Get recording length from stream

[skogl]

Hi,

I have figured out that the following api command works for streaming recordings:

http://<ip>:8866/live?recording=<id>&client=myclient

But if I open the stream in vlc the length of the stream is undefined and thus seeking is not possible.

Is there anything I can do to fix this? Maybe another api method?


Thank you!

[sub]

I'm not sure why that would be. The server does return the length of the recording in the standard HTTP headers.

For example:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: NextPVR
Connection: Close
Content-Range: bytes 0-138181504/138181504
Content-Length: 138181504
Content-Type: video/MP2T


From knowing the file size, a player would then typically read a bit from the beginning, then a bit from the end, and look at the timestamps from both those spots to determine the duration. It may be something that VLC chose to just not do while using a network stream.

[mvallevand]

There are issues with in progress recordings.

Martin

[sub]

There are issues with in progress recordings.

Martin

Yeah, in progress is a bit different - but I think he's mainly interested in existing recordings.

[sub]

It seems to be limitation of VLC with network streams (at least with transport streams). I can reproduce the problem by putting a .ts recording on my nextpvr.com website (so file served up by apache), and VLC will show an undefined duration. I can see it just starts reading from beginning to end - it never tries to look for the duration.

If you're only interested in playing in VLC, and really want to get the seeking working over http, you could probably hookup some PostProcessing.bat job to convert to mp4 or mkv files. I'm guessing skipping will work with this type of container.

[skogl]

Yes, I am only interested in recordings.

I am seeing the same as you when using vlc and putting the .ts on an apache server. But if I use exoplayer demo the stream is getting correct length when reading from apache server but not directly from npvr.
Also, if I put the recording into another pvr (like dvblink) the length is detectable from vlc as well.

Not sure how to debug vlc, but debugging exoplayer I can see that we try to open the recording and read from the end. Exoplayer expects position to be in the end of file but it seems as if only 56400 bytes are returned. This makes exoplayer throw EOFException. This is from web.log:

2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] Got Web Request (::ffff:192.168.5.2): /live recording=854&client=MyClient
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] StreamNative@1..
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] StreamNative@2
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] StreamNative@3
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] StreamNative@4
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] RollingFile(C:\Users\Public\Videos\Pyjamashjältarna\Pyjamashjältarna_20190328_17001710.ts)..
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] SharedMemoryHelper::Open(): C:\Users\Public\Videos\Pyjamashjältarna\Pyjamashjältarna_20190328_17001710.ts
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] OpenFileMapping: Global\NPVRSlip5c50796a616d6173686ae46c7461726e615f32303139303332385f31373030313731302e7473
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] Unable to find in 'Global', about to check 'Local'
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] Unable to find in either 'Global' or 'Local'
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] About to stream recording: C:\Users\Public\Videos\Pyjamashjältarna\Pyjamashjältarna_20190328_17001710.ts
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] Request had range request
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] Requested Range: bytes=347908288- (564000 bytes)
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] Sent 56400 bytes
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] Sent 56400 bytes
2019-04-09 12:47:35.779 [DEBUG][31] Sent 56400 bytes
2019-04-09 12:47:35.795 [DEBUG][31] Sent 56400 bytes
2019-04-09 12:47:35.811 [DEBUG][31] Sent 56400 bytes
2019-04-09 12:47:35.826 [DEBUG][31] Sent 56400 bytes
2019-04-09 12:47:35.842 [DEBUG][31] Sent 56400 bytes
2019-04-09 12:47:35.842 [DEBUG][31] Sent 56400 bytes
2019-04-09 12:47:35.842 [DEBUG][31] Sent 56400 bytes
2019-04-09 12:47:35.842 [DEBUG][31] Sent 56400 bytes
2019-04-09 12:47:35.842 [DEBUG][31] Sent total of 564000 bytes
2019-04-09 12:47:35.842 [DEBUG][31] RollingFile.Close()
2019-04-09 12:47:37.153 [DEBUG][37] ********** Checking VLC Heartbeat Dictionary
2019-04-09 12:47:37.153 [DEBUG][37] +++++No entries in VLC Heartbeat Dictionary.

[jcole998]

(I wonder if this post will be #6 or #7. Header shows 6 posts but only 5 items.)

[skogl]

I'm just a junior member, my posts need to be moderated first…

[sub]

I'm just a junior member, my posts need to be moderated first…

Only the ones with urls in them.

[skogl]

No comment on the logs? Why is only 56400 bytes returned when trying to read bytes at file end?