[Freevo-devel] [RFC] RTMP (flash streaming) support

[Angelo A. <mi...@gm...>]

Hello freevo dev's,

I just happened to setup a freevo box at home, connected to a TV. As it
turns out, TV live streaming was important for my own purposes so I
decided to quickly hack rtmp support (lots of live free TV services are
rtmp) into freevo.
Since this might be useful for others too, I decided to share my setup.

Since this was the first time I messed with freevo, I decided not to
touch the python code and instead wrap the mplayer binary.
So here it is how I made it work:

In freevo.conf I replaced the system's mplayer with the wrapper:
# mplayer = /home/mediacenter/bin/mplayer-wrapper

Then created a webtv.fxd somewhere with something like this inside:
# <movie title="FOO">
#   <cover-img>&imgdir;/foo.png</cover-img>
#   <video><url
id="p1">"@stream=rtmp://steamhere.com/foo/|path=bar|player=http://www.streamhere.com/player.swf@"</url></video>
#   <info>
#     <tagline>Foo channel.</tagline>
#     <plot>Video: 480x360@25, 600 kbps&#xa;Audio: stereo, 96 kbps</plot>
#   </info>
# </movie>

Notice the "strange" url there. This will be later parsed by the
mplayer-wrapper:
Note: The double-quotes inside the url tag are important, to keep
special symbols like & away from bash.

--------------------- mplayer-wrapper ----------------------------
#!/bin/bash

INPUT="$(echo "$@" | sed -e 's/\-autosync\ [0-9]*//')"

if [[ ! "$(echo "$INPUT" | grep -Eo "rtmp://")" ]]; then
        exec /usr/bin/mplayer $INPUT
        exit 0
fi

echo "mplayer rtmp wrapper init" > ~/mplayer-wrapper.log
RTMP_PARAMS="$(echo "$INPUT" | grep -Eo "@[^@]*@" | sed -e 's/^@//' -e
's/@$//')"
echo "RTMP params: $RTMP_PARAMS" >> ~/mplayer-wrapper.log

RTMP_STREAM="$(echo "$RTMP_PARAMS" | grep -Eo "stream=[^|@]*" | sed -e
's/stream=//')"
echo "RTMP stream: $RTMP_STREAM" >> ~/mplayer-wrapper.log

RTMP_PATH="$(echo "$RTMP_PARAMS"   | grep -Eo "path=[^|@]*"   | sed -e
's/path=//')"
echo "  RTMP path: $RTMP_PATH" >> ~/mplayer-wrapper.log

RTMP_PLAYER="$(echo "$RTMP_PARAMS" | grep -Eo "player=[^|@]*" | sed -e
's/player=//')"
echo "RTMP player: $RTMP_PLAYER" >> ~/mplayer-wrapper.log

mkfifo /tmp/freevo.flv &> /dev/null
rtmpdump -r "$RTMP_STREAM" -y "$RTMP_PATH" -W "$RTMP_PLAYER" -k 1 -v -o
- > /tmp/freevo.flv &

MPLAYER_ARGS="$(echo "$INPUT" | sed -e "s@${RTMP_PARAMS}@@" -e 's/@//g'
-e 's@"@@g')"

echo "Executing: /usr/bin/mplayer $MPLAYER_ARGS /tmp/freevo.flv" >>
~/mplayer-wrapper.log
exec /usr/bin/mplayer $MPLAYER_ARGS -loop 0 -autosync 30 \
        /tmp/freevo.flv

----------------------------------------------------------------

The wrapper receives as input a concatenation of mplayer arguments
provided by video.mplayer and the url itself, something like this:
-slave -v -vo xv,sdl,x11, -ao alsa -nolirc -nojoystick -autoq 100
-screenw 400 -screenh 300 -fs -cache 1000 -vf pp=de -osdlevel 0
"@stream=rtmp://steamhere.com/foo/|path=bar|player=http://www.streamhere.com/player.swf@"

Then the wrapper parses stream, path and player fields from its input
and gives them to rtmpdump. rtmpdump's output is redirected into a fifo
connected to mplayer's input. rtmpdump's arguments (delimited by @@) are
stripped from the wrappers input to get the correct mplayer's arguments.

Note: if the rtmp:// string is not detected in the wrapper's input,
mplayer is launched as usual.

As you can see this is a _really quick hack_, but it works very well!
Some may ask why the hell all of this fuzz, why using rtmpdump. The
quick answer is that some flash based streaming services check if the
stream client is the crappy flash client located in their ad-filled
websites. The authors of rtmpdump then developed this wonderful tool to
somehow "impersonate" the flash client.

Some info about my system:
Gentoo 2.6.35-hardened-r2
freevo-1.9.0
rtmpdump-2.3
mplayer-1.0_rc4_p20100612

I plan to integrate this into the freevo's video class but since I'm
currently lacking time I decided to push this hack into the mailing list.

Thanks to all freevo's contributors,
we have a wonderful project here.
-- 
Angelo Arrifano AKA MiKNiX
mi...@gm...
http://www.arrifano.com

Gentoo Linux OMAP850/Embedded Official Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/~miknix
mi...@ge...

Linwizard Project Leader/Developer
mi...@us...

PGP Pubkey 0x3D92BB0B