Month: March 2008

Within a day it was streaming to VLC…

Iplayer content in Mpeg4 streams

To Clairfy, this is my view not those of my employer. I am not suggesting that breaking BBC DRM or systems is good. But in this endless war on DRM I have blogged whats going on.

I'm wondering how long it will take for BBC iplayer content destined for the iPhone, to appear on peoples desktops. And I'm now wondering about the Xbox Media Centre, The Wii, The PSP, etc? My guess, because of the weekend 2-4 days. All the details are here… This is another example of how hyper clever and passionate the backstage community really are. I just wish it didn't involve downloading the file (Seems there might have been a problem with the servers?). Lets get it streaming and make them into legal services (aka don't break, GeoIP or Streaming) which I can promote to the managers as positive examples of opening content.

The BBC have just launched a version of their iPlayer that works with the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Instead of streaming Flash, it streams an MP4… but they don't let non-iPhone users know it's an option. So, I used the User Agent Switcher to set Firefox to claim to be an iPhone, and in place of the normal Flash playback doofer, I got a Quicktime one instead… and nothing much happened. It turns out it's because it won't actually stream, it wants to download the whole thing. That's no problem though, I get 600kb/sec downloads at work =)

So, I got out Firebug and found the stream; then copied and pasted it into the address bar, and it started downloading to play in Firefox again. Not what I wanted – so I went to Save Page As… and saved the MP4 file. And then realised that I was actually, at this point, trying to download it three times (the original iPlayer window, the new QuickTime-only tab and the download) so I closed everything else, and watched it download the mp4 at the aforementioned 600kb/sec.

Once finished, I knew it had worked – hovering the pointer over the file in Windows Explorer showed its dimensions (480×272), and moments later an entirely randomly chosen programme was playing in VLC.

So, who fancies cobbling together some code to automate this, to do what the BBC has failed to do all along – make a reasonable quality iPlayer download service for platforms other than Windows, which lacks DRM? 

So its now Monday morning and the Backstage list has been on fire over the weekend. Not only is there a fully usable Xbox Media Centre script which allows you to watch iplayer content but Matthew's been busy and updated his iplayer related prototypes. Finally also there is a very clear guide to getting it working using any Gnu/linux system. Since the Mpeg4 streams/downloads went live, people on the list have been asking why it doesn't stream correctly? People like Andy Halsall
are asking how this all fits in with the DRM versions which have launched on Windows and is coming to the Mac? Also can they really use these streams?

So if the BBC are entitled to distribute this material DRM free for the
iPhone, why are they not providing it for other platforms? I'm sure
Mac/Linux/Windows/$other users would quite like DRM free, non-expiring media.

In addition, I have to wonder about the legality of ripping the BBC's iPlayer
streams in the manner described in Matt's how-to, it works, and works well
(or at least it did at around 18:00 today), the end result would be ideal for
many people in a variety of circumstances.

Then the whole thing got boingboinged…

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Finally a dance download store I like

So I finally bought some tunes legally for the first time in a long time. I checked out a service called Audiojelly.com which has a huge back story and did a quick scan through my Tunes to get list and picked up quite a few of them. Obviously all 320k Mpeg3's with no DRM. In the end I bought…

  • apologies (original mix)conrad s
  • cause you know (nic chagall remix) markus schulz feat. departure
  • frozen (original mix) dogzilla
  • heaven scent (greg downey remix)bedrock
  • how long? (original mix)aly & fila vs. fkn feat. jahala
  • in the dark (tiesto trance mix) tiesto
  • industry (original mix)the green martian
  • kalopsia (monogato's filth remix) the blizzard
  • lost in moonshine infinity (original mix) planisphere
  • s.o.s. (message in a bottle) (sander van doorn remix) filterfunk
  • the fall (richard durand remix) way out west

I found Audiojelly really simple and quick to add and buy tracks. They also seemed to do everything correctly, for example I added loads of tunes into my playlist before even signing up. I only needed to signup when I wanted to buy them and even then everything was smooth. The price of the songs isn't as cheap as elsewhere but for dance music they seem to have a wide selection. Maybe not as many as beatport but its not as painful to use as beatport. The only bit of Flash on the page was the playlist and that worked well the rest of the site. You can do stuff like embed, bookmark and even send a chunk to a friend for their approval or something.

I think I'm going to get more into mixing. I've checked out a couple other dj applications for ubuntu but its a area which is in need of much more voices and effort. I would like to think my pacemaker will do away with the need for switching back to Windows to run Virtual DJ but it looks a long way off at the moment. I don't talk to me about virtualisation, it works but that split second difference is killer when mixing live.

