Utility: Web Radio and TV Encoder

[wayner]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

I have not found anything with VLC that I haven't had to struggle to get right though...

Isn't that the truth. In theory VLC seems so promising but it rarely works the way that you think it should and/or without a lot of playing around and crashing - VLC has even given me BSODs at times which is rare for other apps.

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by wayner

Isn't that the truth. In theory VLC seems so promising but it rarely works the way that you think it should and/or without a lot of playing around and crashing - VLC has even given me BSODs at times which is rare for other apps.

I've not experienced any BSODs personally. Perhaps the later versions are more stable.

Took me a while to cook up the right command line parameters to make WebFeedEncoder work.

[michaeldjcox]

I've added some screenshots of the latest release 0.9.4 to the announcement thread for anyone thats interested.

http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=44260

[willplaice]

Michael,

thanks for making this idiot proof to install...
I have a couple of web radio stations in, but i am haveing very bad stuttering issues...

I had a search through the thead and couldn't see anythin...
I have temp. removed my other encoders, and my dual core processor sits at about 20%. I have 4GB of ram in the box.

can you point me in the right direction... (i have installed the latest version and didn't have it installed prior to that, VLC 0.99)

many thanks, and it looks fab...

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by willplaice

Michael,

thanks for making this idiot proof to install...
I have a couple of web radio stations in, but i am haveing very bad stuttering issues...

I had a search through the thead and couldn't see anythin...
I have temp. removed my other encoders, and my dual core processor sits at about 20%. I have 4GB of ram in the box.

can you point me in the right direction... (i have installed the latest version and didn't have it installed prior to that, VLC 0.99)

many thanks, and it looks fab...

Hi,

Is the stuttering experienced on an extender or in a SageTV client running on the same box as the webfeedencoder, or some other scenario?

I have a outstanding support call with SageTV trying to resolve the stuttering issue when the SageTV client is on the same host as the encoder. Its mentioned in the known issues in the announcement.

Michael

[Farmer Scott]

I'm trying to perform a new install of webfeedencoder 0.9.4 on Windows XP running Sage 6.5.9. During the installation, I get an error that indicates the encoder.props file cannot be found, although I don't think I should have been created yet. I have installed VLC 0.9.9, was there something else that needs to be installed prior to running the JAR to install webfeedencoder?

[michaeldjcox]

Hi,

No there is nothing else to install.

The install will have generated a log file in the same directory as the release jar file.

Can you post that to me please.

Also did it create a webfeedencoder/config dir with encoder.props in it?

Did it claim it was doing an upgrade or did it confirm a first time install?

Thanks for trying WebFeedEncoder.

Michael

[Farmer Scott]

Michael,

It does confirm that it's going to perform a first time installation. It didn't even create the top level folder (C:\Program Files\WebFreeEncoder), so there's no config/encoder.props file. Thinking it may be a path issue, I also tried to install in c:\, same result.

Log's attached.

Thanks for the quick response!

Scott

[michaeldjcox]

Hi,

Seems a odd this one.

Did you have an earlier version installed?

If not....

Could you try deleting the dir:

C:\Program Files\webfeedencoder_backup_pre_0.9.4

and also:

c:\Program Files\webfeedencoder

and trying again pls - post the log on failure.

It is possible that this is about user permissions - if your user is not administrator you may need to login as that user.

Michael

[Farmer Scott]

Michael,

Neither of those directories exist. You'll notice in this install (which is actually to a different location), it tries to create the backup, although it again didn't exist, nor did it create any directories. I can, however, create the directories in a command window or Explorer, so I don't believe it is permission related.

I did notice, however, that it does create a file called WebFeedEncoder.props in c:\documents and settings\scott\local settings\temp...not sure if that's the same file or something different.

New log's attached...

Scott

[michaeldjcox]

Going to have to get some sleep but...

It seems that you..

1. selected a dir
2. watched the task bar complete as the files were extracted
3. configured the encoder properties
4. tried to configure sagetv

and there it went bang.

After step two the file config/encoder.props should be there!

Can you try stopping just after the extraction and testing if there is any content in the webfeedencoder dir.

Michael

[Farmer Scott]

Michael,

I get the Welcome screen, and click next...
Choose a destination folder (C:\webfeedencoder), and click next...
Get the Installation required screen, indicating a first time installation will be performed, click next; at this point, I was expecting a directory with installation files, but it's not there...
Get Configure Properties screen, click Configure...
At Configure SageTV screen, select Sage.properties, click Configure...
And viola, the missing encoder.props error screen is next.

I take it from reading through the log it's not extracting and copying the files to the correct place. As a side note, I did just create an empty webfeedencoder folder, and it detected as unrecognised content and renamed it, but never created a new webfeedencoder folder. Is 0.9.3 available by chance that I could attempt to install?

Scott

[michaeldjcox]

I could make 0.9.3 available.

But really this process should be rock solid - I've lost count of the number of times I have tested this.

