VODServer - Watch internet streams as TV channels (4 Viewers)

rsenden · September 25, 2013

Current Version: 1.3 - 08 Oct 2013
Downloads: https://sourceforge.net/projects/vodserver/files/?
Full documentation: http://vodserver.sourceforge.net/
Change Log: http://vodserver.sourceforge.net/history.html

A question that comes up every now and then is whether it is possible to add internet streams to the DVB-IP tuner of the MediaPortal TV-Server. Currently this is not possible out-of-the-box, since most internet streams are not in the MPEG2-TS format that the TV-Server requires. The OnlineVideos plugin provides a good alternative for watching internet streams, but it is a client-side plug-in and doesn't provide features like EPG and scheduled recordings.

Therefore I have developed a simple yet flexible and powerful Video On Demand Server, which can open many types of video streams and transcode them to a format supported by the TV-Server. This is a stand-alone server; the streams provided by this server can be used by the standard TV-Server DVB-IP tuner. VODServer uses rtmpdump and ffmpeg for retrieving stream data and transcoding; these utilities are included in the archive. Streams are started on-demand (i.e. whenever the TV-Server requests a stream), so no unnecessary use of bandwidth.

Sample configuration files are included for iLive.to and CastAlba.tv, allowing you to stream content from these services to the TV-Server (note that these samples are for reference purposes only; actually using this functionality may violate the Terms of Use for these services). Support for other services can be added via configuration files.

Please refer to the README.HTML file in the installation archive for more information. If you have any questions, remarks or additional service definitions to share, please do so on this thread.

Note: For now this server is Windows-only (due to the way ffmpeg and rtmpdump are invoked). The server itself is written in Java, so you will need to have a Java 7 JRE installed.

Multi Media PC · September 25, 2013

Sounds great will take al look at this

sand · September 26, 2013

@rsenden
You are the absolute master

, it works with your m3u lists

I have to check how to add additional sites but even this is beyond expectations.

marirs · September 27, 2013

I have a online live tv channel that would be ideal for this but it requires a login and the stream url changes each time with a session id. I already have a python script that I wrote to get the dynamic url, but how would I use that with a static m3u file?

I can probably set up a local proxy but I'm not sure how to redirect the stream? I can have a local proxy return another playlist with the actual url.. would that work? Any ideas @rsenden?

Thanks.

rsenden · September 27, 2013

marirs said:
I have a online live tv channel that would be ideal for this but it requires a login and the stream url changes each time with a session id. I already have a python script that I wrote to get the dynamic url, but how would I use that with a static m3u file?

I can probably set up a local proxy but I'm not sure how to redirect the stream? I can have a local proxy return another playlist with the actual url.. would that work? Any ideas @rsenden?

Thanks.

VODServer basically already works as a proxy. The TV Server is configured with a static m3u file containing URL's pointing to VODServer. When VODServer is called it will dynamically determine the actual stream to use. For example, it can access arbitrary web pages and extract information like stream URL's by using regular expressions.

Can you describe the steps your Python script uses to determine the actual stream URL? Maybe VODServer can be configured with similar steps. Otherwise, if you can make the actual stream URL available via a web page (i.e. call the python script from within a local web server), VODServer can automatically grab this URL and stream the contents to TV Server.

marirs · September 28, 2013

My python script just POSTs some info and parses the web page to get the rtsp stream url. I have set up a proxy in python to return the url as a web page:

Code:

<html><title>Live Stream</title><a href="rtsp://urlhere.com">link</a></html>

and I can access http://localhost and get the page, but I'm not sure how to set up a service in VODServer?

rsenden · September 28, 2013

marirs said:
My python script just POSTs some info and parses the web page to get the rtsp stream url. I have set up a proxy in python to return the url as a web page:

Code:

<html><title>Live Stream</title><a href="rtsp://urlhere.com">link</a></html>

and I can access http://localhost and get the page, but I'm not sure how to set up a service in VODServer?

Can you please try the attached configuration file? I didn't test it myself, but it is very similar to the mms service. Copy the file to the VODServer directory, restart VODServer, and then call
http://vodserver:port/rtsp?url=http://localhost
This will tell VODServer to get the page at http://localhost, uses a regular expression to find the rtsp:// link, and finally invokes ffmpeg with the rtsp link found.

marirs · September 28, 2013

It doesn't seem to be working... it gets my rtsp url from my proxy ok, but I think there may be a problem in the ffmpeg command line that VODServer is using because my rtsp url contains an "&" so the command line should be

Code:

ffmpeg -i "rtsp://..."

and VODServer seems to be using

Code:

ffmpeg -i rtsp://...

.

rsenden · September 28, 2013

marirs said:
It doesn't seem to be working... it gets my rtsp url from my proxy ok, but I think there may be a problem in the ffmpeg command line that VODServer is using because my rtsp url contains an "&" so the command line should be

Code:

ffmpeg -i "rtsp://..."

and VODServer seems to be using

Code:

ffmpeg -i rtsp://...

.

OK, you need to add the quotes to the ffmpeg command. Just open the vodserver-service-rtsp.xml file in a text editor, scroll down to the end, and change the command from

Code:

ffmpeg -i !!rtspUrl!! !!ffmpegOutputParams!!

to

Code:

ffmpeg -i "!!rtspUrl!!" !!ffmpegOutputParams!!

marirs · September 28, 2013

That was easy!

Thanks it seems to be working great so far.

VODServer - Watch internet streams as TV channels (4 Viewers)

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