Playing the TWiT Live video stream

[RADicaLMMS]

Is there any way to play the TWiT live video stream with Winamp?

http://bglive-a.bitgravity.com/twit/live/low

Thanks.

[CJ_Man]

Hi RADicaLMMS,

I've never had any luck with this stream in any media player. The only one that does anything with it at all is Media Player Classic, which shows a still of the first frame it gets, that's it.

VLC, like Winamp, does nothing with it. All 3 players actually pull the stream okay, you can see the data flow in a network monitor, but they just can't display it.

Media Player Classic shows it's properties as:
Video: MPEG4 Video (H264) 720x416 [Video]
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 44100Hz mono 64Kbps [Audio]

[RADicaLMMS]

Hi CJ_Man,

Odd you say that, VLC version 1.1.5 is the only media player that's able to play both low and high bitrate video feeds, and I use pretty much all it the time to live view the 400 Kbps stream for hours, because I just have a 1 Mbps ADSL connection. Even the 1 Mbps stream works fine.

http://wiki.twit*****wiki/TWiT_Live#Streaming_with_VLC

[Smelter]

flash player can play it too.

I have no problems playing it with my custom flash player in development.

[CJ_Man]

Hi again RADicaLMMS,

Thanks for prompting me to check my VLC version. I was running 1.0.5 so I dumped it and installed the latest.

It now plays the stream fine. Still no luck with Winamp (or MPC) though.

[alanwebber]

Thanks RADicaLMMS the VLC link you gave shows a high stream that works. For me it is quite choppy so not smooth - maybe I will try in my laptops is this machine has XP and that one W7. Although imagine wil not look again as never heard of twit network looks like not many people do shows. Seems they are just using Skype so I suppose anyone can make a show like on shoutcast?

Anyway was looking for and answer to a different question and found this thread. Happy New year

[CJ_Man]

Originally Posted by alanwebber

Although imagine wil not look again as never heard of twit network looks like not many people do shows. Seems they are just using Skype so I suppose anyone can make a show like on shoutcast?

They are actually a pretty professional outfit. Get good sponsors and actually make a profit from podcasting. See http://www.twit*****

The network is in recess atm but crank up again this coming week with the regular shows as well as live coverage from CES which I'm looking forward to.

For the live schedule see: https://www.google.com/calendar/embe...&gsessionid=OK

[alanwebber]

I see - so I clicked on link on the home page and the video opened on a page using Quicktime as I guess I have Firefox set up that way but the player works smoothly - thanks

Actually I see they just play the stream - as I started it also on my laptop and it started from the beginning. So I guess you could just download it like you can with lots of shows using iTunes.

[CJ_Man]

Just following up. Have got the TwiT stream playing in Winamp now.

You need to add m4v to the Directshow filter list if it isn't there already and add ?.m4v to the stream URL, so it becomes:

http://bglive-a.bitgravity.com/twit/live/low?.m4v

Winamp shows a bizarre time count and incorrect bitrate but it plays fine.

[RADicaLMMS]

Thanks for sharing CJ_Man, had 50% luck with Winamp, ffdshow is decoding audio now, but still no luck with video. It's streaming down smoothly, because I can see the bits flowing down in my NetMeter.

I suspect the de-muxer (FLV splitter) isn't passing along video to ffdshow's decoder.

[CJ_Man]

Originally Posted by RADicaLMMS

I suspect the de-muxer (FLV splitter) isn't passing along video to ffdshow's decoder.

Unless you have the Pro version of Winamp then the MP4 plugin doesn't do video anyway so make sure that M4V is NOT on the MP4 Demuxer extension list, it should just be on the Directshow list.

You will need to have an alternative MP4 splitter such as Gabest installed.

Here is what the file info shows under Currently Used Filters when playing the stream for me:

ffdshow Video decoder
MP3 Decoder DMO
MPC - FLV Splitter (Gabest)


Note: If you are using Windows7 then this can be a very useful little tool:
http://www.codecguide.com/windows7_p...er_tweaker.htm

[RADicaLMMS]

Troubleshooting this has been so much fun :-) Here's how I got it working on my WinXP system.

1. Un-installed FLVSplitter version 1.0.0.4_nt if that doesn't work, de-register using this switch C:\Program Files\FLVSplitter>regsvr32 /u FLVSplitter.ax from the command prompt (check your install path).

2. Downloaded the latest version from SourceForge.net - Home / DirectShow Filters / FLV Splitter 1.0.0.5

3. Manually registered FLVSplitter.ax using this switch C:\Program Files\FLVSplitter_20090428>regsvr32 flvsplitter.ax (check your install path) from the command prompt, because it didn't work from Run (Windows+R).

These are my currently used filters:
ffdshow Video Decoder
FLV Splitter
MPEG Layer-3 Decoder

I suspect the older version of FLVSplitter v1.0.0.4 wasn't working properly. Even though it was running properly in Winamp with other FLV media.

The irony of all this is, I found the correct download link from the same Wikipedia article I started and referenced in 2008 I'm thinking of posting our findings on the TWiT Live Wiki, but it seems like too much work even if for tech. tinkerers.

[RADicaLMMS]

Just want to add, removing MP4 from the Nullsoft MP4 Demuxer, broke regular Icecast MP3 streaming. Re-adding MP4, fixed the issue. Everything else is working fine.