MLB.TV in Linux

mchapter · 05-24-2010, 02:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by itshardertotell

hm. i am o nthe latest svn update for the regular branch (#253) and it still comes up with the same error when i try to play a game in mlbviewer. here is the debug output again. is it a problem with my suds?

thanks for anyone who can help!
markus

you also have to follow the steps in this post http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post3974804

they essentially are:

Code:

$ cd mlbviewer
$ cp MediaService.xsd ~/.mlb
$ rm -r /tmp/suds/*

if that doesn't work, do a which on your mlbviewer.py

Code:

which mlbviewer.py

and see if it's in the local mlbviewer directory (i.e. where svn put it), or in /usr/bin... if it's in /usr/bin I would delete that and just use the local version in the svn directory.

itshardertotell · 05-25-2010, 01:30 PM

thanks so much, mchapter! that worked! thank you so much!

duhctaep · 05-27-2010, 06:30 AM

would a script that downloads an audio file and converts it to an mp3, suitable for playing on an mp3 player, be something that would upset an mlb.com troll?

btw, it seems that this forum thread is where all discussion of mlbviewer is happening. i think it would help a lot of people to put a link pointing here from the sf.net page, if there isn't one already. i just stumbled across it by googling python exceptions.

swordthrower · 05-27-2010, 01:50 PM

I just installed the latest mlbviewer from svn and when I select a game it freezes after the following output (I disabled really-quiet in mplayer), and mplayer doesn't pop up. But if I do a ps -A it shows up as running.

I have verified that mplayer can play videos using -vo "xv".

Strangely enough, when I first installed mlbviewer, it worked for about 10 seconds, and then mplayer starting stuttering pretty badly. Then I built the latest mplayer from source, and I got the following error. So, I scrapped the newest version, and reinstalled mplayer from the repositories... no luck, as you can see!

Thanks for you help. I didn't see any other posts with this specific problem. FWIW, I'm running Linux Mint 8.

Code:

Buffering streamRTMPDump v2.2d
                              (c) 2010 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu, The Flvstreamer Team; license: GPL
                        Connecting ...
                                      MPlayer SVN-r31226-4.4.1 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team

         Playing -.
                   Reading from stdin...
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   INFO: Connected...
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   Starting Live Stream
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   INFO: Metadata:
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   INFO:   width                 400.00
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   INFO:   height                448.00
                                                                   INFO:   framerate             29.97
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   INFO:   videocodecid          7.00
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)   INFO:   videodatarate         704.00
                                                                   INFO:   audiodatarate         32.00
Cache fill: 19.92% (417792 bytes)   
                                    libavformat file format detected.
                                                                     [flv @ 0x939a7f0]Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
                                                              [lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
                   [lavf] stream 1: audio (aac), -aid 0
                                                       VIDEO:  [H264]  400x448  0bpp  29.970 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
467.221 kB / 5.03 sec

mchapter · 05-27-2010, 05:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swordthrower

I just installed the latest mlbviewer from svn and when I select a game it freezes after the following output (I disabled really-quiet in mplayer), and mplayer doesn't pop up. But if I do a ps -A it shows up as running.

In your ~/.mlb/config, what is the 'video_player=' line? One that I used at one point is video_player=mplayer -cache 2048.

swordthrower · 05-27-2010, 06:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mchapter

In your ~/.mlb/config, what is the 'video_player=' line? One that I used at one point is video_player=mplayer -cache 2048.

Here is my .config file, with the same video_player line as you suggested... Are there other options for video players? Can I use totem?

Code:

# See README for explanation of these settings.
# user and pass are required except for Top Plays
user=*****
pass=*****

show_player_command=0

live_from_start=0

favorite_color=cyan

speed=800

video_follow=

video_player=mplayer -cache 2048

show_inning_frames=1

x_display=

audio_player=mplayer -cache 64 -really-quiet

flash_browser=firefox %s

max_bps=800000

bg_color=xterm

coverage=home

strict_stream=1

audio_follow=

top_plays_player=

favorite=

use_color=0

use_nexdef=0

debug=0

time_offset=

blackout=

mchapter · 05-27-2010, 09:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swordthrower

Here is my .config file, with the same video_player line as you suggested... Are there other options for video players? Can I use totem?

Code:

# See README for explanation of these settings.
# user and pass are required except for Top Plays
user=mnrjj@yahoo.com
pass=*****

show_player_command=0

My understanding is yes, you can use any video player you like. There are two parameters that get filled in your video_player= command. One is %f which is a unique filename based on the stream, and %s does something.. I don't know what though.

