Sid Sidberry Reads

Plugins for Pidgin (the IM client formerly known as Gaim) that update the status message to show the currently playing track, somehow getting it from your music player. Found so far, in what I think is the descending order of something no particular order:

Pidgin “now playing” — updating status messages to song being played « The Lumber Room

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I decided to document my last event. don’t know what this falls under, but hopefully it helps others.

so lets get started

the event

I was contacted by the client to do a live webcast for a horse show. I would setup everything needed prior to the event, and also come to the event location for a day and a half to insure everything ran smoothly, was setup, etc.

the setup

We used fms installed on a media temple extreme server. The extreme server was to be used initially because we didn’t know how many users would be watching. if and when traffic to the feed started to elevate we’d contact mt to upgrade to a nitro server.

for broadcasting we used flash media encoder

day one

I arrived at the event to learn we still needed to pick up some of the equipment to access the video feed. We got to circuit city (no fry’s nearby) and decided on the WinTV-HVR-950 model 1145 from hauppauge.

after arriving at the event, this is the day before the actual event, we found out the a/v people wouldn’t arrive till the morning of the event so the day was pretty much spent making sure everything was running, installed, etc.

day two – seehorse politics

day two started off badly to say the least. the company doing the video “seehorse” apparently had some issues because they had originally wanted to do the web feed. this lead to us receiving the feed used for internal broadcasting which completely sucked and had no audio, we dealt with this the best we could.

luckily they also had brought in outside video people to assist with the filming of the event. Namely Thomas “Rick” Rommarito. I can’t say enough about Rick Rommarito. Rick saw our feed and told us not to worry. Rick ran us a direct feed to the video, audio, and was a great help. keep in mind that seehorse video’s staff had pretty much told me and the company that had hired me to blow off (with out saying it of course). we we’re pretty much ignored by the seehorse video team. so thank you again to Thomas “Rick” Rommarito for everything he did. He is the only reason we got a good video feed or audio. If you found this article while searching on seehorse, please don’t use them, contact rick directly at : rickbommarito[at][sbcglobal][dot][net]. Very knowledgeable a/v guy.

day two – the server

so half way through the day we finally had a good video and audio feed, after a few compatibility issues and tweaking we we’re up and running. here are screen shots from both fms admin, and top to show you how we’re on resources. the cpu usage for the fms process is wrong, so look at the actual cpu usages. for any one interested we maintained about 220-230 concurrent users throughout the day. once that number started to increase is when the server started having issues (end of day). I’d say keep users at about 200 concurrent if your going to be on an extreme.

early in the day we realized we’d need to upgrade to the nitro asap. I contacted mt, and was told we could be upgraded by the following morning. near the end of the day when i contacted mt again for an eta we found out all nitros were sold out for at least a week.

*update* – turns out there was a communication issue. one of the techs had a nitro on standby, but the night shift wasn’t in the loop. found this out the following week

edgecast to the rescue

with our upgrade plan now shot we needed a new host. after limelight told us there’s a 7 day wait, and Akamai seems to have outsourced their entire operation. speaking with someone at Akamai was just pointless, not to mention I didn’t hear back from a sales rep for two days, and that was also outsourced.

*update – I received a call from their guys two weeks later, asking what type of service i want!*

Edgecast was a different story, they knew we we’re 3 steps from being screwed and had us up and running within hours, I’ve already spoken on them in a previous post, but i wanted to make sure i mentioned them again. it normally takes a few days to get everything setup, but james seriously helped us out.

day three

day three had us with a brand new video feed, a new feed to computer setup, and edgecast streaming.

first off the edgecast streaming is great, any future events will use them, screw maintaining our own fms servers.

by the end of the day everything was finally running smoothly, and i got a flight heading back home

issues
our biggest issue was video, which luckily for us Thomas Rick Rommarito handled that.

next up was our server, we’d previously spoken to mt to make sure the nitro was ready on standby. *update – see previous update * I can’t be mad at mt though, as they have proven over and over again to be rock solid and caring. they even contacted me twice after about the nitro issue. edgecast was amazing. their support, network, and customer service was amazing. both myself and the client we’re happy with them, and now the client will be rolling out an entire service using the edgecast system, which leaves me happy to build with their system again.

after those two major issues the reoccurring issue was stream quality. horse shows are very motion intensive, and although we had a good feed, we didn’t have good lighting at all. i recommend any hauppauge product, because I use them at home, and every other encoder tested lacked the features it had. we tryed a few different one’s at the clients request, but in the end always went back to the hauppauge.

to overcome some of the lighting issues i used hauppauge’s built in features to adjust the feed which helped produce a better feed. the client had purchased a number of other encoders because he wanted to split the video / audio with another device. I’ll never again use a pyro product. once we started using the pyro adapter it created nothing but issues.

