command completed. Hope it worked!" and produce a 5B file. Rangers@Tigers, Cubs@Brewers, and Phillies@Rockies. All three play when using the awesome 'f' shortcut.

What does the /tmp/rtmpdump.log file say? I thought it would be more convenient to log rtmpdump's output to this file than to have errors lost to the curses interface.

I think they are StreamNotFound errors.

I think I have a solution for this.

I also think I'd like to go out for awhile and enjoy my Friday night. I'll have a patch tomorrow.

Thanks! It's a good catch.

TheDevilWearsPravda · 04-10-2009, 11:50 PM

yup, StreamNotFound. Appreciate your hard work and dedication. I think I owe you a SuperBeer 9000.

quonset · 04-11-2009, 02:34 AM

I'm getting this error on around half of the archived games I try to view:

Code:

Server raised fault: 'Error in JiBX marshalling'
There was an error in the dvr processes:local variable 'u' referenced before assignment

Also, if I resize the xterm with mlbdvr, I get the following crash:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):                                                                     
  File "./mlbdvr.py", line 1273, in <module>
    curses.wrapper(mainloop, mycfg.data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/curses/wrapper.py", line 44, in wrapper
    return func(stdscr, *args, **kwds)
  File "./mlbdvr.py", line 383, in mainloop
    inputs, outputs, excepts = select.select(inputlst, [], [])
select.error: (4, 'Interrupted system call')

Great work though! The f) key is nice.

As an aside, the only real issues I have with the official client are that it takes up too much screen real estate -- I'm at least trying to work when I watch baseball -- and that even with scores removed, the "slider" can still spoil games by visually (and numerically) indicating how much time is left -- viz., "oh, well, that's not enough time that they could come back". Since both of these problems are non-existent with mplayer (viz., it's resizeable and I can turn osdlevel to none), I'd prefer to be watching live games with mlbviewer!

Theophile · 04-11-2009, 10:49 AM

So I got everything installed, patched, and working. I'm using mlbdvr.py to "record" an archived game from yesterday. It writes the .mp4 file but mplayer gives the unsupported codec error. This is the error, right?

The way I figure it, rtmp dump is writing data and it's not being converted. That means there HAS to be a way to play it, doesn't it?

Theophile · 04-11-2009, 11:00 AM

Also, rtmpdump should work for h.264. Before Hulu broke it, I used to use rtmpdump to get 480p h.264 videos from Hulu. Here's the info from one:

Code:

General
Complete name                    : PrideOfTheYankees-264.flv
Format                           : Flash Video
File size                        : 543 MiB
Duration                         : 1h 14mn
Overall bit rate                 : 1 019 Kbps
_code                            : NetStream.Data.Start

Video
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : High@L5.1
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 4 frames
Muxing mode                      : Container profile=Unknown@5.1
Duration                         : 1h 14mn
Width                            : 640 pixels
Height                           : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 4/3
Frame rate mode                  : Variable
Frame rate                       : 29.970 fps
Resolution                       : 24 bits
Colorimetry                      : 4:2:0
Scan type                        : Progressive

Audio
Format                           : AAC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version                   : Version 4
Format profile                   : LC
Format settings, SBR             : No
Duration                         : 1h 14mn
Channel(s)                       : 2 channels
Channel positions                : L R
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Resolution                       : 16 bits

Is this a container problem? Is a .mp4 being "forced" into an .flv container or something?

berselius · 04-11-2009, 11:54 AM

This might be a stupid question, but are there some dependencices that I don't know about for autobahn.jar? I tried to build it and just got a core dump.

Theophile · 04-11-2009, 12:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by berselius

This might be a stupid question, but are there some dependencices that I don't know about for autobahn.jar? I tried to build it and just got a core dump.

You don't have to build it. Just run it:

Code:

java -jar autobahn.jar

Theophile · 04-11-2009, 12:36 PM

Hey daftcat, I just got live video working with mplayer.

The bad news is I think it was a fluke. I was using the soapevent.py script in the test subdirectory on the PIT-CIN game going on right now. rtmpdump stared writing the file and I handed it off to mplayer. To my surprise, it started playing, albeit without sound. Here's a screenshot showing the player window (video overlay didn't make it into the screenshot) and the terminal output:

SCREENSHOT

Subsequent attempts to play the same file result in the error:

Code:

[flv @ 0xbe8990]Unsupported video codec (7)
[flv @ 0xbe8990]Unsupported video codec (7)
[flv @ 0xbe8990]Unsupported video codec (7)
[flv @ 0xbe8990]Unsupported video codec (7)
[flv @ 0xbe8990]Unsupported video codec (7)
[flv @ 0xbe8990]Unsupported video codec (7)
[lavf] Video stream found, -vid 0
[lavf] Audio stream found, -aid 1
VIDEO:  []  0x0  0bpp  1000.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
xscreensaver_disable: Could not find XScreenSaver window.
GNOME screensaver disabled
==========================================================================
Cannot find codec matching selected -vo and video format 0x7.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/codecs.html!
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Forced audio codec: mad
Requested audio codec family [wma9spdmo] (afm=dmo) not available.
Enable it at compilation.
Requested audio codec family [wma9spdshow] (afm=dshow) not available.
Enable it at compilation.
Cannot find codec for audio format 0xA.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/codecs.html!
Audio: no sound
Video: no video

This tells me the video data is in there somewhere!

EDIT: I am now able to do this consistently. As long as I launch mplayer within a few seconds of starting the video capture, it plays every time in mplayer. Still no audio though. I'm guessing audio is in a different stream since they now have the option of choosing your audio stream.

berselius · 04-11-2009, 01:16 PM

Whoops, I meant run it, not build it. I get a "Aborted (core dumped)" message when I try to run it.

Theophile · 04-11-2009, 01:26 PM

Another screenshot to prove my point:

SCREENSHOT 2

Also, mediainfo is able to detecet the videostream:

Code:

theophile@graven:~/mlbviewer/test$ mediainfo 14-244270-2009-04-11.mp4 
General
Complete name                    : 14-244270-2009-04-11.mp4
Format                           : Flash Video
File size                        : 22.9 MiB
Duration                         : 92h 33mn
Overall bit rate                 : 577 bps
_width                           : 400.000
_height                          : 450.000
_framerate                       : 29.970
_videocodecid                    : 7.000
_videodatarate                   : 750.000
_audiodatarate                   : 48.000

Video
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : Main@L3.2
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 1 frame
Muxing mode                      : Container profile=Unknown@3.2
Duration                         : 92h 33mn
Width                            : 400 pixels
Height                           : 450 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16/9
Frame rate mode                  : Variable
Frame rate                       : 29.970 fps
Standard                         : Component
Resolution                       : 24 bits
Colorimetry                      : 4:2:0
Scan type                        : Progressive

Audio
Format                           : AAC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version                   : Version 4
Format profile                   : Main
Duration                         : 92h 33mn
Channel(s)                       : 1 channel
Channel positions                : C
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Resolution                       : 16 bits

I'm thinking this is a container problem at heart. What do you think?