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Dress my head, what kind of hat should I be wearing?

Kangol Hat

So I've had my Kangol hat for something like I believe 11-13 years and its actually getting to the point where I should really replace it but I don't know what with.

So the obvious choice would be the exact same hat but actually they don't do my hat any more and have not done so for the last ten years, which kind of sucks. So what about another Kangol? Well to be honest the styles are not very appealing. Its either a grandad hat (also known as a flat cap?), normal hat or some variation on a skull cap. My current hat is a cross between a normal hat, baseball cap and skull cap. It kind of sits on the very top of my head so you can clearly see my forehead. This feels more comfitable that the skull cap style stuff you see most people wearing. The Grandad hats do look pretty good on someone like Samuel L Jackson but look wrong on someone a little more rounded like myself. Normal baseball caps are very wrong on myself too although the visor versions of the baseball caps are not so bad, but its rare you see them around now plus I'm going to look like a dick wearing a visor in the rain or snow (who knows I could be in Manchester)

So come on people, what should I be wearing?

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BarCampManchesterUK

Werewolf in BarCampManchesterUK

So I went to BarCampManchesterUK yesterday, it was good but very different from what I'd had expected. The venue (Manchester evening news?) was good except the cooling systems were broken so each room became hotter and hotter during the day. On the last session, I stuck in Werewolf because it was obvious we weren't going to play it otherwise and we found another space to play in just above reception because I knew the rooms were far too uncomfitable to play in. In total there were 4 actual rooms and a couple of spaces to sit and chat. This was good because, people started milling around and chatting later in the day, and there was a clear distance from the rooms.

The sessions were quite web developer/design led through-out the day, I started the day off at a talk about voice on the web which I wasn't totally sure of, my thoughts were confirmed when the presenters mac died twice while trying to make a call home using a google gadget. He did in the end get it working but even then it didn't work as expected. The next session I did about Data Portability which I was really suprised very few people had heard about (yep more work needed to spread the word it would seem). I used pretty much the same slides as Thursday. What was suprising was the talk after mine which was about the same subject but from a different persepective. The guy was trying to hack into facebook and social networking sites his own content from his own server. We had quite a discussion about the fact he was doing something in between the truly decentralised social networks and the data portability group aims of getting the main players to play nicely with users data. I might have come across quite negative that session but I did say he should maybe put his efforts into one or the other. Anyway we had a chat afterwards and everythings cool. The other noteworthy session was the northpack session. They seem to be a a group of three guys who are all about promoting the north of england. They had built a web application to pull in rss feeds and upcoming events and display them for all to see (I guess Feedjack or Planet could do the same). It was good and something we in London have been talking about for years but never actually done. So anyway I started asking them if they had thought about allowing the rest of the country to use their web application? But i think that got turned into a debate about the south north divide.

Northpack guys

Anyway, I thought we got everything sorted till at the after party at this great place called Ra!n (very apt because its been raining since I got to Manchester) when a woman called Jennifer slightly drunk, tells me exactly what she thinks of the south and the BBCs move to Manchester. Unfortueally, I never got a real chance to respond because she slipped and fell (not my doing) and we called her a cab to go home.

So BarCampManchester was good and I met lots of good people and if the rooms were not so hot, it was run over 2 days and wifi actually worked it would have be great. I was however a little ruffled about the real strong tension about the south.

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Derren Brown live

Derren brown's Birthday cake

Watched Derren Brown live in Epson yesterday night. This is about the 4th time I've seen him live and he seems to get better each time. The playhouse was packed solid and some people had paid almost 100 pounds for tickets, due partly because this was his only London performance.

Unlike before, I did get on stage but was too slow getting to the correct side of the stage. If I had, Derren would have asked me to phone a friend and got my friends to guest some numbers. Those numbers would have been the same numbers as a serial number on a ten pound note he had in his pocket. The trick was much more involved than just that, but I won't spoil it for you. Andy also got on stage but this time during the trick where derren guess a object your thinking about. Trying to be tricky he picked Radio (which if you know him wasn't very clever at all). Derren actually guessed Andys object without asking any questions at all.

At the end of the night, we did go around to the stage door, where Derren did appear for a short while. It was his birthday, so he wanted to shoot off quickly. But he did bring a lovely chocolate cake for the waiting crowd and pose for a few shots while signing peoples books. Andy and Noor joked about selling the cake on ebay and actually derren said it was a good idea, so I'm wondering if Andy actually did put it up or not?

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