so once we had the hauppauge device back as the video source i was able to tweak settings and get a decent quality stream that had little lag, good motion, and decent to to good quality. I found the sweet spot to be at a 380 bit rate. the client wanted clear motion, but also needed the horses and people to be of good quality also staying around 380 offered the best motion and quality without being to bandwidth heavy. we broadcasted at a custom 16:9 resolution.

another issue was that the client had an outsource team that developed, and maintained the broadcast site. any changes had to go directly through them. they’re a good group, but often the need to contact them for changes, as well as time differences we’re frustrating. I tried to use the player the client already had in place, but in the end just hacked out a quick and simple player when i finally got completely frustrated.

in the end

so what did i learn? motion intensive events are a different experience than non motion intensive ones. don’t use pyro products. use edgecast, the quality of our stream when using their network was worth it.

I’ve normally ran our own fms server for broadcasts events. I won’t ever again, the cost and benefits of edgecasts service just makes setting up and maintaining a fms server pointless. It’s less of a headache, and you don’t need to monitor anything. In the end the cost of using edgecast is less when you add the man hours, maintenance, headaches, chain smoking, etc.

media temple dv extremes are good for around 200-210 concurrent users, after than your gonna start feeling it.

also something I realized : widescreen formats (16:9) are better then 4:3 for live streams. I found that when using a wide screen format the viewing experience was alot better, especially at smaller sizes than traditional 4:3 format. i was able to reduce the viewer and stream size by going to widescreen, and the viewing experience was actually better.

Server Resources

that’s all folks

yes i know there’s more than goes into live streams, but this is just me giving a brief overview from an experience. hopefully this helps someone, and wasn’t just good intent, bad execution

Sid

If you’d like to see the event streams recorded check out : http://www.iequine.com/

A client is looking for advertisers on a gamer / role player site with 2-3 mill+ hits per month. no porn, or adult martiel. If interested contact me and I’ll put you in contact with them.

Greg

I forgot how to active video smoothing in an flvplayback component, learned it again here

Andrew Wason from Motionbox Inc.
sent me the following workaround, which allows you to activate video
smoothing for FLVPlayback components (in this case the instance
FLVPlayer):

 
Empire Dev Blog – Julian Pscheid: FLVPlayback Video Smoothing

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the documentation was a little confusing.

for broadcasting use the url provided for publishing with out the trailing /

so if your publishing point is : rtmp://fmsbcastserverurl/20xxxx/ , use rtmp://fmsserverurl/20xxxx

to view your stream use the player url without the stream name (that got me for a bit). their documentation says to include you stream name, don’t.

so if your player url is rtmp://fmsviewingserverurl/20xxxx/examplestream

change it to rtmp://fmsviewingserverurl/20xxxx and use that in your netconnection

everything else works as normal set your stream ids, etc. Also the jw flv player is fully compatible with this: http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player

just add the following to your swfobject call for the player :

so.addVariable(“file”, “rtmp://fmsviewingserverurl/20xxxx”);
so.addVariable(“id”, “yourstreamid”);

enjoy, sid

*update, forgot to mention if your using the flvplayer component the just follow their guide*

THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN SHUTDOWN, CEASED, SHOT, STABBED, ETC

Why?

I’m shutting down this project due to spam concerns, lack of time, and because it can be done a lot better.

Next Steps

http://myspaceapi.info It’s not live, and i have no idea when i’ll start or finish it, but i’m aiming for an end of the year launch. I’ve realized a lot of flaws in both the execution and direction of this project, and will release a web based service / api that i hope better meets the actual needs of users vs a class of functions i toss together as time permits i hope to release a full fledged api for myspace. a big thanx to Design Is Fuel. They’ve pointed me into a much better direction and i think everyone will be happy with the results.

the class as it stands is open source – basically that means everything you can download from this page is yours and the web’s.

To everyone that contributed : Don’t worry i’m axing the entire class and working from the ground up. but please send me your info if it’s not listed so i can add it. once the api gets up i’ll release a developers resource.

—–here’s the old page

This version is released as is.

After trying to play catch up with myspace i’ve chosen to rewrite the entire class. this should hopefully allow for a better application. this version was released on june 18, 2007, and is the last version to be released before the rewrite.

You’ll notice this version includes what is the start of documentation. from this date forward i’ll include the entire documentation site as part of the zip.

Project Page

This will be the permanent page for this project from now on.
http://elsid.net/myspace-access-class/

What is the MySpace Access Class?
The access class is a php4/php5 class to allow anyone to access myspace remotely. It is not a proxy service.

Requirements?
php4/php5, curl

Demo / Documentation : http://myspacedemo.elsid.net

File : http://myspacedemo.elsid.net/accessClass.zip

Features

• blog posting
• comment posting
• friendslist navigation
• myspace navigation
• music player extraction
• functions to pull data from user page
• error support (includes php errors)
• friend adding
• settings for debugging mode, error displaying and recovery
• logs out of myspace at close
• functions for collecting hashes, hidden fields, etc.
• url tokens are automatically extracted / included
• captha functions (needs testing)
• bulletin posting

Who makes this?