Another theory - the version of java being picked up by default is wrong.

Open a DOS prompt and type:

java -version

If it doesn't say its a 1.6 java version than thats probably the issue.

the solution then is to find a 1.6 (or possibly 1.5) java and run it on the install jar file e.g.

C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\java.exe -jar webfeedencoder_0_9_4.jar

This may be a bit of a shortcoming with this (new) mode of delivering the code - that I'm at the mercy of possibly having a microsoft JVM running the installer or a really old version of java.

Michael

[Farmer Scott]

Michael,

Just checked...java version is 1.6.0_15.

Scott

[michaeldjcox]

Just when you get to the "Configure" screen, after the task progress panel describing the extract of files, the webfeedencoder directory should be populated.

I'm going to have to roll you a special one with some extra debug I think.

But another suggestion - the jar file is incomplete in some way.

Should be about 4.3 Mb in size.

Try making a copy of the jar, renaming it to ".zip" then open it with winZip or WinRar or just windows compressed folders and check the content.

It should contain webfeedencoder/config/encoder.props.

Even better paste a list of the content back to me

Michael

[Farmer Scott]

Michael,

There is a webfeedencoder/config/encoder.props in the JAR file (when renamed to .zip and opened with Windows Explorer). There's actually four directories (META-INF, resources, uk, webfeedencoder). However, and I believe this may be the problem, there's also a zero-length file with the same name as each of those directories...when I try to extract them with Explorer, it fails. I'm wondering if the installation might work if I download and install WinZip?

Scott

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by Farmer Scott

Michael,

There is a webfeedencoder/config/encoder.props in the JAR file (when renamed to .zip and opened with Windows Explorer). There's actually four directories (META-INF, resources, uk, webfeedencoder). However, and I believe this may be the problem, there's also a zero-length file with the same name as each of those directories...when I try to extract them with Explorer, it fails. I'm wondering if the installation might work if I download and install WinZip?

Scott

Don't worry about the zero length. Thats because its a jar file and not a zip file.

I know you have checked your java version but could you also try running the installer from the DOS prompt something like:

C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\java.exe -jar webfeedencoder_0_9_4.jar

I'm still not entirely convinced the correct version of java is being used.

Also try moving the delivered jar file to a directory without spaces.

The other thing -and this is grasping at straws a bit - does it install to My Documents

I that doesn't work then its time for some extra debug output.

When it all works the log should immediately list the contents when the installer it started:

02-Sep-2009 08:37:39 main uk.co.mdjcox.installer.Installer main INFO: Beginning installation Web Feed Encoder 0.9.4
02-Sep-2009 08:37:39 main uk.co.mdjcox.installer.components.DeliverableComponent <init> INFO: Created Name=META-INF/ chmod=null pack=null os=null
02-Sep-2009 08:37:39 main uk.co.mdjcox.installer.components.DeliverableComponent <init> INFO: Created Name=META-INF/MANIFEST.MF chmod=null pack=null os=null
02-Sep-2009 08:37:39 main uk.co.mdjcox.installer.components.DeliverableComponent <init> INFO: Created Name=webfeedencoder/ chmod=null pack=webfeedencoder os=null
02-Sep-2009 08:37:39 main uk.co.mdjcox.installer.components.DeliverableComponent <init> INFO: Created Name=webfeedencoder/cache/ chmod=null pack=webfeedencoder os=null
02-Sep-2009 08:37:39 main uk.co.mdjcox.installer.components.DeliverableComponent <init> INFO: Created Name=webfeedencoder/channels/ chmod=null pack=webfeedencoder os=null
etc etc...

Michael

[michaeldjcox]

An amendment to the installation instructions...

Always run up the VLC media player manually once after you have installed VLC.

Its raises a dialog requesting information.

If WebFeedEncoder is the first thing to run a newly installed VLC you won't see any dialog and you will see "No signal" in SageTV.

Michael

[michaeldjcox]

You need to

edit commands/tune.tv.windows.commands

and add the bit in red:

...vb=4000,fps=30,....

I did that to the radio command but the radio command still only works with VLC 0.9.8

Hope to update on that soon.

Michael

[n9cqs]

I love this plug-in... or at least the concept, if I could just get it to work.

So far, I installed it, and configured a radio station, and when I try to access it, the following happens:

1. There is no sound. When I tried out the .mp3 file after a test, I am getting a recording there, and the logo of the radio station on the .mpg file, but no sound.
2. The controls (either on the local "server" machine OR the Hauppauge 200 Media extender) are VERY slow. They respond (such as stopping the recording) but they are VERY slow. I am running Windows XP on a Dell dual core 3.4 GHz (each core) with 2 GB memory. When I look at the CPU use, it is not all that bad (less than 25% with a few spikes). So it is not like the machine is being tied up.

I also noticed that it brings up 2 instances of VLC. I've even tried to kill one, then the other in different runs... no difference.

Any ideas of what might be going wrong?

Jeff