[theophile]

I was told not long ago that rtmpdump uses code from the XBMC project so I'm hoping someone here can answer an rtmpdump question for me.

I am currently helping debug a project that allows MLB.TV subscribers to watch the content without using a web browser or flash plugin.

Basically, here is the problem. We are using a patched version of rtmpdump to get the data off the server. MLB.TV uses MP4 files, but the files downloaded by rtmpdump have FLV headers. I am able to use a FLV demuxer to extract the elementary streams, which are h.264 video and AAC audio. Once extracted, these files play fine, which tells me that the raw file downloaded by rtmpdump would play if only the header correctly identified it as MP4.

Can anyone tell me to what extent rtmpdump "processes" files when downloading? My working theory is that rtmpdump begins by writing the 9-byte FLV header then simply appends the data gathered from the server without further processing. Is this more or less correct?

If anyone could work with me on figuring some of this stuff out, I'd really appreciate it. I think the bottom line is that the created MP4 files merely have an incorrect FLV header and if that could be corrected, the files would play perfectly.

Thanks in advance!

[BlueCop]

this is not my experience that rtmp servers ever serve mp4 files. it is not simply an mp4 with an flv header. it is an flv files muxed with h264/acc. i know that many of the rtmp urls have mp4 is the urls ect but they aren' t mp4 muxed.

this is just my experience for ~6 different rtmp servers that serve h264/acc in flv over rtmp but call it mp4.

i have to use ffmpeg and mp4box to get correctly headered elementary stream for muxing into mkv or mp4.

what do you mean by play? where do these files not play?

xbmc used to play h264/aac over rtmp but the timecodes were incorrect and caused stuttering but recent svns has completely broken it decoding of these streams.

[theophile]

I PM'ed you a sample file. I was assuming the source file was mp4 because that's what the extension was on the server.

The problem with playback of the grabbed files is that mplayer dies with this:

Code:

[h264 @ 0x89aac40]AVC: Consumed only 1 bytes instead of 3110
[h264 @ 0x89aac40]no frame!
Error while decoding frame!
[h264 @ 0x89aac40]AVC: Consumed only 1 bytes instead of 3109
[h264 @ 0x89aac40]no frame!
Error while decoding frame!
[h264 @ 0x89aac40]AVC: Consumed only 1 bytes instead of 3109
[h264 @ 0x89aac40]no frame!
Error while decoding frame!
[h264 @ 0x89aac40]AVC: Consumed only 1 bytes instead of 3109
[h264 @ 0x89aac40]no frame!
Error while decoding frame!
[h264 @ 0x89aac40]AVC: Consumed only 1 bytes instead of 3110
[h264 @ 0x89aac40]no frame!
Error while decoding frame!
[h264 @ 0x89aac40]AVC: Consumed only 1 bytes instead of 3109
[h264 @ 0x89aac40]no frame!
Error while decoding frame!
A:   0.4 V:   0.0 A-V:  0.362 ct:  0.000   0/  0 ??% ??% ??,?% 2216 0

Exiting... (End of file)

If I pass it the "-novideo" option I can hear the sound fine. I get the same AVC errors when trying to play it with ffplay. Any ideas?

[theophile]

Turns out rtmpdump has nothing to do with it. I acquired the same file format using a method other than rtmpdump and I get the same playback errors from mplayer. Looks like it's a codec thing.

[theophile]

Well this is still a bit off-topic, but I'm still trying to figure out how to play this h.264/aac FLV file in mplayer or ffmpeg. By the way, XBMC produces the same errors as above when trying to play this file.

If any of you video guys could spare a moment to check this out, I've posted a more detailed write-up at the Doom9 forum here:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1273668

If we can get this sorted out, this could hopefully be a step towards a working MLB-TV plugin/script for XBMC.

Thanks!

[BlueCop]

theophile: i had a similar problem around june 08 with an flv file from hulu contains h264/aac. i just submitted a bug report to ffmpeg and they fixed it rather quickly. just make sure to give them a sample

[theophile]

Can you show me the bug report you filed so I can see how much detail I need to provide?

Thanks!

[theophile]

Nevermind, I found it.