I would turn on show_player_command=1 and see what the command looks like. If you use your current setup, you should see mplayer open shortly after you select a game (it has to fill the buffer first). If it doesn't open, then we can dissect the command that's shown and see if it's mplayer that is at fault. You could also substitute other players as you suggested.

poorboywilly · 05-28-2010, 12:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mchapter

My understanding is yes, you can use any video player you like. There are two parameters that get filled in your video_player= command. One is %f which is a unique filename based on the stream, and %s does something.. I don't know what though.

I would turn on show_player_command=1 and see what the command looks like. If you use your current setup, you should see mplayer open shortly after you select a game (it has to fill the buffer first). If it doesn't open, then we can dissect the command that's shown and see if it's mplayer that is at fault. You could also substitute other players as you suggested.

Any video player that can read FLV containers and decode h264 at an acceptable rate on your computer should be fine. The audio is AAC and should not be a problem for any decent video player.

%s is what he is looking for: mplayer replaces it with the name of the file (or stream or whatever) that the video player should open. In the case of "regular" (non-nexdef) streams, rtmpdump/flvstreamer is downloading the video data and that is being piped to the stdin of the video_player command. Thus, %s will be replaced with "-" in this case. Try using

Code:

video_player=yourplayer -options %s

and seeing if you can get it working with another player.

Also, can you use mplayer to play a video file located on your computer? You said you compiled mplayer from source and then installed it again from the repository, are you sure you aren't still using the compiled version? (doing a "which mplayer" may help determine that).

swordthrower · 05-28-2010, 02:51 PM

Thanks for your help, guys. I've got it working with vlc (video_player=vlc %s).

swordthrower · 05-31-2010, 03:43 PM

I've had an issue with mlbviewer where the video gets jumpy after a few minutes, and it pauses every few seconds for a second or so, then plays for a few seconds, then pauses, and so on.

The video player output when it pauses is:

Code:

number of reference frames exceeds max (probably corrupt input), discarding one

This has happened for every game regardless of resolution or video player. It starts after about 3-5 minutes of smooth playing.

Anyone have this problem as well?

Thanks!

js102704 · 05-31-2010, 03:45 PM

Is there a post or a link which describes how to start from scratch with mlbviewer and download the latest version?

swordthrower · 05-31-2010, 05:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by js102704

Is there a post or a link which describes how to start from scratch with mlbviewer and download the latest version?

I followed this post to get mine installed.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post3943407

swordthrower · 05-31-2010, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swordthrower

I've had an issue with mlbviewer where the video gets jumpy after a few minutes, and it pauses every few seconds for a second or so, then plays for a few seconds, then pauses, and so on.

The video player output when it pauses is:

Code:

number of reference frames exceeds max (probably corrupt input), discarding one

This has happened for every game regardless of resolution or video player. It starts after about 3-5 minutes of smooth playing.

Anyone have this problem as well?

Thanks!

Also, once in a while I get this message along with the multitudes of the above message:

Code:

avcodec decoder error: more than 5 seconds of late video -> dropping frame (computer too slow ?)

I have the latest w32codecs installed, and my computer is definitely not too slow...

Anybody seeing this too?

mchapter · 06-01-2010, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swordthrower

Also, once in a while I get this message along with the multitudes of the above message:

Code:

avcodec decoder error: more than 5 seconds of late video -> dropping frame (computer too slow ?)

I have the latest w32codecs installed, and my computer is definitely not too slow...

Anybody seeing this too?

I'm not seeing anything like that but sometimes I do have some trouble with the feed dropping out and returning to the mlbviewer menu on live games. It's kinda frustrating but I don't know exactly what's causing it. Have you tried different fidelities? 1200k is pretty nice, 800k is watchable too.

swordthrower · 06-02-2010, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mchapter

I'm not seeing anything like that but sometimes I do have some trouble with the feed dropping out and returning to the mlbviewer menu on live games. It's kinda frustrating but I don't know exactly what's causing it. Have you tried different fidelities? 1200k is pretty nice, 800k is watchable too.

So, I've noticed that if I pause the stream, for literally just a few seconds once I start it playing, this issue doesn't seem to re-occur. I'm assuming what's happening is that more video is being shoved into the buffer, and so it never gets into the choppy stage since there's a little bit of wiggle room for the stream to be buffered.... But the fact is I have no idea why it works! It just does.