[MPlayer-users] Trouble with radio audio streams encoded in WMA9 (WMAv3)

Sun Jan 9 22:44:45 CET 2005

Hi again

Thank you for your answer. I evaluated it a bit i think and hope :)

søn, 09 01 2005 kl. 20:08 +0100, skrev Reimar Döffinger:
> Hi,
> > When listening to the national radio station in Denmark ( DR - Danmarks
> > Radio ), you have to use WMA9 (WMAv3 as I understand the name of the
> > codec is called.)
> 
> The one I tried (http://wmsc.dr.dk/e02ch01m?wmcontentbitrate=300000) is
> wmav2, which can be decoded with ffmpeg's decoder (it is somtimes buggy,
> but at least in this case it works). You should better
> give a direct link to a sample next time!
> 

Please look later in this post about whether it is wmav2 or wmav3.

> > However, I guess a lot of other people could be getting into the same
> > trouble in the future as well when more stations start to use WMA9
> > (WMAv3).
> > 
> > The problem is that unless you use Microsofts Media Player 9+ you will
> > only hear the stream in 20 Kbit/s even though you choose a stream of
> > either 64Kbps, 32Kbps or 20 Kbps.
> 
> That's because they all stream the same file, only the
> wmcontentbitrate=28000 at the end seems to tell WMP which stream in it
> to request and play.

Could it be that the entire .asx-file is transmitted (via some library
call?) to the wma9dmod.dll and the dll then determines the right
options/settings. Or that the player have to specify some (extra)
options to wma9dmod.dll. What I mean is that the header of the .asx-file
is (I do not know if 'ASX Version = "3.0"' triggers anything in Windows
Media Player 9+ or not?):

<ASX Version = "3.0">
 ......A LOT in between....
 href="http://wmsc.dr.dk/e02ch03m?wmcontentbitrate=40000"/>
 ......A LOT in between....
</ASX>
For channel P3: 40000 tells that its a 32 Kbps, 28000 that it is 20 Kbps
etc. So yes it is the same link except for the wmcontentbitrate as you
stated. However I still get the 20 Kbps stream sound output.

According to the radios home page the channels are broadcast as a
MultiBitRate (MBR) stream: http://www.dr.dk/netradio/netradiohelp.shtml
(and there is a player bug for the Mac edition of the Windows Media
Player - but not the pc version, it works well.)

Could it be that MPlayer doesn't support MBR properly?

Or is there an option besides bandwidth, (bandwidth doesnt work for me
in the MPlayer 1.0pre6-3.3.4 version for Debian,) where I can select
what channel/broadcast to pick?
See my example here:

entering 'mplayer -bandwidth 1111111 http://wmsc.dr.dk/e02ch03m'
(doesn't matter whether or not I append '?wmcontentbitrate=300000' to
the end when i enter 'mplayer -bandwidth 1111111
http://wmsc.dr.dk/e02ch03m?wmcontentbitrate=300000')

However I see the following from the output of MPlayer (I've tried with
other numbers than just 1111111. It gives the same result):
---START---
anders at anders:~$ mplayer -bandwidth 1111111
http://wmsc.dr.dk/e02ch03m?wmcontentbitrate=300000
MPlayer 1.0pre6-3.3.4 (C) 2000-2004 MPlayer Team
CPU: Advanced Micro Devices Athlon Thunderbird (Family: 6, Stepping: 2)
... skipping the unimportant details...

.... I know there is an option for disabling inet6 from mplayer ;)....
Playing http://wmsc.dr.dk/e02ch03m?wmcontentbitrate=300000.
Resolving wmsc.dr.dk for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: wmsc.dr.dk
Resolving wmsc.dr.dk for AF_INET...
Connecting to server wmsc.dr.dk[195.85.253.68]:80 ...
Resolving wmsc.dr.dk for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: wmsc.dr.dk
Resolving wmsc.dr.dk for AF_INET...
Connecting to server wmsc.dr.dk[195.85.253.68]:80 ...
Stream bitrate properties object
Max bandwidth set to 1111111
 stream count=[0x3][3]
   stream id=[0x1][1]
   max bitrate=[0xfd7a][64890]
   stream id=[0x2][2]
   max bitrate=[0x8042][32834]
   stream id=[0x3][3]
   max bitrate=[0x517a][20858]
Resolving wmsc.dr.dk for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: wmsc.dr.dk
Resolving wmsc.dr.dk for AF_INET...
Connecting to server wmsc.dr.dk[195.85.253.68]:80 ...
Server return 500:Internal Server Error
Failed to parse header
Trying default streaming for http protocol
 Resolving wmsc.dr.dk for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: wmsc.dr.dk
Resolving wmsc.dr.dk for AF_INET...
Connecting to server wmsc.dr.dk[195.85.253.68]:80 ...
Cache size set to 1024 KBytes
Connected to server: wmsc.dr.dk
Cache fill:  0,02% (158 bytes)

Exiting... (End of file)
anders at anders:~$      
---STOP---

So as you see MPlayer detects 3 streams. When looking in 'man MPlayer' I
do not find an option for selecting one of these 3 streams.

Windows Media Player states (on entering the direct link into it) that
the content of P3 is:
Bit rate:	64 Kbps
Audio codec:	Windows Media Audio 9 20 kbps, 44 kHz, mono 1-pass CBR
Location:	http://wmsc.dr.dk/e02ch03m?wmcontentbitrate=300000

Ofcause its strange that it reports 20 kbps when Bit rate is 64 Kbps,
but at least 1) The sound is ok and 2) it states Windows Media Audio 9,
which is WMA9/WMAv3 (and not WMAv2). My guess however is for
crossportability (although of worst quality) the developers of wma made
it in a way so WMAv2 capable players detects it as WMAv2 but in 20 kbps
and playes it back as well in 20 kbps.

> 
> > Please visit for the links:
> > http://www.dr.dk/netradio/netradiohelp_direkte.shtml
> > 
> > So here is what I have tried to make it work, but without any luck:
> 
> Solution: Use latest CVS of MPlayer. And if the URL is of the type
> mms:// replace that by http://

All the links are http:// but thanks for reminding!

> 
> > 2. So then I tried to fiddle with /etc/mplayer/codecs.conf
> 
> Can't help as it's not caused by the decoder. Can't be, because if the
> decoder could make a difference, you would always have to transmit all
> the data over the network. Makes sense, doesn't it? ;-)

Well, I not an expert, but maybe the wma9dmod.dll needs an option
specified from the player that it is a MBR stream and/or that it is a
WMAv3 stream? 

> 
> > 3. Finally i tried as well with Kaffeine (That utilizes Xine as I
> > understand it) but also here the result was 20 Kbps, but I understand
> > that Xine and MPlayer share code (for good obvious reasons :) ), so that
> > might be the reason???
> 
> I thought they fixed it short time ago although in a different way...
> If you are really sure they didn't, tell me, I will then contact them
> and give some hints how I fixed it for MPlayer...
> For network things VLC might actually be best btw.

I use the Debian version of Kaffeine 0.5-rc2 (Under KDE 3.3.1) and it is
not fixed. So unless there is an option for specifiing specific decoder
details as the decoder and options, I do not know them (I cant find any
in the Experts options in the Xine parameters for Kaffeine).

> 
> Greetings,
> Reimar Döffinger
> 
> _______________________________________________
> MPlayer-users mailing list
> MPlayer-users at mplayerhq.hu
> http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users
> 

So what is your point of view to all this regarding MBR, the streams,
your fix (what did it fix) etc.?

Thanks for replying :)

Kind regards

Anders Lind