No I haven't answered these questions yet. VDPAU wouldn't compile, so I couldn't use that. Initially was using xv.

My graphics card is an NVIDIA 9600 GT and I'm using NVIDIA's latest (stable) Linux x86_64 drivers v180.51.

Funny thing, now that you mention it I went through the listed of drivers and tried x11, xover, and gl and gl2. gl and gl2 finally worked. That's bizarre (to me).

Is it just me or today (may 31) the non-premium feeds is just unwatchable?
The stream from rtmpdump is very very choppy and it is like watching tha game in stop-motion

quick question on updating mlbviewer and mplayer--

for both, can i just run "svn update" from the appropriate directories and be done? or is there more that needs to be done after checking out the latest builds? i remember in a previous update of mlbviewer having to copy some mediaservice files to my ~/.mlb directory. as far as mplayer goes, do i have to configure/make/makeinstall after checkout?

also, i see in the thread that some are having trouble with newer mplayer builds. should i not update?

thanks!

There are the files MediaService.wsdl and MediaService.xsd which need to be copied to ~/.mlb/. If these two files got updated during the "svn update" (which, yes, so long as you checked out the svn source in the first place and didn't install a sourceforge release, is the way to go) then they need to be copied over. If they got updated and you didn't copy them then you will get some sort of error when you try to watch games in mlbviewer, so that is generally the indication if you didn't copy those over. Also, when they get updated you should delete the suds cache with rm -r /tmp/suds/.

As for mplayer, if the mplayer you have works currently I don't see any reason to update it. Most of the mplayer packages released with our distros are not up to date enough as about a month ago there was an ffmpeg bug fix that makes the streams playable, which is why people are generally using the mplayer svn.

well svn updated my mlbviewer to 208 and i am not getting any errors, so i guess this time it was not necessary to copy over those files. but i will keep that in mind for the future.

i jumped the gun with mplayer and ran svn update. to finish the install do i need to do anything else? if it is not complete as it is, should i avoid finishing the update to avoid any potential issues?

thanks!

With Mplayer, the link below is pretty clear as to what you have to do. After an update of Mlbviewer, you don't have to do anything usually but with Mplayer, you have to build it again after an update if you want the newer version.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/...layer_From_SVN

well that was a giant mistake. i had everything running fine, except for occasional sync issues, and i figured i would see if installing the newest mplayer would help.

sure enough, i see what some others on the previous page are experiencing with the new build:

if i switch feeds mplayer simply crashes. stranger yet, i cannot start watching that same game again even after restarting mlbviewer. i can start another game, crash mplayer by switching feeds, and then again be unable to start that feed (I always get the error "Buffering streamread: Resource temporarily unavailable" or "read: Resource temporarily unavailable" and then i have to ctrl-c out of mlbviewer). sometimes when switching it doesn't crash immediately, but after a 5-15 seconds of playback. it also appears that sometimes it is possible to go to a higher bitrate feed, but going from 3000 to 2200 is killing it every time for me.

i assume this has to do with the new mplayer. is there a way to solve this? or do i have to go back to an older version of mplayer? more importantly, why can't i watch the feed again after restarting mlbviewer (i have literally made every feed from today unwatchable by testing this out)?

i am also updated to build 208 of mlbviewer, if that is relevant.

edit: i also noticed just now that i cannot open those games in nexdef mode using the official flash player now either!

hey daftcat, were you working on or planning to work on adding runs per inning to the inning display?

Once again, I have to give thanks you guys for helping each other out. It really takes a load off me and that's exactly what I've been needing. Now if only my Royals would start winning again, my blood pressure could come down again.

For those who are running bleeding edge mplayer from svn and encountering stability problems, I myself have stopped updating on a regular basis. I felt mplayer and mlbviewer was at a reasonable state to sit back and enjoy the games. If you want to go back to the build I'm using--and it's reasonably stable--you can check out revision 29311:

This will create a new directory called mplayer-29311 (adjust this directory name to your personal preference with the last argument of the svn command) that contains revision 29311 of mplayer. If you kinda remember what date mplayer started going wonky on you, you can look in the 'svn log' output for a revision on or near that date to update to. This should be your 'last known good' revision. I'd recommend keeping a cheat sheet of good and bad mplayer builds if you enjoy updating and rebuilding mplayer on a regular basis.

Eventually, but probably not any time soon. Two problems are the inning frames are "measured" for a single character and I would need to make an extra xml request to get the scores since they are not in the inning times xml. Neither are really big deals but I'm kind of holding off on new code until I get a chance to fix up what I've got.

thanks! i will go install that version. if there are multiple versions of mplayer installed can i just put the full path in the mlb config file for the version i want to use? how does mlbviewer choose which version of mplayer to use now, as i think i have two installed (the one that doesn't work as well as a very old version)?

also, i am assuming this will fix the problem, but any idea why after the the feed crashes with the newest version it cannot be restarted? it is an issue with the autobahn plugin?

