BBC News HD - Embed M3U8 playlist as extras device

[cbconrad92]

Hello,
In the UK, BBC News HD is no longer a freeview channel and is broadcast via iPlayer only (I am based in the UK and using this for personal use with a full licence fee). I have been able to capture a stream via FFMpeg outside of NextPVR to an MP4 and play back without issue and I am attempting to use the extras-?.xml format to add an additional channel into NextPVR so that I can run the HD version alongside my other channels. Unfortunately, the stream does not start and errors. 

This is the format of the extras xml I have generated :

<extras>
    <channel name="BBC News HD">
      <command>C:/Program Files/NextPVR/Other/ffmpeg.exe</command>
      <args>-i "https://vs-hls-push-uk-live.akamaized.net/x=3/i=urn:bbc:pips:service:bbc_news_channel_hd/t=3840/v=pv14/b=5070016/main.m3u8" -vcodec copy -acodec copy -f mpegts</args>
    </channel>
  </extras>

The command line arguments are working outside of the NextPVR interface (with the addition of an output file to the end where I am able to preview the output via VLC and ffplay), it is registering in NextPVR as an extra device with a channel embedded, it doesn't start to stream.


I am using NextPVR v5.27. Apologies I am new to this so if this is an obvious question or in the wrong place, if you could move it I'd be very grateful. As an extra, if anyone would also know how to map the EPG guide listings for BBC News SD to the HD variant (I have this coming in via the DVB-T EPG), that would be fantastic however I am hoping to walk before I run!

Any thoughts gratefully received. Thank you.

[mvallevand]

First If the m3u8 is not DRM'd then it might work as IPTV

What do you see as

curl "https://vs-hls-push-uk-live.akamaized.net/x=3/i=urn:bbc:pips:service:bbc_news_channel_hd/t=3840/v=pv14/b=5070016/main.m3u8"

Martin

[cbconrad92]

Hi Martin
Thanks so much for your reply. Running the curl as you suggest gives :

curl "https://vs-hls-push-uk-live.akamaized.net/x=3/i=urn:bbc:pips:service:bbc_news_channel_hd/t=3840/v=pv14/b=5070016/main.m3u8"
#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-VERSION:3
#EXT-X-INDEPENDENT-SEGMENTS
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:4
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:432216327
#EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIME:2022-08-05T14:44:51.84Z
#EXTINF:3.84,
432216327.ts
#EXTINF:3.84,
432216328.ts
#EXTINF:3.84,
432216329.ts
#EXTINF:3.84,
432216330.ts
#EXTINF:3.84,
432216331.ts

... 800 other entries following the same format

#EXTINF:3.84,
432218197.ts
#EXTINF:3.84,
432218198.ts
#EXTINF:3.84,
432218199.ts
#EXTINF:3.84,
432218200.ts
#EXTINF:3.84,
432218201.ts
Ends

Thanks again, much appreciated

[mvallevand]

That should work as IPTV then.

Martin

[cbconrad92]

Hi Martin,
Thanks very much for your response. Trying this via the IPTV client on Version: 5.2.7.220410, I press import and the website states 0 channels no longer exist and have been deleted.

Any thoughts as to what I could do to get this playlist to map or are there additional steps I need to do to enable the IPTV client for first use? I'm currently just using the DVB-T2 tuners.

Really appreciate your help

[mvallevand]

I might be wrong on IPTV since sub might want an m3u to a list of m3u8 files.

With 800+ segments this is quite odd for live tv.

I can't see what is wrong with that extra though maybe show use the zipped logs.

Martin.

[cbconrad92]

I might be wrong on IPTV since sub might want an m3u to a list of m3u8 files.

With 800+ segments this is quite odd for live tv.

I can't see what is wrong with that extra though maybe show use the zipped logs.

Martin.

Thanks again and no problem. I did try presenting the playlist to NPVR via a local playlist and likewise attempted to use Kodi to do the same but neither would take the local file.

It does appear having done a second CURL that the TS segments number has incremented so it seems that the DASH streams in the playlist have UID's that increment over their lifetime.

Thanks for looking into the stream and likewise, the logs indicate that it is able to run up the FFMPEG stream and a TS stream does appear in my Recorded TV folder but goes no further, so I suspect the extra is in fact working but it generates an 8kb TS file, presumably as no further stream information is forthcoming into NPVR.

