ARD Mediathek offline viewing on Ubuntu

Since I am a bit of a sucker for German "Krimis" as well as some their excellent documentaries I like to watch ARD Mediathek IPTV. However there are several problems with this when you live at the opposite side of the world. ARD has a block for any films that are 15+ years outside of 20.00h-6.00h GMT+1. Which makes it pretty much impossible to watch at a reasonable time in Australia. I also like to watch these things on the plane which requires download of the media files. Install JSON Parser sudo apt-get install jq Download script wget https://github.com/leogaggl/media/raw/master/download_mediathek.sh chmod +x download_mediathek.sh Usage ./download_mediathek.sh -f save_as_filename.mp4 -q 3 MEDIATHEK-URL The -f and -q parameters are optional. -f filename.mp4 (or full path + filename to save in different directory). Defaults to original filename -q quality setting from 0 to 3 (where 0 is lowest and 3 highest quality). Defaults to highest quality Please leave a comment if you find any issues or log an issue on GitHub. NOTE (2014-07-06): If you are only interested in the Tatort series I suggest you look at this script by Felix Knecht (see comment below)

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Getting Foscam IP Cameras to work from Linux (Ubuntu)

As with most hardware manufacturers of hardware Foscam utility software is Windows or Mac only. The actual unit tested with the below is a FI9805E Outdoor POE camera. Installation The installation is relatively painless as the unit is set up to get the IP assignment via DHCP (check your routers DHCP assignment list). https://IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM should get you to the web-admin interface. The default user is 'admin' with no (empty) password. Taking snapshots http://IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?cmd=snapPicture&usr=username&pwd=password I had some issues with the color of the images in daylight (which for an outdoor camera is not really a good thing. A Firmware update (V2.14.1.5) improved this (you can disable the IR LEDs during daylight hours). Thanks for FOSCAM UK support via Twitter I found the download URL as the main site seems to have been down for a while. Firmware URL: http://foscamuk.co.uk/downloads/ Streaming in H.264 video The easiest way to get the stream appears to be the RTSP connection (using VLC or any network video player). MXPlayer on Android works very well too. rtsp://username:password@IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/videoMain rtsp://username:password@IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/videoSub rtsp://username:password@IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/audio Streaming in MPEG mode The be able to use the MPEG streaming the stream format needs to be set first. http://IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?&usr=username&pwd=password&cmd=setSubStreamFormat&format=1 http://IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/cgi-bin/CGIStream.cgi?cmd=GetMJStream&usr=username&pwd=password Resetting back to H264: http://IP.ADDRESS.OF.CAM:PORT/cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?&usr=username&pwd=password&cmd=setSubStreamFormat&format=0 Next steps will be to make this work from a headless device with an Amazon S3 storage backend. This Github project https://github.com/phil-lavin/Foscam-FI8908W-Recorder is looking promising. Watch this space.

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Re-index media files on Synology NAS servers

One of the annoying things with Synology NAS servers is the fact that a video file moved to the filesystem does not automatically appear on the DNLA share on client devices. It needs a re-index of the media files. You can log into the HTML Admin Console and start a re-index, however this will be a full re-index and most likely take ages to complete. A quicker way is to connect to the SSH Console and issue the following command: synoindex -R video This will only re-index video files. This can also be used for photos and other media types. As per documentation here are the other command options. synoindex -R {all|photo|music|video|thumb} )

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Installing libdvdcss on Ubuntu 13.10

With the demise of the Medibuntu repository and libdvdcss not being hosted in the main Ubuntu repos due to licensing issues a new repository is needed from 13.10 upwards. Thanks to the good folks at VideoLAN (makers of the awsome VLC Video Player) there is a ready and updated source available. wget ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/debian/videolan-apt.asc | sudo apt-key add - echo "deb ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/debian/stable ./" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/libdvdcss.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

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Installing OMXPlayer on Raspberry Pi

Since I didn't have any luck playing videos on the RPi using mplayer I found omxplayer after some search. It has the ability to use the RPi's GPU thus taking some load of the CPU. UPDATE 2013-04-01: omxplayer is now included in the Raspbian (Debian Wheezy) repositories and can be simply installed by one line. sudo apt-get install omxplayer Check another article on how to install Raspbian. OMXPlayer binary (.deb) downloads can be found here: http://omxplayer.sconde.net/ Install dependencies apt-get install libpcre3 fonts-freefont-ttf fbset libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libva-dev libva-x11-1 libva1 Install omxplayer wget http://omxplayer.sconde.net/builds/omxplayer_0.2.4~git20121205~ec7ac68f_armhf.deb dpkg -i omxplayer_0.2.4~git20121205~ec7ac68f_armhf.deb Play video omxplayer -o hdmi video.mp4 Note: If there is no sound when playing through the HDMI interface make sure your /boot/config.txt file has the following line (and it's not commented out). hdmi_drive = 2 OMXPlayer Key bindings Key Action 1 Increase Speed 2 Decrease Speed j Previous Audio stream k Next Audio stream i Previous Chapter o Next Chapter n Previous Subtitle stream m Next Subtitle stream s Toggle subtitles q Exit OMXPlayer Space or p Pause/Resume - Decrease Volume + Increase Volume Left Seek -30 Right Seek +30 Down Seek -600 Up Seek +600

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Saving Video Streams in Ubuntu

Flash Media rtmpdump apt-get install rtmpdump rtmpdump -r "rtmp://domain.tld/video_name.flv" -o video_name.flv Docs: http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/rtmpdump.1.html Windows Media mimms apt-get install mimms mimms mms://domain.tld/video_name.wmv Docs: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man1/mimms.1.html mplayer mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile video_name.wmv mms://domain.tld/video_name.wmv

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Installing VideoLAN VLC 2.0 on Ubuntu 11.10

With the release of the final VLC 2.0 player you need to add a back-port (the next version 12.04 will have it included in the main repositories) PPA to Oneiric Ocelot (11.10) sudo add-apt-repository ppa:n-muench/vlc sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install vlc Thanks to Nate Muench for providing this !

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Install Handbrake on Ubuntu

Note: this has been verified to work on 11.04 (Natty), 11.10 (Oneiric) & 12.04 (Precise) To convert a DVD and make it viewable on your mobile device Handbrake seems to be the most useful tool I have discovered so far. Since it is not part of the default Ubuntu Repositories here is the installation process. The first step is to insure libdvdcss2 is installed sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-releases sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install handbrake-gtk

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