I'm actually really enjoying where mlbviewer is right now and not having to think about coding anything any time soon. I'm also getting really busy at my day job so code-free nights and weekends are looking mighty attractive.

Eventually...

I want to fix up bookmarks. I realized I broke it when I implemented the coverage selection and HD indicator features.

I plan to either implement flvstreamer support or strip down rtmpdump (remove the write-to-disk and encryption code) and release it as a spin-off specifically for mlbviewer. I'd like to do this sooner than later. Maybe by All-Star break.

I also want to do a code clean up. I'd like to re-design the classes so that there is more of the season-specific/subscription-specific functions done through class inheritance rather than a complex mess of if/else statements in the code. In other words, all seasons and service levels should all be derived from the same parent class that has methods like get_media_listings() and get_media_url() and the derived classes take care of the specific differences. This should both simplify the mlbviewer code and the mlbtv.py code. In turn, this would enable future development (like however they plan to change things next year) or new applications (like boxee) to use more uniform objects and methods. This will likely start in July.

The second stage of code cleanup is creating a widget library for mlbviewer so that if I need a listings window, I don't have to figure out how to make bookmarks, top plays, game listings, and whatever new feature compatible with the one place in the code where I draw a listings window. Likewise, I have one place in the code where I play media and several different switches to handle the differences between audio, video, condensed games, top plays, and innings. The other benefit of having a widget library is that it will be easier to implement new screens and new features such as scoreboard, line scores, and standings. I'm not sure when I'll work on this but likely not before July.

In the meantime, mlbviewer development is going into quiet mode. I'll continue to provide fixes (like the condensed games fix last week) as they are needed, but there won't be much in the way of new code for awhile.

Generally I see it recommended when configuring mplayer to use
which means when you run "make install" it copies the program binaries to the subdirectories within /usr. This means it will overwrite any packages your package manager has installed, as well as any previous build of mplayer you have compiled. The directory where you download the mplayer svn and run the ./configure and make commands is kind of a "sandbox" where the source code lives and compilation occurs, once make install is run you could (and usually do) delete the binaries from where you put the source code.

The autobahn plugin should be considered unstable. It's the best we've got but it isn't perfect. Since it is easier to restart the autobahn plugin than it is to re-build mplayer, your first troubleshooting step should always be to restart the autobahn plugin. In general, a feed crash is a perfect indication (excuse) to restart the plugin. In other words, blame the plugin first because it's easier to restart.

Mplayer is statically linked meaning everything mplayer needs to run is compiled into the mplayer binary. This means that instead of performing a 'make install' every time you rebuild mplayer, you can manually install it with whatever name you want in whatever location you want.

For example, you could "install" revision 29311 into /usr/bin like so:

Then you would edit your config file to use '/usr/bin/mplayer-29311'. You could even create a directory in your home directory called mplayer-svn-binaries and put your mplayer's in there. This way, you could test 'em all out or revert to any version with a change in your config file. As to the one mlbviewer is currently using, it's the one in your path if you don't use a full path name. So you could use "which mplayer" and/or "mplayer -version" to figure out which mplayer mlbviewer is using.

this has been quite an education for me! so thank you for that. this is in addition of course to the amazing baseball viewing experience you have provided us all with!

i installed the version of mplayer that you recommended, and then killed autobahn and reinstalled it (i don't know how to restart it on a mac without going back to getautobahn.com, although i'm sure a system restart would also work). i have the games going again, but i am still experiencing a crash sometimes when i go from a 3000k feed to a 2200k feed. but since i want to watch the 3000k stream i am not all that concerned with this. it would really only be an issue if during the game mlbviewer for some reason needs to switch feeds. i don't remember having this problem before, so i am not quite sure what is going on.

just to clarify about mplayer--
i download a new version with svn and then run "sh configure --enable-dynamic-plugins --prefix=/usr" and then "make". i can skip the "make install" in favor of the technique you described above. if however i want to try out a newer version, should i run "svn up" in that directory, or is there a way to get a completely new directory with the new version (and labeled as such so i know the version number -- like what i got when i just dled 29311 by running "svn co -r 29311 svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer-29311")? or is the procedure to move/rename mplayer to my "mplayer-svn-binaries" directory after i run "make" and then i can keep repeating this (and naming them manually) each time i update? i guess this is silly, but i don't know how to tell what version was "made" except in the case above where you told me what version to get (in the mplayer directory is there a way to tell the version so i can name it and copy it over?).

the only other thing i need to work on is the fullscreen on second monitor issue. hopefully this week i will have a chance to do what you suggested back on page 120!

thanks again for all the help!
:-)

edit: i think i figured it out. i can run the fullpath to mplayer with --version and find out what revision is in the directory. i told you -- it is a learning process!