www.channel4.com: Any way to capture video from the new 4OD service?

[nonna]

StreamRecorder:
Thanks for the link, I had already read that. Seems to be screen capture is what is recommened. Not really what I wanted to do, I would rather download the original. Still need to give GetFLV another try.

hyc:

thanks for letting me know about the type mismatch. Still not sure why the RTMPSRV generated command does not work.

As for get-flash-videos
I believe I have both perl and rtmpdump install properly according to the get_flash_video installation notes. I downloaded what it said to along with the two modules it mentions in the Windows install part and have RTMPDUMP in my system32 folder. I think that is the correct way. I will also try to get the other modules it mentions.

When I use this command

perl get_flash_videos rtmpe://ll.securestream.channel4.com/a4174/e1/mp4:xcuassets/CH4_08_02_16_25880001001001_001.mp4

I get this

Couldn't download 'rtmpe://ll.securestream.channel4.com/a4174/e1/mp4:xcuassets/CH4_08_02_16_25880001001001_001.mp4': 501 Protocol scheme 'rtmpe' is not supported
Can't locate object method "host" via package "URI::_foreign" at FlashVideo/URLFinder.pm line 64

I am probably not using the right command. I do realize that it says rtmpe not supported but as it uses RTMPDUMP for rtmp URLs I am not sure what to do as there are no options on the man page that I would put before the http web page that the video plays on.


It seems to me from my experimenting that both rtmpdump and get_flash_videos rely on the precision and correctness of the URL it is given. As such my parsing needs to be better but I can't understand the peculiarities of the RTMPDUMP errors like:

WARNING: Trying different position for client digest!
and
ERROR: RTMP_ReadPacket, failed to read RTMP packet header

that I get when RTMPSRV does the command structure and thus I would think would be correctly parsed by RTMPDUMP and download.


I would be interested to know if anyone else has been successful with downloading from 4oD with either RTMPDUMP or get_flash_videos or anything else other than screen capture.

I was able to take the address StreamTransport got from a DemandFive video and edit to use in RTMPDUMP, but not one from SeeSaw. So I am not sure of the peculiarities, though I wish I know more.
Anyway, thanks for the info, I will continue with this as an intellectual pursuit and hopefully get some help and luck along the way.

Cheers

[hyc]

Originally Posted by nonna

When I use this command

perl get_flash_videos rtmpe://ll.securestream.channel4.com/a4174/e1/mp4:xcuassets/CH4_08_02_16_25880001001001_001.mp4

I get this

Couldn't download 'rtmpe://ll.securestream.channel4.com/a4174/e1/mp4:xcuassets/CH4_08_02_16_25880001001001_001.mp4': 501 Protocol scheme 'rtmpe' is not supported
Can't locate object method "host" via package "URI::_foreign" at FlashVideo/URLFinder.pm line 64

I am probably not using the right command. I do realize that it says rtmpe not supported but as it uses RTMPDUMP for rtmp URLs I am not sure what to do as there are no options on the man page that I would put before the http web page that the video plays on.

get_flash_videos expects the HTTP URL of the web page hosting the video, it doesn't accept RTMP URLs. It will scrape the web pages itself to find the RTMP URLs and put them into the format that rtmpdump wants. The whole point of using the get_flash_videos script is to avoid the hassle of trying to find the RTMP URL yourself.

[nonna]

I can't get GetFLV to work for me. It must be operator error. I have tried different versions, portable versions, trial versions. It supposedly finds the URL sometimes and I choose download and then go to the FLV Downloader part and it never does anything. The green arrow icon changes to the red X and it never shows any progress. Sometimes it shows different URLs for the same video. It never seems to get the ad URLs, which is fine of course, but odd if it supposed to show downloadable videos. Regardless I guess some more trial and error with it is needed. Any ideas as to why GetFLV doesn't seem to work for me?

@hyc

I see now that it needs the http. But it never finds the URL for the rtmpe file. I have both channel4.pm and 4od.pm and brightcove.pm in the plugins folder. Looking at channel4.pm and 4od.pm files themselves they seem to need updating as I think the url scheme has changed.

I get

Using method 'generic' for http://www.channel4.com/programmes/sas-the-real-story/4od
Found 4odplayer-4.49.5.swf
Guessed http://www.channel4.com/programmes/sas-the-real-story/4odplayer-4.49.5.swf trying...
Exists on http://www.channel4.com/programmes/sas-the-real-story/4odplayer-4.49.5.swf: 400
Error: No URLs found at FlashVideo/Generic.pm line 129.

