RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex
Ah see if the Plex guys didn't fork so far away they could have used XBMC's code. I say that as a massive fan of XBMC for 10 years and a regular users and contributor (so ignore my jest) Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Dave Addey Sent: 29 September 2009 17:53 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Hi Ian (and other posters), Many thanks for all the suggestions and ideas - much appreciated. I had originally tried to get the iPlayer RTMP streams playing inside a third-party Flash player, but nothing I tried would get them to play. I did also take a look at the XBMC plugin for inspiration (Plex is forked from XBMC), but they seem to be using their own proprietary RTMP player, which isn't easily available for us to use in Plex. In the end I gave up with trying to get the raw streams to work outside of the original flash player. Instead, I'm using Plex's rather neat webkit page-cropping approach, which finds the iPlayer swf file on a page loaded from bbc.co.uk/iplayer and displays the page in cropped form to just show the video part of the player. I also did some digging around in the iPlayer javascript files and found that the iPlayer swf file has a Javascript API, which I've taken advantage of for playing and pausing playback, and for tracking progress via JS callbacks. It's all working rather well (until the iPlayer site next changes at least), using the RSS and JSON feeds to obtain the programme info and then using this webkit approach for playback. If you'd like to give it a try, you can download Plex here (it's open source and free): http://www.plexapp.com/ The iPlayer plugin can be downloaded and installed from the in-app App Store. It would still be good to access the RTMP streams directly - and this would probably be more reliable in the long term. Is there any magic involved in getting them to play? Has anyone found a third-party flash-based player (ideally with useful JavaScript hooks) for doing so? Thanks again for the help! - Dave From: Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk Reply-To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:55:23 +0100 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Hi Dave, Have a look at the XBMC iplayer plugin which you should be able to leverage. http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-iplayerv2/ I use it personally to watch iplayer from my home media centre (XBMC 2.1) Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 29 September 2009 07:06 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex 2009/9/28 Dave Addey listma...@addey.com Hi Backstage, I've been working on fixing the iPlayer plugin for the Mac OS X media centre app Plex. The updated plugin seems to be working pretty well by reading the BBC RSS feeds and JSON feeds, but I have a few questions: 1) Are there any issues with integrating iPlayer into an app like Plex? (I'm not trying to work around the geographical restrictions on iPlayer access, I should add - I'm just providing a wrapper for the iPlayer flash player from within Plex.) I'm aware that doing so could be likely to break at any time if the iPlayer site were to change. (You can view Plex here: http://www.plexapp.com/) Yes, this is the make your stuff with our stuff BBC Backstage line. 2) Assuming this isn't a problem legally, is there anywhere I can find a list of all of the potential subcategories / subgenres used by iPlayer? I can see a list of those with at least one current programme assigned to them, but I don't know if this list is complete. For example, Children's Activities, Children's Animation, etc. I think you have to work it out from what's out there. 3) Is there a feed (RSS / JSON / something else) which can be used for searching? Yes, do a search from the iPlayer page and scrape it for URLs. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=S http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=Manor earchTerm Thanks in advance for any help! - Dave. -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage
Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex
Heh! I've only just really explored both, having scraped along for ages with a hacked Apple TV. But now my Mac Mini has arrived, I'm trying to shape it into the media centre I've always dreamed of, hence my work on the iPlayer plugin. And Plex has a prettier default UI that XBMC on OS X, so I got distracted by its shiny shininess. You should give it a try :) - Dave From: Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk Reply-To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:41:29 +0100 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Ah see if the Plex guys didn't fork so far away they could have used XBMC's code. I say that as a massive fan of XBMC for 10 years and a regular users and contributor (so ignore my jest) Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Dave Addey Sent: 29 September 2009 17:53 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Hi Ian (and other posters), Many thanks for all the suggestions and ideas - much appreciated. I had originally tried to get the iPlayer RTMP streams playing inside a third-party Flash player, but nothing I tried would get them to play. I did