playing youtube videos offline

[Shep]

For the last 5 months, after watching a youtube video I've retrieved the /tmp/Flash* file and renamed it and been able to replay the video at will using gxine.
But lately, the retrieved file seems corruputed and when I [attempt to] feed it to gxine the progress bar jumps about all over the place instead of creeping steadily from left to right and there is no audio or video.
The only adverse event I've noticed was that the motherboard battery was dying and for a period of a few days I was getting "stale file handle" error messages at times. I've just booted using the "fix file system" option in case there were problems, and noted that it gave no error messages.

# uname -a
Linux puppypc 2.6.25.16 #1 Tue Aug 26 10:45:53 GMT-8 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Any ideas on what has gone wrong? I'm not aware of any other problems, all seems to be working perfectly. I'm running off the CD so the OS is unlikely to have been corrupted.

[valpy]

Probably codec-related, some new types of FLV are appearing.

See harrier's entry of 2008-11-23 towards end of following thread:
http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/ ... 59060.html

quoted here for reference

Okay, some other forums have recognized it's a problme of some FLV files which contain H.264 w/ AAC codecs, this is supported since Flash Player 9.0.115, many media sites bring this format online in recent days, this causes matters because many players/converters still not support this format, include newest FFmpeg, Mplayer, and Nero Show Time etc.

..... and then goes on to suggest a solution (not sure if it's fully linux-based), see thread for details.

Things may improve when ffmpeg builds catch up with the latest FLV format. I've seen suggestions elsewhere that HandBrake can already cope using its built-in ffmpeg (apparently may need a couple of attempts), but I haven't tried it.

[mikeb]

Thanks for the info...I wondered what was going on...

so from clunky to gungy formats ........10ghz cpu to watch this movie eh

Give me juicy xvid and mp3 any day..snarl...grunt

Now if you tube included video hardware acceleration code to help play the stuff that would be a different matter.

surprised ffmpeg is not on this one yet as the option of other codecs in flash streams has been around for last 2 years........

So what we have is H264 and aac in an FLV container...I wonder if the latest avidemux could rewrap it as avi without recoding which is a fast operation...it may at least play it as it treats videos as elemental streams.

If you have a link to a video I wouldn't mind experimenting with it

regards

mike

[JohnRoberts]

These files may not be playable in gxine directly (at least until we get a proper decoder) but they are definitely convertible to a playable format if you can find a converter for the job. In Puppy (contrary with W$) you can download them - at least.

Question: Can anyone propose a good general purpose transcoder to use in Puppy? (My only transcoding was done in Windoze, using MediaCoder )

[Shep]

Probably codec-related, some new types of FLV are appearing.

Two points: the videos all play fine through Seamonkey while it's retrieving them (and if I ask it to repeat), and doesn't Seamonkey use the gxine plugin to play these anyway? Secondly, these are not recent videos; most were put onto youtube a few years ago so cannot be relying on any recent extensions.

[nubc]

Use VLC for .flv playback.

configure VLC:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 788#185788

[JohnRoberts]

Probably codec-related, some new types of FLV are appearing.

Two points: the videos all play fine through Seamonkey while it's retrieving them (and if I ask it to repeat), and doesn't Seamonkey use the gxine plugin to play these anyway? Secondly, these are not recent videos; most were put onto youtube a few years ago so cannot be relying on any recent extensions.

When Seamonkey plays them directly it uses Flash Player and not Gxine. If
they are old or not is immaterial. Users posting videos do not post in FLV format necessarily. They are probably transcoded by YouTube. It is a matter
of whether YouTube has updated its stored videos...

[mikeb]

Question: Can anyone propose a good general purpose transcoder to use in Puppy? (My only transcoding was done in Windoze, using MediaCoder

the latest avidemux can.....2.4.x

mike

[JohnRoberts]

Tks Mike!!

[valpy]

..... or you can use plinej's recent build of ffmpeg from an rxvt terminal (it's more recent than the default puppy 4 version)

obtain faad2-2.6.pet , faac-1.26.pet and ffmpeg-svn-r14332.pet

from the following thread

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 33&t=25384

and install them.