Primary Developer :
Myself – Greg Sidberry – poetics5 [ at ] yahoo.com

Contributers :
Brad Turcotte – brad [at] bradsucks.net
initial development, feedback, getMyspaceFriends()

FB ( still no idea what his name is) – thegreatfb [ at ] gmail.com
extractText(), extractMyspacePlayer()

Contributing

I love it when other people make functions, keeps me from having to. If your trying to write a function and it doesn’t work – contact me.

Please send any code as a php file. I try to fix any broken functions that are sent to me, and include or update all functions sent to me.

Common Questions

is this an extension? no this is a php4 class. It will work with wordpress, drupal, pretty much anything running php.

whats new? friend requests, bulletin posting

do you plan on ever fixing your site? one day

Do you offer support? yeap, actually about 4 of the functions in the class come from people trying to make new functions and contacting me for help.

i’m adding a function, do i need to let you know? yeap, send it over so i can add it.

why are you so damn sexy? genetics

will you always offer support? yeap, as long as there is a page there is support

umm i’d like to hire you. yippie money, you can contact me directly at poetics5 [ at ] yahoo.com, or contact the guys that feed me http://designisfuel.com

why are you writing a class you don’t even use? i like to help my friends, and by friends i mean people i don’t know.

i’d like to give you money! yippie paypal : greg [ at ] sidneyblack.net

umm i can’t make this work? see the support question, i’d say rtfm – but there isn’t one.

Licensing, usage, and restrictions

If you use this in a commercial project – please make a donation.
If you add a function – Send it to me.
Do Not Use This Class To Spam!!!!

Other than that I love linkage love, comments, and suggestions…

This Class is provided as is, and is in a constant state of development. all versions are released as alpha.

Future Tasks

I’d like to put together proper documentation for this project, svn access, and trac.

Development

If you’d like to contribute, or would like to help with the development process please contact me.

at the moment this project has an ActiveCollab area setup for potential developers.

he’s pretty dang through

This page was written with non-techie people in mind. If you read SlashDot or BoingBoing, if you’re active in the anti-DRM movement, etc, then this page will have nothing new for you. But if you are an “average computer user”, then you probably think that breaking DRM is too hard, too complicated, impossible, or illegal. This page is for you. With simple straightforward steps any grandmother could follow, I aim to empower the “average user” to legally break DRM, to practice their right to transcode media into different formats so that this media can be enjoyed on any device, and to make back-ups. If you have always wanted to rip, copy, and mix video the same way you can with audio, and make DVDs (or video CDs that you can watch on TV by playing on your DVD player) as easily as you make mixed CDs (using videos from your DVDs, from YouTube, from your digital camera, etc), then this page is for you.

http://www.antidrm.hpg.ig.com.br/

If your having problems getting FairUse4Wm, Mirakagi, or commander, you can get it here:
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3811318

tutorial for FairUse4Wm, Mirakagi, and how to use.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/07/20/crack-and-remove-windows-media-video-wmvasf-and-audio-wma-drm-license-acquistion-in-wmp-player-with-fairuse4wm-13-fix-2-and-mirakagi/

Need to get rid of drm from a windows media file? Use FairUse4WM

Freeware DRM removal Windows software. Strip copy-protection from .WMV, .ASF, .WMA (Windows Media Player 9, 10, 11)

Can’t transfer legally purchased music and videos to your iPod, Sony PSP because of the DRM protection of Windows Media files? Here comes free software for Windows called FairUse4WM.

FairUse4WM can’t crack DRM license. You must have VALID license files on your harddrive and be able to play the DRM protected files without restrictions. FairUse4WM is intended to be used to make fair-use backups only. Please do not abuse this rule.

remember to scroll down as there are additional versions on the page – if your using a recent or updated copy of vista you’ll need the version that supports 11.0.6000.6324

check it out:
http://all-streaming-media.com/remove-DRM-protection/FairUse4WM-freeware-DRM-removal-Windows-software-Strip-copy-protection-from-WMV-ASF-WMA-Windows-Media-Player.htm

FYI – half the download links are dead. here’s a few that were working when i grabbed it

http://maxupload.com/36D11188
http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/29049_vi21f/FairUse4WM.exe

Update :
http://elsid.net/2007/09/18/windows-media-drm-removal-update/

Video Contact Sheet *NIX (vcs for short) is a script that creates a contact sheet (preview) from videos by taking still captures distributed over the length of the video. The output image contains useful information on the video such as codecs, file size, screen size, frame rate, and length. It requires mplayer, ImageMagick (convert and montage), bc, and ffmpeg.

check it out :
http://freshmeat.net/projects/video-contact-sheet