also take a look at the XBMC plugin for inspiration (Plex is forked from XBMC), but they seem to be using their own proprietary RTMP player, which isn't easily available for us to use in Plex. In the end I gave up with trying to get the raw streams to work outside of the original flash player. Instead, I'm using Plex's rather neat webkit page-cropping approach, which finds the iPlayer swf file on a page loaded from bbc.co.uk/iplayer and displays the page in cropped form to just show the video part of the player. I also did some digging around in the iPlayer javascript files and found that the iPlayer swf file has a Javascript API, which I've taken advantage of for playing and pausing playback, and for tracking progress via JS callbacks. It's all working rather well (until the iPlayer site next changes at least), using the RSS and JSON feeds to obtain the programme info and then using this webkit approach for playback. If you'd like to give it a try, you can download Plex here (it's open source and free): http://www.plexapp.com/ The iPlayer plugin can be downloaded and installed from the in-app App Store. It would still be good to access the RTMP streams directly - and this would probably be more reliable in the long term. Is there any magic involved in getting them to play? Has anyone found a third-party flash-based player (ideally with useful JavaScript hooks) for doing so? Thanks again for the help! - Dave From: Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk Reply-To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:55:23 +0100 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Hi Dave, Have a look at the XBMC iplayer plugin which you should be able to leverage. http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-iplayerv2/ I use it personally to watch iplayer from my home media centre (XBMC 2.1) Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 29 September 2009 07:06 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex 2009/9/28 Dave Addey listma...@addey.com Hi Backstage, I've been working on fixing the iPlayer plugin for the Mac OS X media centre app Plex. The updated plugin seems to be working pretty well by reading the BBC RSS feeds and JSON feeds, but I have a few questions: 1) Are there any issues with integrating iPlayer into an app like Plex? (I'm not trying to work around the geographical restrictions on iPlayer access, I should add - I'm just providing a wrapper for the iPlayer flash player from within Plex.) I'm aware that doing so could be likely to break at any time if the iPlayer site were to change. (You can view Plex here: http://www.plexapp.com/) Yes, this is the make your stuff with our stuff BBC Backstage line. 2) Assuming this isn't a problem legally, is there anywhere I can find a list of all of the potential subcategories / subgenres used by iPlayer? I can see a list of those with at least one current programme assigned to them, but I don't know if this list is complete. For example, Children's Activities, Children's Animation, etc. I think you have to work it out from what's out there. 3) Is there a feed (RSS / JSON / something else) which can be used
RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex
My UI on XBMC is stunning, actually it's the same as Plex - http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubicgarden/tags/xbmc I use to run XBMC on my Xbox and still have it for backup. Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Dave Addey Sent: 30 September 2009 16:50 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Heh! I've only just really explored both, having scraped along for ages with a hacked Apple TV. But now my Mac Mini has arrived, I'm trying to shape it into the media centre I've always dreamed of, hence my work on the iPlayer plugin. And Plex has a prettier default UI that XBMC on OS X, so I got distracted by its shiny shininess. You should give it a try :) - Dave From: Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk Reply-To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:41:29 +0100 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Ah see if the Plex guys didn't fork so far away they could have used XBMC's code. I say that as a massive fan of XBMC for 10 years and a regular users and contributor (so ignore my jest) Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Dave Addey Sent: 29 September 2009 17:53 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Hi Ian (and other posters), Many thanks for all the suggestions and ideas - much appreciated. I had originally tried to get the iPlayer RTMP streams playing inside a third-party Flash player, but nothing I tried would get them to play. I did also take a look at the XBMC plugin for inspiration (Plex is forked from XBMC), but they seem to be using their own proprietary RTMP player, which isn't easily available for us to use in Plex. In the end I gave up with trying to get the raw streams to work outside of the original flash player. Instead, I'm using Plex's rather neat webkit page-cropping approach, which finds the iPlayer swf file on a page loaded from bbc.co.uk/iplayer and displays the page in cropped form to just show the video part of the player. I also did some digging around in the iPlayer javascript files and found that