Streaming video to Boxee

[eteles]

Hi All,

I need to develop an application on boxee that basically plays a video that is streamed through VLC media player. The video window will need to have start, pause, fast forward and backwards buttons so the user can control the playback.

Can you please help me on which protocols to use on VLC to stream the video (http, udp, rtp?...) and how to write the code to get this video on the application?

Thanks in advance

[darcilicious]

Have you taken a look at the developer docs yet?

http://developer.boxee.tv/Main_Page

[eteles]

Hi Darcilicious,

Yes of course. The developer docs do not mention VLC at all, and I am having trouble setting up a basic video window that gets the video through an external url.

Help?

Thanks.

[darcilicious]

So assuming you're using http streaming, this wasn't of any help? http://developer.boxee.tv/Examples:_...e_Streaming%29

[darcilicious]

erm, that might not help, after reading it's based on apple's stuff.

[darcilicious]

Actually, based on this thread http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.ph...ght=vlc+stream it should work.

[eteles]

Ye just as you mentioned the first post is for HTLS. It is ok except I dont see support for that in VLC and I miss the controls on the video.

I will have a look at the second link you posted.

Do you have any code snippets for simples video windows on the boxee?

Very appreciated for your help.

[eteles]

OK so after some long digging around, I managed to get a video streamed from vlc through HTTP protocol into my boxee client application.

1- Stream the video from VLC to localhost (for testing purposes, later on can get the stream from other IP's):

2 - Create a RSS file according to boxee RSS specs that points to the previous URL of the video. This feed I hosted on my own pc through Apache web server, making it available at http://localhost/....xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:boxee="http://boxee.tv/spec/rss/" xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">
    <channel>
        <title>Foot ZON available matches</title>
        <description>An online movie theater. Watch and enjoy.</description>
        <link>http://movies.com</link>
        <webmaster>support@movies.com</webmaster>
        <lastBuildDate>Tue Aug 17 02:33:43 -0700 2010</lastBuildDate>
        <ttl>48</ttl>
        <item>
            <media:content url="http://127.0.0.1:8080" type="video/quicktime" />
            <title>Porto x Setubal - Taça da Liga 2012</title>
            <description>Futebol</description>
            <media:thumbnail url="http://bp0.blogger.com/_1FUSMyGOEmA/R1v1KyDAMoI/AAAAAAAABW4/Ext4aSi4brA/s400/taca_portugal.jpg"/>
            <boxee:media-type type="movie" expression="full" name="feature"/>
            <media:category scheme="urn:imdb">tt9830498</media:category>
            <boxee:release-date>2012</boxee:release-date>
            <media:category scheme="urn:boxee:genre">Sports</media:category>
            <media:restriction type="country" relationship="allow">US AF AX AL DZ AS AO AI A1 AQ AG AR AM AW AP AZ BH BD BB BY BZ BJ BT BO BA BW BV BR IO BN BG BF BI KH CM CV KY CF TD CL CN CX CC CO KM CG CK CR CI HR CU CY CZ DJ DM DO CD EC EG SV GQ ER EE ET EU FK FO FJ GA GM GE GH GI GR GL GD GU GT GG GN GW GY HT HM VA HN HU IS IN ID IR IQ IM IL IT JM JP JE JO KZ KE KI KW KG LA LV LB LS LR LY LT MO MK MG MW MY MV ML MT MH MR MU MX FM MD MN ME MS MA MZ MM NA NR NP NL AN NI NE NG NU NF KP MP OM PK PW PS PA PG PY PE PH PN PL PT QA RU RW SH KN LC VC WS SM ST A2 SA SN RS SC SL SG SK SI SB SO ZA GS KR ES LK SD SR SJ SZ SY TW TJ TZ TH TL TG TK TO TT TN TR TM TC TV UG UA AE UM UY UZ VU VE VN VG VI EH YE ZM ZW RO DK FI NO SE</media:restriction>
        </item>
    </channel>
</rss>

3 - Call the feed through the python file:

import mc
listItem = mc.ListItem(mc.ListItem.MEDIA_VIDEO_UNKNOWN)
listItem.SetPath('http://127.0.0.1:8080/')
listItem.SetLabel('My Test Video')
listItem.SetContentType('video/quicktime')
mc.GetPlayer().Play(listItem)

4 - Create the list item in the main.xml for the video link to be presented:

        <control type="list" id="120">
           <posy>3</posy>
            <posx>15</posx>
            <width>700</width>
            <height>394</height>
            <scrolltime>200</scrolltime>
            <orientation>vertical</orientation>
            <itemlayout width="700" height="40">
                <control type="label">
                    <posx>10</posx>
                    <width>680</width>
                    <height>40</height>
                    <font>font23</font>
                    <aligny>center</aligny>
                    <label>$INFO[ListItem.Label]</label>
                    <textcolor>grey</textcolor>
                </control>
            </itemlayout>
            <focusedlayout width="600" height="40">
                <control type="label">
                    <posx>10</posx>
                    <width>680</width>
                    <height>40</height>
                    <font>font23</font>
                    <aligny>center</aligny>
                    <label>$INFO[ListItem.Label]</label>
                    <textcolor>white</textcolor>
                    <scroll>true</scroll>
                </control>
            </focusedlayout>
            <content type="url" url="rss://127.0.0.1/footrss.xml">
            </content>
        </control>

My problem now is: I cannot control the video this way (forward, back) since it is a "live" http stream. How can I achieve this?