NBC WaterPolo Stream

deadmund · #1 08-19-2012, 02:13 PM

Hi, I'm trying to record the video from this stream: http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/wat...ld-finals.html

The player is some embedded flash based video player, it looks like a youtube player but I believe that it is NOT a youtube video. Just a player that looks identical.

Anyway, I would love to use rtmpdump to grab the video but I can't figure out the rtmp URL. I'm starting to think it is not actually an rtmp stream. I started capturing packets using wireshark, started the video, I can see packets definitely related to the video but the rtmpt filter reveals 0 packets and I can't find any URL. I've also tried looking at the html source of the page and I couldn't find the stream URL there either. What can I do to find this URL and record this steam?

Thanks!

deadmund · #2 08-19-2012, 05:45 PM

I have figured out a solution. I used video download helper (the firefox add-on) to get the URL. Turns out the video was in hundreds of 5 second segments. I then looked at 2 or 3 of the URLs to determine the pattern (which was quite simple) and wrote a python script that called VLC to download each segment. Because they're mpeg video files I could cat them all together with no video processing. This was all on linux. Post here if you have questions about how I did this so you can do it too!

quackeroats · #3 08-19-2012, 11:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadmund

I have figured out a solution. I used video download helper (the firefox add-on) to get the URL. Turns out the video was in hundreds of 5 second segments. I then looked at 2 or 3 of the URLs to determine the pattern (which was quite simple) and wrote a python script that called VLC to download each segment. Because they're mpeg video files I could cat them all together with no video processing. This was all on linux. Post here if you have questions about how I did this so you can do it too!

AWESOME !
i am assuming its not portable to windows. the other thread on NBC olympics, seems to be having trouble as well. i so far have never been able to successfully download the LONG 3Hr+ preliminaries video of most of the sports.

wer783 · #4 08-20-2012, 01:46 AM

I would like to see your python script that you used to capture this stream. I haven't used python so it would help me. Could you post it or an example of how you do it?

There is another long thread on capturing the Olympics which uses ffmpeg. This works pretty well but the problem is that you have to capture the whole stream from the beginning and the connection to their server will usually disconnect before the whole thing can be captured. I like your method because it looks like you'd be able to start at any point in the stream.

I was able to see the pattern and was able to download some 5-second segments. Right now, if I had to do it, I would try to use a batch file and just save all the files. It sounds like your way is better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadmund

I have figured out a solution. I used video download helper (the firefox add-on) to get the URL. Turns out the video was in hundreds of 5 second segments. I then looked at 2 or 3 of the URLs to determine the pattern (which was quite simple) and wrote a python script that called VLC to download each segment. Because they're mpeg video files I could cat them all together with no video processing. This was all on linux. Post here if you have questions about how I did this so you can do it too!

wer783 · #5 08-22-2012, 03:08 AM

I would really like to see an example of how VLC is used to download one of these 5-second packets using a script.

Deadmund?

Anyone else know how to do this?

nwtim · #6 08-22-2012, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadmund

I have figured out a solution. I used video download helper (the firefox add-on) to get the URL. Turns out the video was in hundreds of 5 second segments. I then looked at 2 or 3 of the URLs to determine the pattern (which was quite simple) and wrote a python script that called VLC to download each segment. Because they're mpeg video files I could cat them all together with no video processing. This was all on linux. Post here if you have questions about how I did this so you can do it too!

Please come back and explain in a little more detail how you did this. I can get all the segments in a number of ways, but I haven't found any good way to cat them. How did you do it?

Can VLC cat the files from a playlist? (I gathered the some 3000 files it took to make up a 4 hour video using apowersoft's Streaming Video Recorder, but it can't join them yet - they're working on it)

I can get the URL pattern figured out very easily, but I don't have a good way to sequence thousands of them. I can open a URL in VLC, but I haven't successfully done it from the command line (I tried a batch file to deal with the very long URL).