the iPlayer swf file has a Javascript API, which I've taken advantage of for playing and pausing playback, and for tracking progress via JS callbacks. It's all working rather well (until the iPlayer site next changes at least), using the RSS and JSON feeds to obtain the programme info and then using this webkit approach for playback. If you'd like to give it a try, you can download Plex here (it's open source and free): http://www.plexapp.com/ The iPlayer plugin can be downloaded and installed from the in-app App Store. It would still be good to access the RTMP streams directly - and this would probably be more reliable in the long term. Is there any magic involved in getting them to play? Has anyone found a third-party flash-based player (ideally with useful JavaScript hooks) for doing so? Thanks again for the help! - Dave From: Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk Reply-To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:55:23 +0100 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Hi Dave, Have a look at the XBMC iplayer plugin which you should be able to leverage. http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-iplayerv2/ I use it personally to watch iplayer from my home media centre (XBMC 2.1) Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 29 September 2009 07:06 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex 2009/9/28 Dave Addey listma...@addey.com Hi Backstage, I've been working on fixing the iPlayer plugin for the Mac OS X media centre app Plex. The updated plugin seems to be working pretty well by reading the BBC RSS feeds and JSON feeds, but I have a few questions: 1) Are there any issues with integrating iPlayer into an app like Plex? (I'm not trying to work around the geographical restrictions on iPlayer access, I should add - I'm just providing a wrapper for the iPlayer flash player from within Plex.) I'm aware that doing so could be likely to break at any time if the iPlayer site were to change. (You can view Plex here: http
Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex
So it is (stunning), and so it is (the same) :) I should have given XBMC more of a try. Ah well. Dave. From: Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk Reply-To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:59:23 +0100 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex My UI on XBMC is stunning, actually it's the same as Plex - http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubicgarden/tags/xbmc I use to run XBMC on my Xbox and still have it for backup. Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Dave Addey Sent: 30 September 2009 16:50 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Heh! I've only just really explored both, having scraped along for ages with a hacked Apple TV. But now my Mac Mini has arrived, I'm trying to shape it into the media centre I've always dreamed of, hence my work on the iPlayer plugin. And Plex has a prettier default UI that XBMC on OS X, so I got distracted by its shiny shininess. You should give it a try :) - Dave From: Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk Reply-To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:41:29 +0100 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Ah see if the Plex guys didn't fork so far away they could have used XBMC's code. I say that as a massive fan of XBMC for 10 years and a regular users and contributor (so ignore my jest) Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Dave Addey Sent: 29 September 2009 17:53 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Hi Ian (and other posters), Many thanks for all the suggestions and ideas - much appreciated. I had originally tried to get the iPlayer RTMP streams playing inside a third-party Flash player, but nothing I tried would get them to play. I did also take a look at the XBMC plugin for inspiration (Plex is forked from XBMC), but they seem to be using their own proprietary RTMP player, which isn't easily available for us to use in Plex. In the end I gave up with trying to get the raw streams to work outside of the original flash player. Instead, I'm using Plex's rather neat webkit page-cropping approach, which finds the iPlayer swf file on a page loaded from bbc.co.uk/iplayer and displays the page in cropped form to just show the video part of the player. I also did some digging around in the iPlayer javascript files and found that the iPlayer swf file has a Javascript API, which I've taken advantage of for playing and pausing playback, and for tracking progress via JS callbacks. It's all working rather well (until the iPlayer site next changes at least), using the RSS and JSON feeds to obtain the programme info and then using this webkit approach for playback. If you'd like to give it a try, you can download Plex here (it's open source and free): http://www.plexapp.com/ The iPlayer plugin can be downloaded and installed from the in-app App Store. It would still be good to access the RTMP streams directly - and this would probably be more reliable in the long term. Is there any magic involved in getting them to play? Has anyone found a third-party flash-based player (ideally with useful JavaScript hooks) for doing so? Thanks again for the help! - Dave From: Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk Reply-To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:55:23 +0100 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Hi Dave, Have a look at the XBMC iplayer plugin which you should be able to leverage. http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-iplayerv2/ I use it personally to watch iplayer from my home media centre (XBMC 2.1) Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 29 September 2009 07:06 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex 2009/9/28 Dave Addey listma...