So it does not even call the plugin which is why I think it might needed updated. What is odd is that it gives the list of plugins then when it says "Trying to open plugin ..." it does not show them all and repeats some. So it does not I have no programming knowledge so I guess they will stay like they are until some comes along and changes them.

As you said the point of get_flash_videos is to get the URL and format it for RTMPDUMP. Even if it was working to catch the URL I don't forsee it formatting the command passed to RTMPDUMP any better than RTMPSRV does. And as I mentioned before the command generated by RTMPSRV doesn't work for me. And I can't seem to parse out any channel 4 rtmpe URL correctly, even though I seem to be doing ok with other sites.


RTMPSRV has a -C Z: in its command. I am not sure what null data it is wanting to put in. Looking things over it seems there might be a secure token, but when I use the -T parameter with what I think is the token I got from looking at URLSnooper it still does not work. I looked at both the get_flash_videos channel4.pm and a version of get_iplayer that has channel4 functionality and they both seem to speak to there being a secure token. Perhaps this is what I am missing. As I mentioned I think the channel4 get_flash_videos plugins need updating and as the get_iplayer channel4 portion looks similar it to fails to work also.

I have got rtmpdump to work with other sites and I would like to get it to work with channel4 also. I just can't figure out what is so unique that I can't get the videos using RTMPDUMP.

[exobuzz]

We were discussing this over at xbmc.org forums.

Looking at at 4od the akami rtmpe streams needs a auth= parameter to play.

How to generate this though currently is unknown. The XML provided by channel4 for a program contains a token:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/h...107?1274015087

this seems to be 136 bytes mime64 encoded. How to get from that to the auth= though is another thing.

auth strings look something like

da_a1dVaYdXaEcXcWbfdwdibdbncBakajbU-bl76LM-eS-gAT-kttDkpt7swpem8srnunsr3k2tTqvnsq7kYsckFtJsDphmMsfn6 ndrbk3sfp8noqdkVtSkIt9sCoem2sw

There is a log function in the javascript on the channel4 site
/static/programmes/js/controller/brand/catchup.js
that uses
/static/global/js/lib/util/hmacsha1.js (readable version @ http://pajhome.org.uk/crypt/md5/sha1.html)

I'm unsure if this is connected to the XML token though, or it might be doing a similar encryption. It has a function generateV1Signature which is used by a sendLogMessage function. This calls b64_hmac_sha1 to create a mime64 encoded signature.

[eddebaby]

4oD plugin thread on xbmc.org: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php...717#post538717

As exobuzz has just said, the auth key needs to be generated. Here are what I believe to be a matching token (from the xml via wireshark) and auth string (from rtmpsrv):

            <token>qlHbl7C4jfNttKlQipkKgZsecvpwy/PqOJGIwFICaQdaTLQEOo1kQpgEYVsZechuv4jyDBQgNIam
Z/6Xgy9nLoHbojdGjAia+W1E1s7DeaujDh6z10RAIcn+S0QLKzGfO/MeojtHFW55a5Soao7MeDTP
XW2RfC0W2Mt2GdozkNFgiJOcYfKMIg==
</token>

da_czapb_asbEadbFbDded_bDbHdYc8doaA-bl8CQ_-eS-ixR-nqrak8n1lwtgoxnWtKnCk9kGoVpgpmpcmcsBkmnHl2tio8nYsenikZjcnbp8pqpdn5s4kAnxl4t6ofnd

[Spasticus]

Originally Posted by Stream Recorder

Let us know which programs don't work and what kind of errors exactly you get with them when downloading from 4od:

• StreamTransport
• get-flash-videos
• youtube-dl
• rtmpdump
• GetFLV

You can check what programs support RTMPE streams in the following thread:
RTMPE stream recording/downloading/capturing/ripping/saving

GetFLV works, but the progress display doesn't always. Check the file size being downloaded in the directory to see if it changes (you may have to refresh the screen). Also, the bottom panel can't always be expanded to allow you to accept the terms and conditions on the Channel4 website. Do this before loading the page.

Doesn't grab it when I.P. address is anonymized (for example, when unavailable in your country).

[noobie]

Please can anyone help me to rip this?

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/bestival/4od#3131875

I honestly haven't got a clue how to do this but really would like this programme. thanks

[Spasticus]

GetFLV will do it.

[noobie]

Originally Posted by Spasticus

GetFLV will do it.

I've tried using it but it only captures the 2 adverts and not the content I want

[Spasticus]

Originally Posted by noobie

I've tried using it but it only captures the 2 adverts and not the content I want

It does work.

Here. I've done it for you:

Go to my website

mammothobsequious.com

then click the Movies link at the bottom right of the page.