[wazo]

Allright, sorry I guess I explained that wrong. (Thanks for the screen cap). The number your looking for is 1D7E, the result below the first one.

[JiJi]

I LOVE YOU, wazo!

[wazo]

Glad I could help.

[Peabody]

I've been using a variant of Wazo's Method to record Cam4.com, and want to offer information on that.

I think I use Orbit the same way Wazo does. I start the cam, then start Orbit, turn on Browser Monitoring and Grab++ under Tools, then refresh the cam. When the .flv file comes up in Grab++, check that box and hit Download. Then back on the main Orbit window, hit Pause, select Stop the Recording in the box that comes up, then hit Start again. When you are finished recording, hit Pause in Orbit, shut down Grab++, stop Browser Monitoring, delete the FLV file *in Orbit only* but Do Not delete the real file.

Bring up the FLV file in your favorite hex editor, and change the fifth byte of the file from 01 to 05 if this recording contains audio, and save the resulting file as an FLV. (Actually, the final files play the audio anyway without doing this, but it does comply with the spec, so I do it.) Might be nice to have a script or little program that changes the fifth byte of a file to 05, so hex-phobic folks wouldn't have to deal with that.

Then run the whole file through flvtool++, which is a variant of flvtool. The ++ version inserts metadata, makes the file playable, and if you are using it to cut a clip out, it will resequence that clip, thus eliminating the timestamp problems and the Duration changes.

http://rcdn.org:8080/index.php/Flvtool++

flvtool++ <input file> <output file> (<start time> <end time>)

The resulting files play in the latest Real Player, and in Any FLV Player, both video and audio, and are seekable. But audio doesn't work in VLC Player, at least not in the version I have. I don't know about other players.

Generally, the use of flvtool++ seems to work a lot better. I should say, however, that if Cam4 is really bogged down, so that you get long periods of freezing, you may not get a useable recording. There may be a limit on how screwed up the timestamps can get and still recover from it.

Thanks very much to Wazo for figuring all this out, and to the others who contributed to the thread. Hope this new info is useful.

[Peabody]

When I upgraded from Orbit v2.7.5 to 2.7.7, I lost the ability to capture flv files. Grab++ no longer detects them. Maybe I had something set wrong, but others in their forum seemed to have the same problem. So I went back to 2.7.5.

[JiJi]

Originally Posted by Peabody

When I upgraded from Orbit v2.7.5 to 2.7.7, I lost the ability to capture flv files. Grab++ no longer detects them. Maybe I had something set wrong, but others in their forum seemed to have the same problem. So I went back to 2.7.5.

Ugh. I thought it was only me. This happened to me as well.

BTW. Check your PM's, Peabody.

[Xenicide]

Sorry to bring this up again put i got some questions.

The link to flvtool++ doesnt work, but i found one in another place.
But all i got was some files, and you had to have 2 other programs.
One of thoose in turn required another thing called phyton.
Is it suppose to work that way?

In the hex editor i change the fifth byte (04) to 05 on all files, sound or not. Some plays and some dont.

The program i use is Real Player since its the only one i can seek.
But during some (mostly the long ones) it often after a while jump forward. Is that something that flvtool++ fixes?

Something that might matter is that i only let the stream start downloading (after restarting it), and then close the window.
Does it mather if the window is open once you get the stream in grab?
And if i restart the capture it can take a while before downloading, sometimes it wont even start even if the stream is there,
any reason for this?

Btw i got v2.7.6 and it woks.
(But maybe not as it should.)


Lots of questions but i hope i get some answers on some of them.
Thanks.

[Peabody]

Originally Posted by Xenicide

Sorry to bring this up again put i got some questions.

The link to flvtool++ doesnt work, but i found one in another place.
But all i got was some files, and you had to have 2 other programs.
One of thoose in turn required another thing called phyton.
Is it suppose to work that way?

In the hex editor i change the fifth byte (04) to 05 on all files, sound or not. Some plays and some dont.

The program i use is Real Player since its the only one i can seek.
But during some (mostly the long ones) it often after a while jump forward. Is that something that flvtool++ fixes?

Something that might matter is that i only let the stream start downloading (after restarting it), and then close the window.
Does it mather if the window is open once you get the stream in grab?
And if i restart the capture it can take a while before downloading, sometimes it wont even start even if the stream is there,
any reason for this?

Btw i got v2.7.6 and it woks.
(But maybe not as it should.)


Lots of questions but i hope i get some answers on some of them.
Thanks.

You may have ended up with the source code files. The executable is just 68k, and doesn't require other files. This link seems to work now:

http://rcdn.org:8080/images/3/34/Flvtool%2B%2B.zip

In my experience, the jumping forward seems to be a result of the freezing and dropouts you get in the stream from cam4. It is NOT fixed by flvtool++. When the cam4 servers are overloaded, and don't give you a continuous stream, the timestamps in the recorded flv file no longer make any sense to the player. Particularly if video and audio dropouts are independent, as they often are.

What we need is something that will fill in the missing packets with something that has continuous timestamps.

I haven't found a solution to this problem, and as as result I've reverted to using Cam Studio, a free screen capture program. Which, unfortunately, comes with its own sync problems.

I don't know about closing the window. I never tried that.

I also sometimes had the problem with the capture not starting even though the window is up and running. If you are right about being able to close the window, then it looks like Orbit is making a separate duplicate connection to the server to do the capture. And in that case, for some reason it just can't get in again. So, what you are watching is not really what's being captured.

Flash Media Server is a hub , Flash based applications connect to the hub using Real Time Messaging Protocol RTMP. The server can send and receive data to and from the connected users. Connected clients can make [Remote procedure call s RP on the server-side and the server can call methods on specific clients. A SharedObject can be used to synchronize complicated data structures and call remote methods on multiple clients in one go by having clients subscribe to a shared object. Standard ActionScript objects are transported across the NetConnection using the Action Message Format AMF which is handled transparently by the server and flash client.The server also allows users to receive and publish net streams. When viewing a net stream the user can either create their own to view a remotely stored Flash Video FLV or the server can instantiate a net stream and play a video on it, the latter method means that every user will be at the same point in the video when they subscribe to it as they are all viewing the same stream.
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Gwenstefni

Edited by Mod: No Ads in your posts please. Thank you.

[Stream Recorder]

The tricks mentioned here are really nice and might help to solve problems with other web-sites. However newer versions of RTMP Flash stream recorders have better support of cam4.com. For example, Replay Media Catcher can perfectly record RTMP web-cams from cam4:
Tutorial: How to record adult/sex/porn webcam videos from cam4 with Replay Media Catcher