MLB.TV in Linux

edouble312 · 04-20-2009, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Theophile

The default player command in nexdef.py is "mplayer %f -dumpstream -dumpfile %s" (I think). That will save the stream locally instead of playing it.

BTW, I just tried watching a game on a network (at school) that is generally congested and I got the same errors and the stream died after about 10 seconds.

thanks that is how my nexdef.py was already set.

I'm starting to think it's on mlb's end. this was working for me two days ago without much problem, but judging from the long list of people with complaints about nextdef over in the mlb.tv support forum, I think their servers just aren't handling the load.

we might have to wait till some of the 'pretender' teams start losing and there aren't so many people watching for this to work 100% of the time.

I will keep messing with it, but it's irritating to get those 'you've logged in too many times in a short period' messages... cmon mlb, your product isn't working right, and people are trying alternative ways to watch it so we get our money's worth!

edit: do you know the bps options (it's set to 2500000 right now)... what are the other speeds I can try?

thanks again

daftcat · 04-20-2009, 11:31 AM

Rather than mess with any dvr code, I decided to revive mlbviewer.py for nexdef support.

WHAT WORKS:

Live and Archive Games start from Top of 1st.
Speed can be adjusted with max_bps config file parameter (defaults to 800000 or 800K)

WHAT DOESN'T WORK:

Entering a live game at the current position (will be fixed)
Gameday audio

TO-DO:

Enter a live game at the current position rather than top of 1st.
Integrate rtmpdump for gameday audio
Highlights

FURTHER DOWN THE ROAD:

Jump to innings
Condensed games (if and when mlb.com implements them)

daftcat · 04-20-2009, 11:39 AM

So just to be perfectly clear, the nexdef integration code is in mlbviewer.py and uses your video_player configuration file setting.

If you want to implement recording, change your video_player command to include -dumpstream AND a dumpfile. There isn't any support at the moment for mlbviewer.py to record so you have to hack it in like last year.

Example:

Code:

video_player=mplayer -really-quiet -dumpstream %s -dumpfile mlb.mp4

I recommend using -really-quiet option with mplayer until I implement a /tmp/mplayer.log file like I did for rtmpdump.

Gameday audio users, please continue to use mlbdvr.py until I have it integrated into mlbviewer.py.

Going forward towards the sourceforge release, I want mlbviewer.py to be the official client. mlbdvr.py will be deprecated and not included in official releases. It will remain in SVN as a convenience.

I will therefore need the testing efforts of the non-premium users to verify that mlbviewer.py with the autobahn.jar file available from mlb.com works for you as a replacement to rtmpdump.

daftcat · 04-20-2009, 12:14 PM

Oh, should mention this.

"Out of the box", this runs well on my 750 Mhz x 256 MB machine.

Those of you with better boxes should add the max_bps parameter to your configuration file.

daftcat · 04-20-2009, 01:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by edouble312

thanks that is how my nexdef.py was already set.

I'm starting to think it's on mlb's end. this was working for me two days ago without much problem, but judging from the long list of people with complaints about nextdef over in the mlb.tv support forum, I think their servers just aren't handling the load.

we might have to wait till some of the 'pretender' teams start losing and there aren't so many people watching for this to work 100% of the time.

I will keep messing with it, but it's irritating to get those 'you've logged in too many times in a short period' messages... cmon mlb, your product isn't working right, and people are trying alternative ways to watch it so we get our money's worth!

edit: do you know the bps options (it's set to 2500000 right now)... what are the other speeds I can try?

thanks again

You better not be calling the Royals "pretenders" or I'll bug up your mlbviewer.

Actually, I think they are performing about as good as I expected them to, but the rest of the Central just doesn't want to win very badly.

edouble312 · 04-20-2009, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daftcat

You better not be calling the Royals "pretenders" or I'll bug up your mlbviewer.

Actually, I think they are performing about as good as I expected them to, but the rest of the Central just doesn't want to win very badly.

ha well i like the cubs, so immediately hate the cardinals (and white sox for the most part), so it think we're automatically allies. Grienke is outstanding... 36 innings without a giving up a run? this year's cliff lee perhaps.

hey just thought i'd give a report. I've been streaming stuff all morning and have not gotten disconnected with the error i reported earlier.

here's the exciting news. during my experimenting, i turned on my popcorn hour a-100 unit (for those who don't know, it streams video and audio files off your network and supports most everything). anyway, i made a network share in the mlbviewer folder on my box, and fired up one of the mp4's i was recording live with nexdef.py. it looks FANTASTIC and streams live without a problem! no sound however, as i think the AAC codec they're using is unsupported by the unit (it doesn't show up in the codec information panel at all when the file's playing).