@addey.com Hi Backstage, I've been working on fixing the iPlayer plugin for the Mac OS X media centre app Plex. The updated plugin seems to be working pretty well by reading the BBC RSS feeds and JSON feeds, but I have a few questions: 1) Are there any issues with integrating iPlayer into an app
Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex
2009/9/28 Dave Addey listma...@addey.com Hi Backstage, I’ve been working on fixing the iPlayer plugin for the Mac OS X media centre app “Plex”. The updated plugin seems to be working pretty well by reading the BBC RSS feeds and JSON feeds, but I have a few questions: 1) Are there any issues with integrating iPlayer into an app like Plex? (I’m not trying to work around the geographical restrictions on iPlayer access, I should add – I’m just providing a wrapper for the iPlayer flash player from within Plex.) I’m aware that doing so could be likely to break at any time if the iPlayer site were to change. (You can view Plex here: http://www.plexapp.com/) Yes, this is the make your stuff with our stuff BBC Backstage line. 2) Assuming this isn’t a problem legally, is there anywhere I can find a list of all of the potential subcategories / subgenres used by iPlayer? I can see a list of those with at least one current programme assigned to them, but I don’t know if this list is complete. For example, Children’s Activities, Children’s Animation, etc. I think you have to work it out from what's out there. 3) Is there a feed (RSS / JSON / something else) which can be used for searching? Yes, do a search from the iPlayer page and scrape it for URLs. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=Shttp://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=Manor earchTerm Thanks in advance for any help! - Dave. -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex
Hi Dave, Have a look at the XBMC iplayer plugin which you should be able to leverage. http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-iplayerv2/ I use it personally to watch iplayer from my home media centre (XBMC 2.1) Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 29 September 2009 07:06 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex 2009/9/28 Dave Addey listma...@addey.com Hi Backstage, I've been working on fixing the iPlayer plugin for the Mac OS X media centre app Plex. The updated plugin seems to be working pretty well by reading the BBC RSS feeds and JSON feeds, but I have a few questions: 1) Are there any issues with integrating iPlayer into an app like Plex? (I'm not trying to work around the geographical restrictions on iPlayer access, I should add - I'm just providing a wrapper for the iPlayer flash player from within Plex.) I'm aware that doing so could be likely to break at any time if the iPlayer site were to change. (You can view Plex here: http://www.plexapp.com/) Yes, this is the make your stuff with our stuff BBC Backstage line. 2) Assuming this isn't a problem legally, is there anywhere I can find a list of all of the potential subcategories / subgenres used by iPlayer? I can see a list of those with at least one current programme assigned to them, but I don't know if this list is complete. For example, Children's Activities, Children's Animation, etc. I think you have to work it out from what's out there. 3) Is there a feed (RSS / JSON / something else) which can be used for searching? Yes, do a search from the iPlayer page and scrape it for URLs. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=S http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=Manor earchTerm Thanks in advance for any help! - Dave. -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex
I think I replied to this on a non-list-registered address last night. Discussions around iPlayer seem to hit a taboo around about the point where you try and build something which displays the video outside of its original enclosure. When the iPhone version launched there was a lot of excited discussion about that and we got told to keep it quiet on here, so I set up a wiki so developers building unofficial iPlayer clients could share notes: http://beebhack.wikia.com/ Hopefully there should be some useful info on there for you, and once you publish your app you can add it to our list of unofficial clients. If you want to borrow code from apps already out there using metadata, get_iplayer consumes just about any audio and video data and metadata you'd care to mention: http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer/ Please add to the wiki if you dig up anything we've missed. Cheers, Iain On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 9:46 PM, Dave Addey listma...