Then you can convert a problem H.264 / AAC -based .flv to .avi using

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -i problem.flv playable.avi

in an rxvt console

and gxine should cope with the resulting playable.avi

[valpy]

Mike, avidemux mostly uses its own copy of ffmpeg codecs (libavcodec library). So a recent avidemux build will have a sufficiently up-to-date internal version of ffmpeg to cope.

[mikeb]

Mike, avidemux mostly uses its own copy of ffmpeg codecs (libavcodec library). So a recent avidemux build will have a sufficiently up-to-date internal version of ffmpeg to cope.

indeed, and it is such a great program to have around generally.

I used it to make some flv's and it did a great job

mike

[JohnRoberts]

I thought to give it a go and see personally what's up with this. It seems some of the FLV video is indeed playable, but I've come across some files that are not playable in Gxine. I tried with MPlayer (mplayer-1.0rc2-071007-1.pet) w/o luck. Going at it manually on RXVT to look for error messages, Gxine does not give any info but MPlayer outputs:

Code: Select all

....
<repeated as below>
...
[flv @ 0xb72dc4ec]skipping flv packet: type 198, size 7119011, flags 0
[flv @ 0xb72dc4ec]skipping flv packet: type 201, size 8603648, flags 0
[flv @ 0xb72dc4ec]skipping flv packet: type 118, size 1661285, flags 0
[flv @ 0xb72dc4ec]skipping flv packet: type 225, size 10442578, flags 0
[lavf] Video stream found, -vid 0
[lavf] Audio stream found, -aid 1
VIDEO:  []  0x0  0bpp  29.970 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Cannot find codec matching selected -vo and video format 0x7.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/codecs.html!
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [dmo] Win32/DMO decoders
IMediaObject ERROR: 0x83a6343  input format not accepted (0x80040205 : -21472209                                                                                                   87)
ERROR: Could not open required DirectShow codec wmspdmod.dll.
ADecoder preinit failed :(
ADecoder init failed :(
Opening audio decoder: [dshow] Win32/DirectShow decoders
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: wmavds32.ax, //usr/lib/codecs/wmavds32.ax, /us                                                                                                   r/lib/win32/wmavds32.ax, /usr/local/lib/win32/wmavds32.ax
Warning: DS_Filter() could not open DirectShow DLL.  (DLL=wmavds32.ax, r=0x88117                                                                                                   82)
ERROR: Could not open required DirectShow codec wmavds32.ax.
ADecoder preinit failed :(
ADecoder init failed :(
Cannot find codec for audio format 0xA.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/codecs.html!
Audio: no sound
Video: no video

The module wmspdmod.dll IS included in the codecs
So it appears there is a problem with audio decoding and a missing
DirectShow DLL "wmavds32.ax". I installed all of the MPlayer codecs found on their site but this one was nowhere to be found. The odd
part is that this is mentioned in the codecs status table
(http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/codecs-status.html)

I googled a bit and it seems there are a lot of people having issues
with this. I don't understand why this is missing from the codecs
repo - maybe it is obsolete or proprietary. I searched on my Windoze
machines and this is absent as well. It wouldn't be surprising if this
is the reason why Gxine does not play these files...

Does anyone have a clue where to find wmavds32.ax? I would be happy to tinker a bit to see if it is fixable...

=====================================
@Shep: Would you consider renaming the thread - appropriately "Playing offline FLV videos" or something
like that, since it has nothing to do with SeaMonkey...

[mikeb]

Ouch...obscure windows format in flv wrapper...this gets more bizarre...can you give a link to an example so I can dissect it?

mike

[JohnRoberts]

Sure!!! And damn (pardon the language... ) good music too!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud1Y7rXFEQg

Artie kindly checked it on MediaPup and verified that the FLV plays
fine both on Gxine and on MPlayer. I will download MediaPup and
check the codecs available

Shep, can you provide some links as well, so as to do some cross-checking?

[mikeb]

From avidemux 2.4.1

video
Codec 4CC : XXX

audio
Codec: unknown

Artie kindly checked it on MediaPup and verified that the FLV plays fine both on Gxine and on MPlayer. I will download MediaPup and
check the codecs available

weird windows codecs or bleeding edge ffmpeg it seem.

