flvstreamer/rtmpdump does not support SWF Verification

[dinkypumpkin]

On 27/06/2012 14:41, Jonathan Wiltshire wrote:
> On 2012-06-27 14:19, Colin Law wrote:
>>
>> I use get-iplayer 2.80 on Ubuntu 12.04 from the ubuntu repository, but
>> I see that I have flvstreamer 2.1c1 installed and rtmpdump is not
>> installed.  The comment above suggests that this is not ideal, does
>> this mean that the packaging on Ubuntu is not ideal and that it should
>> install rtmpdump and not flvstreamer?
>
> This stems from about January when I made flvstreamer an 'or' dependency
> along with rtmpdump, though the package manager will be satisfied if
> rtmpdump is already installed or you try to install it at the same
> time as get-iplayer. If neither of these is true though it will choose
> flvstreamer by default, which I assume is what's happened to you.
>
> To be honest I'm not sure what to do about this and I'd welcome
> input from testers about how well flvstreamer/rtmpdump work so I can
> make the right choice for Wheezy. Bear in mind that tests must be
> of the versions in Wheezy and not third-party packages though, and that
> we freeze in the next few days.

The only appreciable difference I have ever noticed between the stock 
versions of flvstreamer and rtmpdump in Ubuntu (and in testing on 
Wheezy) is the expected stream dropping/resuming of flvstreamer because 
of SWF Verification.  But I haven't used flvstreamer enough to assess if 
it was more likely to produce "non-monotonic timestamps" errors in 
ffmpeg due to all the dropping/resuming.

My view is that since I'm paying for the bandwidth to stream video, why 
would I use an application that I know is going to continually cut in 
and out?  Another consideration is that flvstreamer is not very likely 
to receive future updates.  If the BBC makes some changes in Flash 
streaming that required changes in client applications, rtmpdump would 
be far more likely to get an upgrade.

I would vote for dropping flvstreamer as a dependency.  It's confusing 
enough the the flvstreamer option value defaults to rtmpdump, so it 
might be good to hide that oddity by switching to rtmpdump only. 
However, I would guess there are at least a few people who prefer 
flvstreamer for reasons of habit or ideology.  If that is a 
consideration,  then perhaps just make rtmpdump the default since new 
users are unlikely to have either one already installed?  The Wheezy 
rtmpdump build is fairly current, so it should serve get_iplayer for 
some time to come.