Utility: Web Radio and TV Encoder

[RocKKer]

Yes all programs were shifted. Not sure what caused that anomaly!

I have attached a configtool.log using the old configtool.jar with the day shift.


Your latest change is excellant! The air times in SageTV are correct. I checked a few days in advance and all is well. It works well with locals and I tested a few non-locals as well.

Great work! Thanks Michael!

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by RocKKer

Yes all programs were shifted. Not sure what caused that anomaly!

I have attached a configtool.log using the old configtool.jar with the day shift.


Your latest change is excellant! The air times in SageTV are correct. I checked a few days in advance and all is well. It works well with locals and I tested a few non-locals as well.

Great work! Thanks Michael!

Superb.

Thank you for committing your valuable time to help me get this to work.

Very much appreciated.

Michael

[RocKKer]

Absolutely! Your welcome. However, I do have ulterior motives - One day I want to use WFE to get IPTV.

But first things first, next step (when I get some time soon) is to get radio streaming implemented in Linux, so don't go away (Please?).

[tmiranda]

Michael,

Can this be used to watch shows that are otherwise only available on one of the network websites? My wife likes to watch "The Bold and the Beautiful" but it is only available online by going directly to the CBS website. It's not on Hulu, or anywhere else that I can determine.

Thanks,

Tom

[michaeldjcox]

Hi Tom,

I think the things that stand in the way are:

1. If the stream URL is not available but known only to some flash player. I am doing some thinking on this one - but nothing available yet. (this is the problem with much online video)

2. The stream is of some non-standard type (I see loads of strange formats for IPTV which VLC does not know).

3. The stream is protected with DRM - and hence will probably only play with Micro$oft Windows Media Player. (this is the problem with iplayer)

But otherwise, which is the case for much content out there, it should work.

Michael

[matt91]

Michael -

Is there a secret handshake I need to learn to be able to download the zip file from the keepandshare.com site?

I get to the file, but the site states that I need to ask you to give access rights to the file.

thanks
matt

[michaeldjcox]

Silly me.

Should be OK now.

Michael

[jaminben]

Hi Michael,

Can you clear your PM box out as I can't reply to your PM.

Your too popular and its full up.......

Cheers

Ben

[michaeldjcox]

More like I'm too lazy and never tidy up.

Done

[btrumsey]

Michael,
Thanks for creating such a great plug-in. I have used it in the past on a Vista based server with no problems, but have recently moved to a WHS server and am not able to get WFE working properly.

Everything appears to be working as expected... the mp3 file gets created and contains audio. The mpg file is created and grows steadily; however, there is no audio in the mpg file, but I do see the currently playing title and the channel logo. I see this only if I view the mpg file directly. Trying to stream to a client or extender, I just get a black screen with no audio.

I've performed a test in the configtool on this channel and attached the logs; maybe that will offer some clues.

My configuration:
WHS server - viewing on SageTV client and HD200
SageTV 6.6.2
VLC 0.9.8a
WFE 0.9.4b

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
-Bret

[michaeldjcox]

Hi,

Oh dear. I was about to buy a WHS box to stick all this on.

I cannot see much in the logs that is wrong.

A couple of questions:

1. The test mpg file that gets created:

C:\Program Files\SageTV\webfeedencoder\tmp\KJZZ_test.mpg

can you run up the VLC media player GUI and open that file. Does it play with video and audio then?- VLC is very good at playing things it produces. Other things often cannot play them apart from SageTV which is usually good.

2. When you had it running on Vista was that with an earlier version of WFE?

3. Can you see if you get success if you edit the commands/tune.radio.windows.commands file and remove the ",fps=30" part - that was added recently.

4. Finally you may want to turn on debug logging in SageTV - it may offer a clue as to why the file isn't playing.

Michael

[btrumsey]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

1. The test mpg file that gets created:

C:\Program Files\SageTV\webfeedencoder\tmp\KJZZ_test.mpg

can you run up the VLC media player GUI and open that file. Does it play with video and audio then?- VLC is very good at playing things it produces. Other things often cannot play them apart from SageTV which is usually good.

When played in VLC I get the video but no audio.

2. When you had it running on Vista was that with an earlier version of WFE?

It was some time ago, so I'm sure that it was a different version. I can't remember what version it was though.

3. Can you see if you get success if you edit the commands/tune.radio.windows.commands file and remove the ",fps=30" part - that was added recently.

4. Finally you may want to turn on debug logging in SageTV - it may offer a clue as to why the file isn't playing.

I'll give these a try today and let you know what I find.

Thanks,
-Bret

[matt91]

Hi Michael -

I just installed the 0.9.4b version of your program. Installed fine, setup seemed to go OK. I can, occasionally, listed to radio over my extenders, so I know that it does work.

However, I'm frequently getting 'hangs' when I try to watch a WFE channel in sage. I have to restart the extender to regain control.

It seems that the MP3 file in the temp directory is getting built every time. So I think that it's stable to at least that step. However, it seems that the audio isn't getting added to the MPG file every time. I think the hangs in Sage are when there is a MPG file built with video but no audio.