I don't know alot about mplayer 'dumpstream' command, and google didn't help me: is there any way to convert the audio on the fly to something playable, (such as mp3)? The picture quality is awesome and it's really cool to play the games in 1080p (upconverted) on my tv. If I could get sound, it would be killer!

daftcat · 04-20-2009, 01:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by edouble312

ha well i like the cubs, so immediately hate the cardinals (and white sox for the most part), so it think we're automatically allies. Grienke is outstanding... 36 innings without a giving up a run? this year's cliff lee perhaps.

hey just thought i'd give a report. I've been streaming stuff all morning and have not gotten disconnected with the error i reported earlier.

here's the exciting news. during my experimenting, i turned on my popcorn hour a-100 unit (for those who don't know, it streams video and audio files off your network and supports most everything). anyway, i made a network share in the mlbviewer folder on my box, and fired up one of the mp4's i was recording live with nexdef.py. it looks FANTASTIC and streams live without a problem! no sound however, as i think the AAC codec they're using is unsupported by the unit (it doesn't show up in the codec information panel at all when the file's playing).

I don't know alot about mplayer 'dumpstream' command, and google didn't help me: is there any way to convert the audio on the fly to something playable, (such as mp3)? The picture quality is awesome and it's really cool to play the games in 1080p (upconverted) on my tv. If I could get sound, it would be killer!

Have you re-compiled your mplayer to a recent SVN revision? I don't know offhand when the bug fix for our video files came in, but it was probably within the last week or so. The reason why I suspect mplayer is because this was the same problem Theophile was having--video but no sound--before the patch came into SVN.

It would be hard to fathom that a media box wouldn't support AAC. Does the media file play with video and audio on your Linux machine before streaming to the popcorn box?

Greinke was hot like this last year too. I think he gets his stuff going faster than the hitters get theirs in the early part of the season. I also think the early schedule is dominated by Central teams and he'll come back to earth when they start playing the AL East teams. It is surprising to see Toronto doing so well even without Burnett and Seattle (where the fsck did they come from?) and the Angels floundering.

Still, if this keeps up, I may see the World Series match up of my two favorite teams: Dodgers vs. Royals. Never thought I'd see the day.

Okay, I'm going to stop dreaming now since the Royals still have Ponson, Horacio Ramirez, and Farnsworth to gum up the works. Here's hoping Bannister and Hochevar come back soon.

Onip · 04-20-2009, 01:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daftcat

I will therefore need the testing efforts of the non-premium users to verify that mlbviewer.py with the autobahn.jar file available from mlb.com works for you as a replacement to rtmpdump.

Two terminals
first one

Code:

$ java -jar autobahn.jar

Second one

Code:

$ python /home/onip/mlbviewer/mlbviewer.py

Any archived game I tried I got

Code:

An error occurred in locating the game stream:

Could not parse NexDef stream list.  Try alternate coverage.

Here's log content

Code:

DEBUG>> home coverage = pit away coverage = hou
DEBUG>> checking for audio_follow = []
DEBUG>> checking for video_follow = []
2009-04-20 20:46:50.664458
Logged in successfully!

Hope this helps

edouble312 · 04-20-2009, 01:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daftcat

Have you re-compiled your mplayer to a recent SVN revision? I don't know offhand when the bug fix for our video files came in, but it was probably within the last week or so. The reason why I suspect mplayer is because this was the same problem Theophile was having--video but no sound--before the patch came into SVN.

It would be hard to fathom that a media box wouldn't support AAC. Does the media file play with video and audio on your Linux machine before streaming to the popcorn box?

Greinke was hot like this last year too. I think he gets his stuff going faster than the hitters get theirs in the early part of the season. I also think the early schedule is dominated by Central teams and he'll come back to earth when they start playing the AL East teams. It is surprising to see Toronto doing so well even without Burnett and Seattle (where the fsck did they come from?) and the Angels floundering.

Still, if this keeps up, I may see the World Series match up of my two favorite teams: Dodgers vs. Royals. Never thought I'd see the day.

Okay, I'm going to stop dreaming now since the Royals still have Ponson, Horacio Ramirez, and Farnsworth to gum up the works. Here's hoping Bannister and Hochevar come back soon.

yeah I have the most recent svn of mplayer, and the sound works fine on my computer. the popcorn does support aac within mp4, just not all varieties of aac. I'm not sure the exact type of aac mlbtv uses. could there be some way of using mencoder to transcode the stream with mp3? i haven't tried that yet.

I don't know if i'd like to see the dodgers in the WS, but i'll be rooting for KC. As long as it's not the yankees i'll be pretty content. farnsworth (or farnsworthless as i called him when he was a cub) is dreadful. 98 mph and you can't get anyone out?

