What to use to watch SBS downloads?

[Joe Green]

As I posted on the blog page, this isn't really an issue with the downloader itself, but since I'm getting no response there I thought I might hope for attention from the horse's mouth, as it were, by posting here. Please forgive the slight system abuse. What can you recommend for watching SBS downloads? VLC, Windows Media Player and KMPlayer all fail for me (but are all ok with ABC downloads). Thanks.

[delx]

Hi,

I'm able to play these videos with mplayer and xbmc on Linux. Perhaps some of them are in different formats?

Could you please provide the name and category of the video you cannot play so I can test it? Copy/pasting the entire grabber.py output would also be helpful.

[Joe Green]

I hadn't tried downloading for some time, but trying again I'm reminded of the nature of the problem:

Downloading: China spots debris in Malaysia Airlines search.mp4 ................. Traceback (most recent call last): File "D:\Documents and Settings\Joe\My Documents\delx-webdl-833418ded83b\grabber.py", line 56, in <module> main() File "D:\Documents and Settings\Joe\My Documents\delx-webdl-833418ded83b\grabber.py", line 49, in main if not n.download(): File "D:\Documents and Settings\Joe\My Documents\delx-webdl-833418ded83b\sbs.py", line 55, in download return download_urllib(filename, video_url, referrer=SWF_URL) File "D:\Documents and Settings\Joe\My Documents\delx-webdl-833418ded83b\common.py", line 238, in download_urllib convert_filename(filename) File "D:\Documents and Settings\Joe\My Documents\delx-webdl-833418ded83b\common.py", line 203, in convert_filename convert_flv_mp4(filename) File "D:\Documents and Settings\Joe\My Documents\delx-webdl-833418ded83b\common.py", line 176, in convert_flv_mp4 os.rename(orig_filename, flv_filename) WindowsError: [Error 32] The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process

As I recall now, this happens consistently with SBS downloads, but never with ABC. So I doubt that it's my virus checker (an obvious candidate) because it's all in the same directory (well I assume so).

It has created a 17 MB .mp4 file, though. Perhaps I can just do the convert/rename manually? I could live with that.

[Joe Green]

Although trying that out failed. I renamed the downloaded .mp4 to .flv (since its first 4 bytes were indeed FLV\x01) and tried running ffmpeg manually, but:

D:...\delx-webdl-833418ded83b> ffmpeg -i China.flv -acodec copy -vcodec copy China.mp4 ffmpeg version N-54499-g63d7684 Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the FFmpeg developers built on Jul 6 2013 10:32:51 with gcc 4.7.3 (GCC) configuration: --disable-static --enable-shared --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --disable-w32threads --enable-avisynth --enable-bzlib --enable-fontconfig --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enable-iconv --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --e nable-libcaca --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgsm --enable-libilbc --enable-libmodplug --enable-libmp3lame --enable-lib opencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinge r --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libvo-amrwben c --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-libxavs --enable-libxvid --enable-zlib libavutil 52. 38.100 / 52. 38.100 libavcodec 55. 18.102 / 55. 18.102 libavformat 55. 11.101 / 55. 11.101 libavdevice 55. 2.100 / 55. 2.100 libavfilter 3. 78.102 / 3. 78.102 libswscale 2. 3.100 / 2. 3.100 libswresample 0. 17.102 / 0. 17.102 libpostproc 52. 3.100 / 52. 3.100 [flv @ 003e5020] Stream discovered after head already parsed [flv @ 003e5020] Could not find codec parameters for stream 0 (Video: none): unspecified size Consider increasing the value for the 'analyzeduration' and 'probesize' options [flv @ 003e5020] Could not find codec parameters for stream 1 (Audio: none, 0 channels): unspecified sample format Consider increasing the value for the 'analyzeduration' and 'probesize' options Input #0, flv, from 'China.flv': Duration: N/A, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A Stream #0:0: Video: none, 1k tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc Stream #0:1: Audio: none, 0 channels Stream #0:2: Data: none Output #0, mp4, to 'China.mp4': Output file #0 does not contain any stream

[delx]

I guess this is because Windows is picky about file handles. I've pushed a change to make sure the file is closed before trying to convert it with ffmpeg. This will hopefully fix your issue :)

[Joe Green]

Alas, still fails on the convert. (The "Running..." diagnostic is my addition, in case I wanted to run ffmpeg separately).

Downloading: German born bionic roo.mp4 ................ Converting German born bionic roo.flv to mp4 Running ['ffmpeg', '-i', 'German born bionic roo.flv', '-acodec', 'copy', '-vcodec', 'copy', 'German born bionic roo.mp4 '] ffmpeg version N-54499-g63d7684 Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the FFmpeg developers built on Jul 6 2013 10:32:51 with gcc 4.7.3 (GCC) configuration: --disable-static --enable-shared --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --disable-w32threads --enable-avisynth --enable-bzlib --enable-fontconfig --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutls --enable-iconv --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --e nable-libcaca --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgsm --enable-libilbc --enable-libmodplug --enable-libmp3lame --enable-lib opencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinge r --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libvo-amrwben c --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-libxavs --enable-libxvid --enable-zlib libavutil 52. 38.100 / 52. 38.100 libavcodec 55. 18.102 / 55. 18.102 libavformat 55. 11.101 / 55. 11.101 libavdevice 55. 2.100 / 55. 2.100 libavfilter 3. 78.102 / 3. 78.102 libswscale 2. 3.100 / 2. 3.100 libswresample 0. 17.102 / 0. 17.102 libpostproc 52. 3.100 / 52. 3.100 [flv @ 003e8c80] Stream discovered after head already parsed [flv @ 003e8c80] Could not find codec parameters for stream 0 (Video: none): unspecified size Consider increasing the value for the 'analyzeduration' and 'probesize' options [flv @ 003e8c80] Could not find codec parameters for stream 1 (Audio: none, 0 channels): unspecified sample format Consider increasing the value for the 'analyzeduration' and 'probesize' options Input #0, flv, from 'German born bionic roo.flv': Duration: N/A, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A Stream #0:0: Video: none, 1k tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc Stream #0:1: Audio: none, 0 channels Stream #0:2: Data: none Output #0, mp4, to 'German born bionic roo.mp4': Output file #0 does not contain any stream ffmpeg exited with error code: 1

[Joe Green]

BTW I'm picking up RTMPDump v2.4 (110812). Not sure if that's relevant but I believe that's the most recent version.

[delx]

Yeah, v2.4 is what I'm running as well. Do any of the iView or other SBS videos work for you? Is it all SBS that fails or just some of them?

[Joe Green]

iView ones work just fine. I can't comment on the others as on the whole I've never tried (although you'll see I recently tried 7 and failed for some more interesting 7-specific reason).

When I try running VLC on a downloaded (but unconverted) SBS file I can get stream info out but interpreting it usefully is beyond my skills. If you want to take a look though...

Also FWIW I don't have access to a Linux box for comparison. :-(

[Joe Green]

Oh I see you said "other SBS videos" and I mis-read this as "other channels' videos". Well I think all SBS ones fail whereas all iView ones are ok.

[delx]

I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04 to Ubuntu 14.04. The versions of avconv and rtmpdump that come with Ubuntu 14.04 seem to be buggy. I found that downloading and compiling the latest versions fixed issues I was having.

rtmpdump in particular is annoying since it always reports version 2.4. I'm using git version a1900c3e152085406ecb87c1962c55ec9c6e4016 with success.

avconv 10.2 seems to work quite well.