[MPlayer-users] Downloading rtsp/mms streams

[Galen]

I thought it would be so simple, just dump the contents of a stream to  
my hard drive, you know with mplayer -dumpstream  
"stream://format-goes-here.com/file.suffix" and life was good. Alas  
no...

Here's the problem in full detail, but in short, I can't get mplayer  
-dumpstream to work properly and I really need some suggestions where  
to go next.

I'm trying to download some video streams, specifically some from the  
PBS Frontline website. I'm trying to get the content located here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/view/

I'm running Mac OS X, version 10.3.6 with a generally "tidy" system -  
frequently repaired permissions, all updates installed, etc. I am using  
the binaries found at mplayerosx.sf.net - specifically lastbinary.sit.

Both Windows Media and Real streams are available. The Real streams are  
higher quality despite being equal in bitrate to the Windows Media, so  
I would prefer them, but I could live with either format I suppose.

It was easy to get the URL for the RealMedia stream for the first  
chapter on the site:
rtsp://149.48.144.100:554/wgbh/pages/frontline/2303/real/ch1_hi.rm

I confirmed this URL works by entering it into RealPlayer, where it  
promptly and correctly played.

Next I tried it in the command line. First time around, I got some  
weird end of file errors and protocol problems before the download  
would even start. I then installed the Real codecs according to the  
directions listed here:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php? 
story=20041005010240934&query=real+stream

That seemed to solve the problem. Well, almost. Now it seems the entire  
(or virtually the entire) download completes when I get a strange  
error. The resulting stream.dump file opens with RealPlayer but shows  
no video or audio. Sometimes, the stream can be opened with MPlayer  
(I'm using the OS X GUI version in this case) but only video will play,  
no audio. Here's the complete command-line transaction:

Galens-PowerBook:~ galen$ mplayer -dumpstream  
"rtsp://149.48.144.100:554/wgbh/pages/frontline/2303/real/ch1_hi.rm"
MPlayer dev-CVS-030914-12:11-3.1 (C) 2000-2003 MPlayer Team

AltiVec found
Reading config file /usr/local/etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf: No such file  
or directory
Reading config file /Users/galen/.mplayer/config
Reading /Users/galen/.mplayer/codecs.conf: 60 audio & 150 video codecs
font: can't open file: /Users/galen/.mplayer/font/font.desc
font: can't open file: /usr/local/share/mplayer/font/font.desc
Using usleep() timing
Input config file /Users/galen/.mplayer/input.conf parsed: 52 binds

Playing  
rtsp://149.48.144.100:554/wgbh/pages/frontline/2303/real/ch1_hi.rm
Resolving 149.48.144.100 for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: 149.48.144.100
Connecting to server 149.48.144.100[149.48.144.100]:554 ...
Cache size set to 640 KBytes
Connected to server: 149.48.144.100
rtsp: read error.
rdt chunk not recognized: got 0x00
rdt chunk not recognized: got 0x41
Core dumped ;)

Exiting... (End of file)


Because Real wasn't working, I decided to try Windows Media. Similarly,  
I got and verified the URL:  
mms://video.pbs.org/general/windows/media4/frontline/2303/windows/ 
ch1_hi.wmv

When I used this with mplayer, the result was even less hopeful than  
the result with Real - the file never began downloading, immediately  
erring out:

Galens-PowerBook:~ galen$ mplayer -dumpstream  
"mms://video.pbs.org/general/windows/media4/frontline/2303/windows/ 
ch1_hi.wmv"
MPlayer dev-CVS-030914-12:11-3.1 (C) 2000-2003 MPlayer Team

AltiVec found
Reading config file /usr/local/etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf: No such file  
or directory
Reading config file /Users/galen/.mplayer/config
Reading /Users/galen/.mplayer/codecs.conf: 60 audio & 150 video codecs
font: can't open file: /Users/galen/.mplayer/font/font.desc
font: can't open file: /usr/local/share/mplayer/font/font.desc
Using usleep() timing
Input config file /Users/galen/.mplayer/input.conf parsed: 52 binds

Playing  
mms://video.pbs.org/general/windows/media4/frontline/2303/windows/ 
ch1_hi.wmv
Resolving video.pbs.org for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: video.pbs.org
Resolving video.pbs.org for AF_INET...
Connecting to server video.pbs.org[149.48.144.100]:80 ...
Connect error : Connection refused
Resolving video.pbs.org for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: video.pbs.org
Resolving video.pbs.org for AF_INET...
Connecting to server video.pbs.org[149.48.144.100]:1755 ...
connected

alert! eof
read error:: Connection reset by peer
pre-header read failed


MPlayer interrupted by signal 11 in module: open_stream
- MPlayer crashed by bad usage of CPU/FPU/RAM.
   Recompile MPlayer with --enable-debug and make a 'gdb' backtrace and
   disassembly. For details, see DOCS/en/bugreports.html#crash
- MPlayer crashed. This shouldn't happen.
   It can be a bug in the MPlayer code _or_ in your drivers _or_ in your
   gcc version. If you think it's MPlayer's fault, please read
   DOCS/en/bugreports.html and follow the instructions there. We can't  
and
   won't help unless you provide this information when reporting a  
possible bug.



Can anybody point me in the right direction here? I'm not all that  
familiar with MPlayer and I just want to be able to reliably download  
Real, and if possible, Windows Media, streams. I'm on OS X and I've  
tried other tools and hunted extensively, aside from VLC (which has  
weird errors along the lines of mplayer) and mmsclient/mimms (which err  
our) and asfrecorder based apps (which also err out) there is nothing  
except screen recording left for me to capture a stream with. I know it  
is possible, and I know MPlayer is a versatile application, so I'm  
asking for some suggestions...

Thanks,
	Galen