Theophile · 04-20-2009, 02:24 PM

Fantastic, thanks!

setting max_bps=3000000 in the config file gave me the full 1280x720 stream. It is a beautiful thing. I'm considering this prophecy fulfilled. ;-)

Theophile · 04-20-2009, 02:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by edouble312

yeah I have the most recent svn of mplayer, and the sound works fine on my computer. the popcorn does support aac within mp4, just not all varieties of aac. I'm not sure the exact type of aac mlbtv uses. could there be some way of using mencoder to transcode the stream with mp3?

Set your player command thusly:

Code:

mencoder %s -ovc copy -oac mp3lame -mc 0 -noskip -o baseball.avi

daftcat · 04-20-2009, 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Onip

Two terminals
first one

Code:

$ java -jar autobahn.jar

Second one

Code:

$ python /home/onip/mlbviewer/mlbviewer.py

Any archived game I tried I got

Code:

An error occurred in locating the game stream:

Could not parse NexDef stream list.  Try alternate coverage.

Here's log content

Code:

DEBUG>> home coverage = pit away coverage = hou
DEBUG>> checking for audio_follow = []
DEBUG>> checking for video_follow = []
2009-04-20 20:46:50.664458
Logged in successfully!

Hope this helps

Added some additional debug information to both nexdef.py and mlbviewer in revision 162. Try again with the Debug 'd' key enabled. You can also try with nexdef.py which should give comparable (though not identical) results.

That error message you are receiving is saying it couldn't request the stream descriptions xml which would have the start timestamp I use to build the url. Basically, if this isn't available, then perhaps nexdef doesn't support non-premium users. I find this hard to believe though. Instead I would think nexdef would implement an entitlements list of which streams are available to premium vs. non-premium users. Denying nexdef to non-premium users altogether sounds rather crappy.

Anyway, let me know what the error is with debug enabled and revision 162.

daftcat · 04-20-2009, 02:43 PM

I'm having a really hard time with the 4/18 Yankees game. I really want to see that 14 run inning but mplayer/autobahn keeps crapping out after a few seconds even with -dumpstream.

I was able to watch several innings of the Bal-Bos game this morning (or at least stream it for my cat while I was getting ready for work.)

edouble312 · 04-20-2009, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Theophile

Set your player command thusly:

Code:

mencoder %s -ovc copy -oac mp3lame -mc 0 -noskip -o baseball.avi

THANKS!! I managed to get about 10 seconds transcoded but it appears nextdef is down right now, as daftcat explains. so i didn't see if the sound worked, (but i'm assuming that it would) and the picture was there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by daftcat

I'm having a really hard time with the 4/18 Yankees game. I really want to see that 14 run inning but mplayer/autobahn keeps crapping out after a few seconds even with -dumpstream.

I was able to watch several innings of the Bal-Bos game this morning (or at least stream it for my cat while I was getting ready for work.)

i'm getting the same problem. my guess is mlb.tv likes to work on their nextdef servers while there are no live games going on. reason #3080 they should refund some of the money for people who bought the season package. thank goodness for this thread and everyone's efforts to create software that actually WORKS. i still find it somewhat hilarious that mlb probably spent millions trying to make a usable player, and a few linux code gurus created a superior player within weeks. the alpha stage of mlbviewer rocks. once the final version is released on sourceforge, it will blow away mlb's crappy flash player (don't they know the flash plugin only allows for a certain number of frames/sec in any browser on any platform?)

about the non-premium subscribers getting nextdef, see this page:
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions...mlbMENUMLBTVPR

from what i can tell, the 'hd' streams are only available for premium users. it says 'tv quality' 800k/s streams when you mouse over the tv feature for non-premium users.

Theophile · 04-20-2009, 03:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by edouble312

THANKS!! I managed to get about 10 seconds transcoded but it appears nextdef is down right now, as daftcat explains. so i didn't see if the sound worked, (but i'm assuming that it would) and the picture was there.

After I posted, I tried it out. I had A/V sync issues. I'm worried that there may be no way to correct that, since the flv container timecodes are incorrect and the the streams are not seekable. The "-mc 0" option and outputting to .avi container are the two main mplayer tricks I know of to keep A/V sync, but if that doesn't work, there may not be a viable way to do on-the-fly transcoding in a way that preserves sync.

Quote:

once the final version is released on sourceforge, it will blow away mlb's crappy flash player (don't they know the flash plugin only allows for a certain number of frames/sec in any browser on any platform?)

Actually, the Win/Mac versions of Flash are pretty good, mainly because they make better use of gfx acceleration hardware. However, there is currently a support ticket open requesting VDPAU support in the Flash plugin. If that ever gets implemented, we'd be able to get silky-smooth fullscreen video playback at full framerate. Nonetheless, I much prefer the scriptable option!