[MPlayer-users] Problem with QT video from pbs.org

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Tue, Sep 01, 2009 at 07:15:05AM -0600, Kevin DeKorte wrote:
> I'm having some issues playing a video from pbs.org, is there anything I
> can do to try and playlist one?
> 
> [kdekorte at quad ~]$ mplayer
> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/media2/eu-doubled.mov

Oh dear, what a horrible setup.
$ strings -n15 eu-doubled.mov 
url nova_eu_3012c01_ref.mov
url nova_eu_3012c01_caps.mov

So
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/media2/nova_eu_3012c01_caps.mov
has the subtitles.

$ strings -n15 nova_eu_3012c01_ref.mov 
nova_eu_3012c01_mp4_ref.mov
nova_eu_3012c01_hi_ref.mov
nova_eu_3012c01_lo_ref.mov

More reference files, leading to e.g.
http://stream.qtv.apple.com/qtv/wgbh/http/nova_eu/nova_eu_3012c01_mp4_ref.mov

Hey, guess what? More reference files!
Leading to e.g.
http://stream.qtv.apple.com/qtv/wgbh/http/nova_eu/nova_eu_3012c01_mp4_300.mov

Can you guess what it is? Yes, it is a reference file. Some people just
never heard of HTTP redirect, and are stuck in "when all you have is a
hammer, everything is a nail" mode. Well, actually it's "if all you have
is QuickTime, ...", but nevermind.

Btw. it points to
http://a768.g.akamai.net/5/768/142/3f9e9589/1a1a1afb6ae049ae214fc034aad839a91985ea187bea5786f362d841a61948bf2688f01f87fb6fdf0e7ceb61c22186fb/nova_eu_3012c01_mp4_300.mov

which plays just fine in MPlayer (though not with -demuxer lavf?).
Sorry, no subtitles though, no idea if/how it would be possible to munge
them in from that very first referenced file.
There are probably some higher/different quality versions there if you
follow some other "reference chain".

I hope you understand that I almost feel it is a good thing that MPlayer
does not follow all this mess... (though I have to admit that someone
did try to implement trying to follow all those references in MPlayer,
it just stops working at some point - though honestly I think that might
be something that a frontend can hack together better).