Stream capture from NBCOlympics

Stream capture from NBCOlympics

 

Back in 2012, I got a number of extremely high quality videos of the London 2012 Olympics from the NBCOlympics site using ffmpeg to input the stream from a URL I got from Firefox's Web Console using the .m3u8 filter. In trying to do something similar this year for the Winter Olympics, I'm able to play the videos in Firefox, but I've had no luck coming up with a URL to try to grab.

Instead, the best I'd probably be able to do would be to get the 5-second long snippets that tick by and merge them together.

Is anybody successfully doing this or can help me find the URL that addresses the whole video stream?

Thanks!

Re: Stream capture from NBCOlympics

 

NBC used YouTube to stream two years ago. They're using AdobeHDS now. You need to acquire every .fdf file for a stream then stitch them together using the php script.

I have yet to actually make this work; my videos end up only consisting of the keyframes.

Re: Stream capture from NBCOlympics

 

Oh yes, I remember there being problems with Adobe HDS for people trying to capture BBC streams of the 2012 Olympics. Adobe HDS segments are variable bit rate which makes audio re-alignment tricky. What I think I recall regarding the Adobe HDS streams from BBC is that HDS was just a default stream. If I remember correctly, any problem loading the HDS links resulted in a redirect to rtmpe streams, which presented fewer problems. I don't know if that's the way NBC is doing it, though, because I haven't had it fail to load the HDS links.

Any thoughts on the possibility of finding rtmpe streams?

Re: Stream capture from NBCOlympics

 

any luck on this?

I've been trying to and I have the same issue...

i.e., run the adobeHDS script against the f4m manifest file and it just assembles a flash video file (i.e,. flv) that only has the keyframes seemingly

perhaps there's some extra parameter to pass/tweak in order for it to request all of the frames instead of just keyframes?

Re: Stream capture from NBCOlympics

 

Your best bet will be a Screen Capture tool such as Replay Video Capture

Re: Stream capture from NBCOlympics

 

I have a couple screen capturing programs that I've tried this with and the resulting file is always jerky and the filesizes are very large. Joining the actual files used for the stream saves significant disk space, and also addresses the framerate match issue.

Re: Stream capture from NBCOlympics

 

Using the Firefox add-on DownloadThemAll, I've been able to grab a long sequence of Seg1-FragXXX files, but I'm not certain how to join them with AdobeHDS.

In case it helps, the files I have are named as follows:

007_Fragments(video,format=f4m-f4f)Seg1-Frag762
...
007_Fragments(video,format=f4m-f4f)Seg1-Frag1000

Of course, I can rename them to anything I want to make joining simpler, so I just need to know what tool and syntax to use to join them.

Can someone point me in the right direction for this? Thanks!

Re: Stream capture from NBCOlympics

 

How do you get downthemall to capture the segment files? I have been trying to figure out how to capture events from nbcolympics.com all week. Stumbled upon using downthemall, but cant even figure out how to get the seg*_frag* files to download with it.

Re: Stream capture from NBCOlympics

 

There are probably a number of ways to do it, but I used the Copy URL option on several of the files linked via VideoDownloadHelper. I copied these URLs to a text window and found the links for the quality I was looking for and some of the file fragment numbers. Next, I opened the DownloadThemAll Manager window (Firefox->Tools->DownThemAll! Tools->Manager) and clicked the (+) button. The resulting Download: text window was populated with the text I had happened to put in my clipboard (which ended in "Seg1-Frag762") and I just changed the 762 to [762:2000], the range I wanted to capture. I clicked on Start! and then "Download Batch" and voila!, the files proceded to be saved.

I'm not sure it's going to do any good, though, because I can't seem to join them together to play.

Re: Stream capture from NBCOlympics

 

Thank you for replying. I did get AdobeHDS.php to actually download all the frames, stitches them together. Problem now is, it gives the full length of what I was trying to capture. But there is first no Audio, second the timing of all the keyframes/fragments is all fast. It is like you fast forward the entire Hockey game in less than 2 mins. Any ideas?

The line of code i used was:

I am using a Macintosh, running this script in the Terminal. You could give it a try whether you are using a Mac or Windows.

Just paste your manifest url within the quotes and run it as soon as you can before it expires. You could also omit the --delete option if you want to keep the fragments saved.

I am at a loss on how to cature the audio and have the timing between frames set properly. If you or anyone has any ideas, please let me know.