@addey.com wrote: Hi Backstage, I’ve been working on fixing the iPlayer plugin for the Mac OS X media centre app “Plex”. The updated plugin seems to be working pretty well by reading the BBC RSS feeds and JSON feeds, but I have a few questions: 1) Are there any issues with integrating iPlayer into an app like Plex? (I’m not trying to work around the geographical restrictions on iPlayer access, I should add – I’m just providing a wrapper for the iPlayer flash player from within Plex.) I’m aware that doing so could be likely to break at any time if the iPlayer site were to change. (You can view Plex here: http://www.plexapp.com/) 2) Assuming this isn’t a problem legally, is there anywhere I can find a list of all of the potential subcategories / subgenres used by iPlayer? I can see a list of those with at least one current programme assigned to them, but I don’t know if this list is complete. For example, Children’s Activities, Children’s Animation, etc. 3) Is there a feed (RSS / JSON / something else) which can be used for searching? Thanks in advance for any help! - Dave. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex
Have a look at the XBMC iplayer plugin which you should be able to leverage. I think you mean use. Or possibly reuse. You do not, under any circumstances, mean leverage. That's utterly meaningless. We have words in English to cover most eventualities without misusing buzzwords. Cheers, Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex
Hi Ian (and other posters), Many thanks for all the suggestions and ideas - much appreciated. I had originally tried to get the iPlayer RTMP streams playing inside a third-party Flash player, but nothing I tried would get them to play. I did also take a look at the XBMC plugin for inspiration (Plex is forked from XBMC), but they seem to be using their own proprietary RTMP player, which isn't easily available for us to use in Plex. In the end I gave up with trying to get the raw streams to work outside of the original flash player. Instead, I'm using Plex's rather neat webkit page-cropping approach, which finds the iPlayer swf file on a page loaded from bbc.co.uk/iplayer and displays the page in cropped form to just show the video part of the player. I also did some digging around in the iPlayer javascript files and found that the iPlayer swf file has a Javascript API, which I've taken advantage of for playing and pausing playback, and for tracking progress via JS callbacks. It's all working rather well (until the iPlayer site next changes at least), using the RSS and JSON feeds to obtain the programme info and then using this webkit approach for playback. If you'd like to give it a try, you can download Plex here (it's open source and free): http://www.plexapp.com/ The iPlayer plugin can be downloaded and installed from the in-app App Store. It would still be good to access the RTMP streams directly - and this would probably be more reliable in the long term. Is there any magic involved in getting them to play? Has anyone found a third-party flash-based player (ideally with useful JavaScript hooks) for doing so? Thanks again for the help! - Dave From: Ian Forrester ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk Reply-To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:55:23 +0100 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex Hi Dave, Have a look at the XBMC iplayer plugin which you should be able to leverage. http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-iplayerv2/ I use it personally to watch iplayer from my home media centre (XBMC 2.1) Secret[] Private[x] Public[] Ian Forrester Senior Backstage Producer, BBC RD 01612444063 | 07711913293 ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth Sent: 29 September 2009 07:06 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex 2009/9/28 Dave Addey listma...@addey.com Hi Backstage, I've been working on fixing the iPlayer plugin for the Mac OS X media centre app Plex. The updated plugin seems to be working pretty well by reading the BBC RSS feeds and JSON feeds, but I have a few questions: 1) Are there any issues with integrating iPlayer into an app like Plex? (I'm not trying to work around the geographical restrictions on iPlayer access, I should add - I'm just providing a wrapper for the iPlayer flash player from within Plex.) I'm aware that doing so could be likely to break at any time if the iPlayer site were to change. (You can view Plex here: http://www.plexapp.com/) Yes, this is the make your stuff with our stuff BBC Backstage line. 2) Assuming this isn't a problem legally, is there anywhere I can find a list of all of the potential subcategories / subgenres used by iPlayer? I can see a list of those with at least one current programme assigned to them, but I don't know if this list is complete. For example, Children's Activities, Children's Animation, etc. I think you have to work it out from what's out there. 3) Is there a feed (RSS / JSON / something else) which can be used for searching? Yes, do a search from the iPlayer page and scrape it for URLs. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=S http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=Manor earchTerm Thanks in advance for any help! - Dave. -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