Really appreciate your help, I'll go back to scratching my head (as I say it is working and capturing outside of the NPVR application so I will use that for now)! If there's any other logs that would be useful to upload then do say.

2022-08-05 18:17:31.307 [DEBUG][70] StartStream(7291:BBC News HD)
2022-08-05 18:17:31.308 [DEBUG][70] looking for capture source (in reverse priority order)
2022-08-05 18:17:31.308 [DEBUG][70] checking: EXTRA Recorder (extras-fm.xml)
2022-08-05 18:17:31.308 [DEBUG][70] enabled and present
2022-08-05 18:17:31.308 [DEBUG][70] has channel
2022-08-05 18:17:31.308 [DEBUG][70] live tv is possible
2022-08-05 18:17:31.308 [DEBUG][70] Running: C:/Program Files/NextPVR/Other/ffmpeg.exe -i "https://vs-hls-push-uk-live.akamaized.net/x=3/i=urn:bbc:pips:service:bbc_news_channel_hd/t=3840/v=pv14/b=5070016/main.m3u8" -vcodec copy -acodec aac -f mpegts
2022-08-05 18:17:31.312 [DEBUG][70] Child PID: 6364
2022-08-05 18:17:31.313 [DEBUG][70] Creating writer: LIVE&E:\Recorded TV\live-BBC News HD-29909.ts
2022-08-05 18:17:31.313 [DEBUG][70] live mode
2022-08-05 18:17:31.315 [DEBUG][70] Created Mutex: Global\NPVR-mutex-e79c4cff6649be80529dfbcc3f4bde4b
2022-08-05 18:17:31.315 [DEBUG][70] Created map: E:\Recorded TV\live-BBC News HD-29909.ts.map
2022-08-05 18:17:31.316 [DEBUG][70] StartStream [LIVE&E:\Recorded TV\live-BBC News HD-29909.ts] allocated handle: 2
2022-08-05 18:17:31.316 [DEBUG][70] Live TV handle: 0x1D0002
2022-08-05 18:17:33.943 [DEBUG][70] Got request [::1]: /services/service (system.logs)
2022-08-05 18:17:33.943 [DEBUG][70] method=system.logs
2022-08-05 18:17:33.943 [DEBUG][70] parameters:
2022-08-05 18:17:33.943 [DEBUG][70]   method: system.logs
2022-08-05 18:17:33.943 [DEBUG][70]   format: json
2022-08-05 18:17:33.943 [DEBUG][70]   sid: e9442b96-0366-48b7-8623-8d2783ea2ff8
2022-08-05 18:17:33.943 [DEBUG][70]   client_ip: ::1
2022-08-05 18:17:33.943 [DEBUG][70]   user_agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/104.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
2022-08-05 18:17:33.943 [DEBUG][70]   host_callback: ...
2022-08-05 18:17:33.943 [DEBUG][70] Zipping logs...
2022-08-05 18:17:33.943 [INFO][70] Flushing logs
2022-08-05 18:17:35.967 [DEBUG][174] <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<rsp stat="ok">
<Status>
<Device oid="25" identifier="Hauppauge WinTV 885 DVBT Tuner/Demod (#0)"> </Device>
<Device oid="26" identifier="Hauppauge WinTV 885 DVBT Tuner/Demod (#1)"> </Device>
<Device oid="27" identifier="Hauppauge WinTV 885 DVBT Tuner/Demod 2 (#0)"> </Device>
<Device oid="28" identifier="Hauppauge WinTV 885 DVBT Tuner/Demod 2 (#1)"> </Device>
  <Device oid="29" identifier="EXTRA Recorder (extras-fm.xml)">
    <LiveTV handle="1D0002">LIVE&amp;E:\Recorded TV\live-BBC News HD-29909.ts</LiveTV>
  </Device>
</Status>
</rsp>

[mvallevand]

Sorry that's a snippet, I asked for the zipped log.

I do see that you are missing -v panic though so some output will be going to stdout that you don't want.

Martin

[cbconrad92]

Hi Martin,
Apologies! I wasn't sure if it was an excerpt or full logs to send and I got the wrong one, I've attached the full logs from the same period at 1820.

I'm sorry, I don't follow what you mean with the -v panic - is this something in the FFMpeg argument I am missing or an argument elsewhere?

Thanks again - really do appreciate it.

[mvallevand]

Your ffmpeg command line argument in the extra needs -v panic to avoid corrupting the ts file.

Martin