From the Sage log:

Sun 11/15 16:34:36.494 [VideoFrame-00216b9b0aae@1750213] File Format Parsed-2 T:\tv\NOAAWeatherRadio-1810475-0.mpg=MPEG2-TS 0:00:00 4128 kbps [#0 Video[MPEG2-Video 30.0 fps 720x576 1:1 progressive]#1 Audio[MP2 22050 Hz 1 channels 128 kbps MAIN idx=1 id=0045]]
Sun 11/15 16:39:34.253 [VideoFrame-00216b9b0aae@1750213] File Format Parsed-2 T:\tv\JackFm-1810460-0.mpg=MPEG2-TS 0:00:00 4000 kbps [#0 Video[MPEG2-Video 30.0 fps 720x576 1:1 progressive]]

The NOAA weather radio channel played fine in Sage, but Sage hung when I tried to watch the JackFM channel.

I've attached the Sage log from the period where I tried to watch this channel, in additional to the WFE encoder log for the same time.

I also added the JackFM config file, in case someone wants to try it on there machine and see if this channel works.

Again, the MP3 for this built fine, so I'm not sure what would cause it to fail to be added to the MPG file. I tried to watch the file via VLC, and I get the video but no audio.

thanks
Matt


Edit: Seems it may be related to the presence of an existing %tmp%\%callsign%.mp3 file. If I delete that file before selecting the channel, it seems to work fine. I haven't repeated it under each condition enough to say it was the cause, but it appears that it may be.

Now...if it is the cause, how do I ensure that the mp3 file is deleted after each use?

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by matt91

Edit: Seems it may be related to the presence of an existing %tmp%\%callsign%.mp3 file. If I delete that file before selecting the channel, it seems to work fine. I haven't repeated it under each condition enough to say it was the cause, but it appears that it may be.

Now...if it is the cause, how do I ensure that the mp3 file is deleted after each use?

Use Notepad to open the detune.tv.windows.commands file in the commands directory and change this:

Delete %tmp%\%callsign%.mp3

to this:

del "%tmp%\%callsign%.mp3"

[matt91]

Looks promising! Will give it a go.

Thanks jason.

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by robogeek

Use Notepad to open the detune.tv.windows.commands file in the commands directory and change this:

Delete %tmp%\%callsign%.mp3

to this:

del "%tmp%\%callsign%.mp3"

If you're on windows and have installed in a directory with spaces the %tmp% directory has a space in.

I can confirm that this is a likely issue as my code processes the command by splitting a command using space as a delimiter so without quotes it would try and delete "D:\Program" instead of "D:\Program Files\webfeedencoder\tmp\blah.mp3".

Things also to consider are that VLC has an irritating habit of not dying when its told to. So it could keep ports/files open preventing further use. I think I had more or less nailed that one except for it crashing when told to die which is less of an issue as it does free resources then.

After a successful attempt have a look on your server task manager and check that there are no more vlc.exe processes running.

matt91 - thanks for reporting the problem back
robogeek - good spot

I will schedule a new patch release for the quotes issue.

Let me know if that does not resolve the issue and I will investigate further.

Michael

[michaeldjcox]

Little notes for user of Vista with UAC turned on.

Its nightmare.

Vista seems to keep different version of files for different users.

So I find that I install webfeedencoder in an elevated command prompt but when I start up SageTV client it cannot see Sage.properties changes or the wfesageplugin.jar. But they are there if you do a directory listing as the correct user.

I also managed to get in a situation where administrator ran one version of WFE but my normal account ran another version - both on the same location.

I'm not sure what the right formula is to get WFE and SageTV working correctly with UAC.

My best advice at the moment is to turn UAC off - but I know thats a big ask. Will try and get my head around it in later versions of WFE.

Michael

[matt91]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

If you're on windows and have installed in a directory with spaces the %tmp% directory has a space in.

Let me know if that does not resolve the issue and I will investigate further.

Michael

I modified my detune.radio.windows.commands to state: Del "%tmp%\%callsign%.mp3"

but the MP3 file still persists after I stop viewing the channel (and even close out the extender session). VLC seems to be stopping correctly.

Any other thoughts?

I can run an hourly batch file or something for the time being to clean these out. Obviously not perfect, but it should allow the family to use the radio channels without too many problems.

otherwise great plugin. thanks.

Matt

[michaeldjcox]

Its should be "Delete" not "Del"

Michael

[btrumsey]

After reading these last few posts about problems with paths that contain spaces, I uninstalled and re-installed WFE, this time using C:\webfeedencoder as the install dir. Now it appears to be working as expected. I tried modifying detune.radio.windows.command file, which fixed the cleanup of the .mp3 file, but was still getting mpg files with no audio. There must be some other command in the chain that does not like the spaces in my install path.

HD200 playback is good; I'm seeing choppy playback on my client... I know there are lots of posts about that here already so I'll read those and try to resolve that.

One thing I noticed that you might want to clean up in a future version: when I specified a UNC path for my channel logos (\\\\WHS\\SageTV\\ChannelLogos), this ends up being added as \WHS\SageTV\ChannelLogos (missing a leading slash) in the encoder.props file. I had to manually update the encoder.props file for it to pick up my logos correctly.

Thanks again for your great support and great SageTV utility!