Perhaps this is an anti copyright move due to the nature of the material.

I'd suggest trying on windows but with what??

mike

[JohnRoberts]

I will do both. Just downloaded MediaPUP as well...
Reverting with results...

(In Windoze I use MediaCoder that basically acts as a
GUI for all the open source tools like MPLayer, ffmpeg
XviD, avidemux, etc. One nice thing is that it will recognize
almost any media and give info about the audio and video
part...)

If Shep could also provide some links, it could be really
useful as to see if it is the same problem or a different
one...

[JohnRoberts]

Oh great!!! The cached file was somehow
corrupted (most probably). I am now in MediaPUP, the file
that I saved is still unreadable, but a freshly cached FLV
from the same link works....

We are now relying on Shep to provide links of problematic
FLVs, otherwise we're shooting in the dark (I already shot
my own foot with this one )

Edit: MediaPUP looks really GREAT!!! I like the wallpaper too!!!

[Shep]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud1Y7rXFEQg
Artie kindly checked it on MediaPup and verified that the FLV plays
fine both on Gxine and on MPlayer. I will download MediaPup and
check the codecs available

Shep, can you provide some links as well, so as to do some cross-checking?

Up until 3 or 4 weeks ago, *every* youtube video (say, 25 in all)
that I salvaged from the /tmp/Flash* buffer played perfectly with
gxine. Was this just coincidence? Maybe.

Then about 3 weeks back there was a "transition period" of a
few days where only *some* of /tmp/Flash* files I retrieved during
those days would be recognised by gxine. Others sent the progress
bar in gxine leaping chaotically all over the place, and producing
no audio.

Since, that transition period, only one (*) of the fifteen or so
/tmp/Flash* files newly downloaded from youtube that I tried would
be recognised by gxine. That's what led me to conclude some piece of
software, viz. Seamonkey, had gone awry.

(1) Now, you want an example of a video that won't play in gxine?
There's this Bowie in New York City clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdo5f_ozf6E

(2) A month ago I saved the /tmp/Flash* of Airborne Toxic on Letterman because it could be played with gxine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTctlgFCtXE
-rw------- 1 root root 10604410 2009-02-09 19:05 FlashToxicLetterman.flv

Today I downloaded the *same* video; it emerges with a differing size and this time it cannot be played with gxine:
-rw------- 1 root root 10605145 2009-03-09 22:34 FlashLettermanDud.flv

# gxine /tmp/FlashLetter*
WARN: INFO.SVD: signature not found
ERROR: unknown ID encountered -- maybe not a proper (S)VCD?

(I'm not sure that the above message means much, as I get that message even with a video that does play okay.)

(3) A few weeks ago, I saved a particular Bowie video; it plays
perfectly with gxine, and animation is much smoother than when
Seamonkey plays it (560MHz P3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25asv1xzYEo
-rw------- 1 root root 12156376 2009-02-11 22:52 FlashBowieMoonlight.flv

Today I downloaded the same clip only to find that it is of a different
size and cannot be played with gxine:
-rw------- 1 root root 10331741 2009-03-10 12:39 FlashBowieMoonlightDUD.flv

(*) To add to the mystery, I today stumbled across just one youtube video whose /tmp/Flash* can be still retrieved today and which does play okay with gxine. It's Bowie in Berlin 2002:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXzyobIKZBE

There seems no logic to this. Can you make any sense out of it?

How do I find out (at the shell prompt) what version of Puppy I'm
using? I think it's 4.1

[mikeb]

There seems no logic to this. Can you make any sense out of it?

Perhaps this is an anti copyright move due to the nature of the material.

seems obvious case of moving the goalposts...all your links are to music vids/tv type material. I presume you tube are getting pressure from PRS and such. You will have a problem playing the download flv because that's intentional.

But.....there is hope......

I downloaded using cclive the wmv version and that played just fine in my crusty old vlc..gxine should be fine too...curiously the internal formats are flv1 and mp3!I used to get the mp4 version with a url bodge but the contents were the same. See this thread..
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=38300
-f wmv in the command line...me the slob has not added format to the gui yet

mike