www.newyankee.com - Rtmpdump stream download REWINDS every 10-20 seconds

[puterboy]

I am using the following rtmpdump command to download a stream:

rtmpdump -r rtmp://e1f1.simplecdn.net/play/ -y /newyankeeonline/NYW_409_Wheelbarrow -o temp2.flv

From the CLI you can repeatedly see the progress indicator - XXX.XXX kB / YY.YY sec (Z.Z%) - move forward incrementally, then skip backwords a few seconds, then start moving forward incrementally for 10-20 seconds, then skip back a few seconds, etc.

The exact timing and number of 'rewinds' varies each time resulting in a downloaded flv file that is approximately 1.5 - 3 times the stated size. Of course, when you view the file, you see the video rewind and replay correspondingly.

I am able to download the file without errors using Moyea FLV downloader so the problem doesn't seem to be with the stream per-se.

I have also tried changing the buffer (-b) using anywhere from 0 to 10000. I also played with the timeout and tried adding '-W http://www.newyankee.com/flash/mwplayer.swf' None of this helped.

Interestingly, it seemed to work just fine last week...

Any thoughts on what might be going wrong here?

[puterboy]

Interestingly, it seems to download fine with mplayer (though the download is real time) using:
mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile temp2.flv "rtmp://e1f1.simplecdn.net/play/newyankeeonline/NYW_409_Wheelbarrow"

I'm wondering whether the problem has anything to do with rtmpdump seeming to download the file *too* fast. It downloads 308MB (of a 25 minute stream that should really only be 177MB) in a little over 7 minutes.

Is there any way to get rtmpdump to download more in real time?

Originally Posted by puterboy

Is there any way to get rtmpdump to download more in real time?

rtmpsuck allows to record in real time.

[puterboy]

I couldn't find any documentation on rtmpsuck other than that it is a "transparent proxy" and thus seems to need another client to actually access the stream.

I was hoping to find a way to "throttle" rtmpdump to test my hypothesis that it is messing up because it is trying to download too fast.

But more generally, any idea why mplayer would work but rtmpdump wouldn't? I assumed (perhaps mistakenly) that they shared a fair bit of code.

Originally Posted by puterboy

But more generally, any idea why mplayer would work but rtmpdump wouldn't? I assumed (perhaps mistakenly) that they shared a fair bit of code.

They seem to use the same librtmp library, so there should be no any difference unless different versions are used.

Please try to use the --live parameter in rtmpdump and let me know whether it helps or not.

You can also download video from _http://www.newyankee.com/online.php with Replay Media Catcher 4. But you need to turn off super download and set client buffer to 1 second (See Tools -> Settings -> RTMP Download Tweaks).

[drbmn]

This is because librtmp is sending pause/unpause when Stream BufferEmpty.
You can see this by turn on debug message "-V", and you will see,

DEBUG: HandleCtrl, received ctrl. type: 31, len: 6
DEBUG: HandleCtrl, Stream BufferEmpty 1
DEBUG: RTMP_SendPause, 1, pauseTime=0
DEBUG: Invoking pause

I try disable sending pause by comment out the following line in librtmp/rtmp.c,

if (!(r->Link.lFlags & RTMP_LF_BUFX))
break;

Only comment the first line, and let the break command uncommented,

// if (!(r->Link.lFlags & RTMP_LF_BUFX))
break;

It works!

[drbmn]

This is because librtmp is sending pause/unpause when Stream BufferEmpty.
You can see this by turn on debug message "-V", and you will see,

DEBUG: HandleCtrl, received ctrl. type: 31, len: 6
DEBUG: HandleCtrl, Stream BufferEmpty 1
DEBUG: RTMP_SendPause, 1, pauseTime=0
DEBUG: Invoking pause

I try disable sending pause by comment out the following line in librtmp/rtmp.c,

if (!(r->Link.lFlags & RTMP_LF_BUFX))
break;

Only comment the first line, and let the break command uncommented,

// if (!(r->Link.lFlags & RTMP_LF_BUFX))
break;

It works!

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http://bugmenot.com/view/stream-recorder.com

[drbmn]

Or you can just turn on "--live" option, so that it won't send pause on buffer empty, but the seek option will be disabled.

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http://bugmenot.com/view/stream-recorder.com