help recording from pegcentral.com

rezo · #1 07-21-2011, 10:46 PM

I could really use some help with streams kept on pegcentral.com. Their media server looks like it is Wowza Media Server and RTMPT protocol over port 80

The material is mostly content from local public access stations such as city government, school districts, etc Not very interesting stuff but there are some clips I really need to grab for a school project.

for example, here is the main launch page to a hosted video.

_http://swoccstudios.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=1cb8dffbf0da798cc9a2eed64a7daec8

After launching it in my browser I am able to gather the following info about this stream from capture file with Wireshark.

app
'peg_c_stream/?doConnect=12345&doPublish=54321'

flashver
'WIN 10,3,181,26'

swfUrl
'http://swoccstudios.pegcentral.com/flash/media_player_102908.swf?server=swoccstudios.pegcen tral.com&account=swoccstudios&pointer=1cb8dffbf0da 798cc9a2eed64a7daec8'

tcUrl
'rtmpt://beta-rtmp.pegcentral.com:80/peg_c_stream/?doConnect=12345&doPublish=54321'

pageUrl
'http://swoccstudios.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=1cb8dffbf0da798cc9a2eed64a7daec8'

play
'mp4:swoccstudios/SE_OlympicEvent_NOVI.mp4'

I've tried various commands but always end up quitting with
"ERROR: RTMP_ReadPacket, failed to read RTMP packet header"
if I use rtmpdump -r "rtmp://beta-rtmp.pegcentral..."

or

"ERROR: RTMP_Connect1, handshake failed."
if I use rtmpdump -r "rtmpt://beta-rtmp.pegcentral..."

It doesn't matter if I specify the port and which arguements I pass beyond that. May somebody please clue me in as to how I can grab their content with rtmpdump? Thanks in advance

KSV · #2 07-22-2011, 12:24 AM

They are using SecureToken method.

Code:

rtmpdump.exe -r "rtmp://beta-rtmp.pegcentral.com/peg_c_stream" -a "peg_c_stream/?doConnect=12345&doPublish=54321" -p "http://swoccstudios.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=1cb8dffbf0da798cc9a2eed64a7daec8" -y "mp4:swoccstudios/SE_OlympicEvent_NOVI.mp4" -T "mytestpassword" --live -o Test.flv

Code:

RTMPDump v2.4 GIT-2011-07-11 (Compiled by KSV)
(c) 2010 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu, The Flvstreamer Team; license: GPL
Connecting ...
INFO: Connected...
Starting Live Stream
INFO: Metadata:
INFO: trackinfo:
INFO:   timescale             30000.00
INFO:   length                2696694.00
INFO:   language              eng
INFO: sampledescription:
INFO:   sampletype            avc1
INFO:   timescale             48000.00
INFO:   length                4298752.00
INFO:   language              eng
INFO: sampledescription:
INFO:   sampletype            mp4a
INFO:   audiochannels         2.00
INFO:   audiosamplerate       48000.00
INFO:   videoframerate        29.97
INFO:   aacaot                2.00
INFO:   avclevel              30.00
INFO:   avcprofile            100.00
INFO:   audiocodecid          mp4a
INFO:   videocodecid          avc1
INFO:   width                 480.00
INFO:   height                360.00
INFO:   frameWidth            480.00
INFO:   frameHeight           360.00
INFO:   displayWidth          480.00
INFO:   displayHeight         360.00
INFO:   moovposition          5054658.00
INFO:   duration              89.89
4711.666 kB / 89.54 sec (99.6%)
Download may be incomplete (downloaded about 99.60%), try resuming

you can safely ignore the 'download incomplete' message. videos are little broken on server side at end position.

rezo · #3 07-22-2011, 02:15 AM

as usual, excellent help KSV

Appreciate your time and effort

unseen wombat · #4 09-27-2011, 08:51 AM

Background: My statistics teacher is in the hospital (possibly) close to death, and I want to download the streams of his lessons in the event he passes and the college decides to take them down because he's really a great teacher. The substitute they gave us recently is horrible.

I tried to do it on my own, but these rtmp things have a HUGE learning curve and I'm not even sure I'm using the right software for these particular videos. I don't want to learn all the nuances of rtmpdump or whatever just to find out I really needed something else. I have no aspirations of being an A/V downloading media expert. I just want to download these few videos for use in the class, and I need to do it quickly before they're gone.

Could someone please show me exactly and succinctly how to download from this website? I've tried all the easy firefox extension downloaders and none work.

The first video from the class is here: _http://tricsmarttv.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=23eabb6b7326bdbf3c46f807685128fe

Thank you. I appreciate any help you can give me.

TubeDigger · #5 09-27-2011, 10:22 AM

If you want only this video from that site - just start RTMPdump with the following command line: rtmpdump -r "rtmp://theta-rtmp.pegcentral.com/peg_c_stream/?doConnect=12345&doPublish=54321" -a "peg_c_stream/?doConnect=12345&doPublish=54321" -T "mytestpassword" -y "mp4:tricsmarttv/CCC-2010-04-14-160047.mp4" -o "CCC-2010-04-14-160047.flv"

