[xine-user] possible mms:// parsing problem

[Robert K. <ro...@kl...>]

I just discovered that xine can play mms streams.  This is great for me
since I listen to a lot of company earnings webcasts from places like
earnings.com.  Up until now I had to do this in windows but now I can do
it in linux.

One problem I have with this is that the archived webcasts often have
many minutes (sometimes an hour) of silence at the beginning of the
webcast before the actual conference call starts.  Since xine doesn't
allow seeking with mms this adds up to a long wait.  The alternative is
to play and save the entire webcast when I'm away from the computer and
then replay the seek-able file after the fact.  This is where I ran into
the following problem.

If I go to earnings.com and try to play a webcast it will popup a new
window and try to play the webcast with some kind of embedded app.  This
fails but if I view source on the window I can pull out the url to the
asf file.  The following command successfully plays the webcast.  This
particular webcast is silent for about 20 minutes before you start
hearing muzak.

$ xine
'http://web.servicebureau.net/conf/meta?i=1112772709&c=2343&m=was&u=/w_ccbn.xsl&date_ticker=8_8_2006_CHCI'

Since I can't seek, I'd like to save this file but if I try the following...

$ xine
'http://web.servicebureau.net/conf/meta?i=1112772709&c=2343&m=was&u=/w_ccbn.xsl&date_ticker=8_8_2006_CHCI#save:foo'

Then the .asf file is saved as "foo" instead of the actual media file.

BUG #1: when #save: is used for an http url, save the actual media
stream not the .asf file.

The contents of the asf file are a single line that looks like the
following:

<ASX version="3"><TITLE>Q2 2006 Comstock Homebuilding Earnings
Conference Call</TITLE><entry><ref
href="mms://a1112.e1112772709.c2343.conf.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1112/2343/1112772709/conference.download.akamai.com/2929/p_!/11/12/77/27/09/1112772709_193.108.155.231_1_1155038356.wma?auth=daAdkbua9dodlc1cldUbjbragcPc8a.cGcE-be26WD-bA&aifp=001&akamai_event_id=1112772709"/><starttime
value="00:57:15"/><TITLE>Q2 2006 Comstock Homebuilding Earnings
Conference Call</TITLE></entry></ASX>

You can also download the above file here:
http://www.kleemann.org/crap/meta.asf

BUG #2: It would be great if xine honored the <starttime> tag and
somehow skipped the long empty intro.

If I try to play the mms file directly xine errors:

$ xine
'mms://a1112.e1112772709.c2343.conf.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1112/2343/1112772709/conference.download.akamai.com/2929/p_!/11/12/77/27/09/1112772709_193.108.155.231_1_1155038356.wma?auth=daAdkbua9dodlc1cldUbjbragcPc8a.cGcE-be26WD-bA&aifp=001&akamai_event_id=1112772709'

xine: cannot find input plugin for MRL [full url is listed]
xine: input plugin cannot open MRL [full url is listed]
libmmsh: http status not 2xx: >401 Unauthorized<

I'm not sure if this is a xine bug or if the web site is somehow
restricting access.

(possible) BUG #3: xine fails to parse the above url.  As a result of
this bug I am unable to save the stream.

I also tried downloading the above .asf file and playing it directly but
that also fails.

$ xine meta.asf

I'm running xine 0.99.4. Specificially on gentoo linux xine-ui
0.99.4-r5, xine-lib 1.1.2-r2, curl 7.15.1-r1

Can anyone help me with this?  Either seeking or saving the stream would
solve my problem.

Robert.