Hi Ian (and other posters), Many thanks for all the suggestions and ideas - much appreciated. I had originally tried to get the iPlayer RTMP streams playing inside a third-party Flash player, but nothing I tried would get them to play. I did also take a look at the XBMC plugin for inspiration (Plex is forked from XBMC), but they seem to be using their own proprietary RTMP player, which isn't easily available for us to use in Plex. In the end I gave up with trying to get the raw streams to work outside of the original flash player.
Instead, I'm using Plex's rather neat webkit page-cropping approach, which finds the iPlayer swf file on a page loaded from bbc.co.uk/iplayer and displays the page in cropped form to just show the video part of the player. I also did some digging around in the iPlayer javascript files and found that the iPlayer swf file has a Javascript API, which I've taken advantage of for playing and pausing playback, and for tracking progress via JS callbacks. It's all working rather well (until the iPlayer site next changes at least), using the RSS and JSON feeds to obtain the programme info and then using this webkit approach for playback. If you'd like to give it a try, you can download Plex here (it's open source and free): http://www.plexapp.com/ The iPlayer plugin can be downloaded and installed from the in-app "App Store". It would still be good to access the RTMP streams directly - and this would probably be more reliable in the long term. Is there any magic involved in getting them to play? Has anyone found a third-party flash-based player (ideally with useful JavaScript hooks) for doing so? Thanks again for the help! - Dave > From: Ian Forrester <ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk> > Reply-To: <backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk> > Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:55:23 +0100 > To: <backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk> > Subject: RE: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex > > Hi Dave, > > Have a look at the XBMC iplayer plugin which you should be able to > leverage. > > http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-iplayerv2/ > > I use it personally to watch iplayer from my home media centre (XBMC > 2.1) > > Secret[] Private[x] Public[] > > Ian Forrester > Senior Backstage Producer, BBC R&D > 01612444063 | 07711913293 > ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk > > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk > [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth > Sent: 29 September 2009 07:06 > To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk > Subject: Re: [backstage] Fixing the iPlayer support in Plex > > > > 2009/9/28 Dave Addey <listma...@addey.com> > > > Hi Backstage, > > I've been working on fixing the iPlayer plugin for the Mac OS X > media centre app "Plex". The updated plugin seems to be working pretty > well by reading the BBC RSS feeds and JSON feeds, but I have a few > questions: > > 1) Are there any issues with integrating iPlayer into an app > like Plex? (I'm not trying to work around the geographical restrictions > on iPlayer access, I should add - I'm just providing a wrapper for the > iPlayer flash player from within Plex.) I'm aware that doing so could > be likely to break at any time if the iPlayer site were to change. (You > can view Plex here: http://www.plexapp.com/) > > > > Yes, this is the "make your stuff with our stuff" BBC Backstage line. > > > > 2) Assuming this isn't a problem legally, is there anywhere I > can find a list of all of the potential subcategories / subgenres used > by iPlayer? I can see a list of those with at least one current > programme assigned to them, but I don't know if this list is complete. > For example, Children's > Activities, Children's > Animation, etc. > > > > I think you have to work it out from what's out there. > > > > 3) Is there a feed (RSS / JSON / something else) which can be > used for searching? > > > > Yes, do a search from the iPlayer page and scrape it for URLs. > > http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=S > <http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=Manor> earchTerm > > > > Thanks in advance for any help! > > - Dave. > > > > > -- > > Brian Butterworth > > follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist > web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and > switchover advice, since 2002 > > > - > Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please > visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. > Unofficial list archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