Code:

c:\>rtmpdump -r "rtmp://theta-rtmp.pegcentral.com/peg_c_stream/?doConnect=12345&
doPublish=54321" -a "peg_c_stream/?doConnect=12345&doPublish=54321" -T "mytestpa
ssword" -y "mp4:tricsmarttv/CCC-2010-04-14-160047.mp4" -o "CCC-2010-04-14-160047
.flv"
RTMPDump v2.4 GIT-2011-07-11 (Compiled by KSV)
(c) 2010 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu, The Flvstreamer Team; license: GPL
Connecting ...
INFO: Connected...
Starting download at: 0.000 kB
INFO: Metadata:
INFO: trackinfo:
INFO:   timescale             30000.00
INFO:   length                162041880.00
INFO:   language              eng
INFO: sampledescription:
INFO:   sampletype            avc1
INFO:   timescale             44100.00
INFO:   length                238175232.00
INFO:   language              eng
INFO: sampledescription:
INFO:   sampletype            mp4a
INFO:   audiochannels         2.00
INFO:   audiosamplerate       44100.00
INFO:   videoframerate        29.97
INFO:   aacaot                2.00
INFO:   avclevel              51.00
INFO:   avcprofile            100.00
INFO:   audiocodecid          mp4a
INFO:   videocodecid          avc1
INFO:   width                 480.00
INFO:   height                360.00
INFO:   frameWidth            480.00
INFO:   frameHeight           360.00
INFO:   displayWidth          480.00
INFO:   displayHeight         360.00
INFO:   moovposition          302509684.00
INFO:   duration              5401.40
1133.895 kB / 30.43 sec (0.5%)

or you may try TubeDigger.

unseen wombat · #6 09-27-2011, 10:44 AM

Thank you so much. And I've checked that if I want to download the other videos from that class, (such as _http://tricsmarttv.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=a8e6ec0268c6b0629fb46ba7feb68932) I just change the part that says: "mp4:tricsmarttv/CCC-2010-04-14-160047.mp4" (which in this case would be "CCC-2010-04-26-160025.mp4")

From each page's source code, I can find the other file names.

This is great. I really appreciate this. Thank you.

ggariepy · #7 10-13-2011, 10:21 AM

I am using the most current build of RTMPdump I could find, dated 2011-09-25, on both Windows and Ubuntu.

The address of the stream I'm trying to download is a city government website located here:

Code:

http://shtv.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=fc4a3b429c535f3a0d925c472e61d883

After a lot of researching and hacking, I came up with the following rtmpdump command line:

Code:

rtmpdump -e -r "rtmp://nu-rtmp.pegcentral.com/peg_c_stream/?doConnect=12345&doPublish=54321" -a "peg_c_stream/?doConnect=12345&doPublish=54321" -T "mytestpassword" -y "mp4:shtv/CityCouncil-2-1-11.mp4" -o "CityCouncil-2-1-11.flv"

Now here's the problem:
When downloading the stream, rtmpdump repeatedly stops and restarts, over and over and over again.

This behavior is the same on both of my machine's operating systems: Windows 7 64-bit and Ubuntu 10.x, which runs as an OracleBox VM on the Windows 7 machine. For your entertainment, I used CamStudio to take a short video snippet of this behavior. It's located here:

Originally I thought this was "normal" -- after all I am calling RTMPDump with the -e switch; maybe the connection to the pegcentral server is just crappy -- something that might be masked by the swf player on the site -- and I'm seeing what's really going on in the console window.

The problem is that while I can download what appears to be complete videos, they, too, stop suddenly at intervals that seem to correspond roughly with the restarts that happen during the download. VLC just gives up and crashes, as you can see in this short YouTube snippet here:

As you might have guessed, I'm having a bit of trouble getting the RTMPSuck application to work on Windoze; same for RTMPServer. None of the shareware FLV programs can handle streams from this site either.

Any help out there from the developer? Maybe someone with a working implementation of RTMPSuck can point out what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks!

--Geoff

nullacht · #8 10-13-2011, 10:53 AM

The solution is really simple. Just add the following parameter to your command line: --live

KSV · #9 10-13-2011, 11:00 AM

You need to add -v (--live) switch to correctly download the stream. although it's recorded stream but this flag disables the hack (Pause Unpause event hack) used by RTMPdump which is causing problems with this particular server.

ggariepy · #10 10-13-2011, 01:09 PM

Thanks to the two of you for the quick answer. Unfortunately, passing in the -v switch created a different problem: the download terminates after only a few hundred KB:

Code:

C:\Program Files (x86)\rtmpdump>rtmpdump -e -r "rtmp://nu-rtmp.pegcentral.com/peg_c_stream/?doConnect=12345&doPublish=54321" -a "peg_c_stream/?doConnect=12345&doPublish=54321" -T "mytestpassword" -y "
mp4:shtv/CityCouncil-2-1-11.mp4" -o "CityCouncil-2-1-11.flv" -v
RTMPDump v2.1
(c) 2009 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu, The Flvstreamer Team; license: GPL
Connecting ...
Starting Live Stream
Metadata:
trackinfo:
  timescale             30000.00
  length                256906650.00
  language              eng
sampledescription:
  sampletype            avc1
  timescale             44100.00
  length                377610240.00
  language              eng
sampledescription:
  sampletype            mp4a
  audiochannels         2.00
  audiosamplerate       44100.00
  videoframerate        29.97
  aacaot                2.00
  avclevel              51.00
  avcprofile            100.00
  audiocodecid          mp4a
  videocodecid          avc1
  width                 480.00
  height                360.00
  frameWidth            480.00
  frameHeight           360.00
  displayWidth          480.00
  displayHeight         360.00
  moovposition          479556162.00
  duration              8563.56
302.591 kB / 8.38 sec (0.0%)
ERROR: RTMP_ReadPacket, failed to read RTMP packet header
Download may be incomplete (downloaded about 0.10%), try resuming

Any ideas?

--Geoff