Record only played portions of video. wmrecorder proxy mode

[jvalt]

Originally intended for the WM Recorder support people, but I thought this forum would have a more diverse audience that may recommend another piece of software, if appropriate.

Note: I own all the pc's in question, so I can alter settings at will. But I want the process to be invisible to the user...

Trying to monitor video usage on a remote PC. I want to capture only the bits of videos that are actually watched, so I am using PRO mode in WM Recorder on the capturing PC.

On the remote pc on the LAN, I have configured wmp to use a proxy: ip.add.re.ss:7771, etc., as appropriate for each protocol (rstp and http in this case).

When that PC accesses a video file, wm recorder will capture it just fine... at first. Then the video will freeze up. Also once you hit the stop button or try to close the browser window containing the video, the entire browser will freeze temporarily. It looks like the embedded wmp is waiting for a response from wm recorder.

Subsequently, further attempts to play videos result in either frozen videos, buffering that only gets up to a percentage and then freezes, etc. Basically it kills the pc's ability to view streaming media.

Is there a way to speed this up? Or is there something wrong with the way I am approaching this? I have searched extensively for ways to capture / sniff streaming media packets and reassemble them into files. Unfortunately, even PIAFCTM won't handle streams - only downloaded videos.


Thanks in advance!

I don't like I.E. It freezes frequently whether due to the embedded player or not. I can try to find a stable version instead of using the latest one, but I prefer to use Firefox instead.

Originally Posted by user guide

ADA and PRO are real time recording modes. When operating in one of these modes the recorder can automatically capture and record while playing video or audio from your browser or media player (real time). ADA provides the best capture capabilities ...

May be it is better to use the ADA mode and watch or/and edit videos after recording them.

Also make sure that your remote PC doesn't use any application that need internet traffic (of course I'm not talking about clock update or any other software with tiny traffic usage).

[jvalt]

Thanks for the reply, and thanks fo the entire message board!

ADA mode DOES seem to work, except for the following:

- ADA mode only seems to capture the URL, then uses that to access and download the entire stream. I want to be able to monitor what is actually WATCHED. With ADA mode (as best I can tell) there would be no way to distinguish between someone simply clicking a link and someone actually watching a video (or portion thereof)

- Because ADA mode starts downloading the entire stream, it immediately consumes 99% of the internet bandwidth, also affecting video viewing for the user.

Man, I've looked into the Wireshark (ethereal) mailing list. I have tried setting up an actual proxy server, which did not seem to help. There has got to be SOMETHING that can do this!

If I have to setup the capturing pc as a media proxy server, by golly I will do it! But I just cannot seem to find out how.

If you know start and end times of an on-demand stream, you can use the following FAQ:
How to record Audio and Video streams in parts . But for monitoring users it seems like only the PRO mode can be used.

As for the media proxy server, I haven't used it. If you find out how to use it, please share this stuff.

[jvalt]

Okay, having windows media player set to only attempt to use http protocol results in captured files that can often be named file.wmv and simply played. These are files captured and rebuilt with NetworkActiv's PIAFCTM.

Now, I have some rebuilt files that are from RSTP streams. When opened with a text editor (eg Wordpad) it has a header that says something like:

OK
BEGIN RSTP stream

and then lots and lots of garbage, which must be the video itself.

Maybe I'm being too simplistic in my thinking, but shouldn't there be a program that can send this data right to a media player window? You know, replay the file, so to speak, as if that media player had requested it from a web site?

Streaming players negotiate with streaming servers before playing. I haven't seen any software that can send "garbage" to a player.

[jvalt]

I understand, and I realize it kinda sounds like a stupid question. but the "payload" should be able to be "played" with something. the files have plaintext headers that describe the content, just like http headers do.

I don't know, but sure seems like all the info is there, waiting to be decoded.

It is not that simple to decode such information. Variable bitrates could be used so combining packets is not an easy task. The developers of stream recording software definitely know how to deal with this "gabage", but I'm not sure that anyone will be willing to do that.