BBC Ceases To Use MP3...

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Mon Feb 9 22:24:53 GMT 2015, Christopher Woods wrote:

> I use (used!) the AAC Shoutcast streams and it'll be a loss to me
> as they're also being canned.
> But it's like arguing with the wind to expect a Shoutcast CDN to be kept 
> running
> just so me and half a dozen others can listen to unicast AAC... ;)

Hello Christopher :-)

 I am one of the 6 (LOL!) others that have been enjoying
the Shoutcast AAC live streams over the course of the last 3 years!
Delivered over HTTP, they were a rock-steady alternative to
the iffy RTMP ones, delivered via the Flash plugin in iPlayerRadio...
 I had bookmarked the direct stream URLs in Winamp, laptop
connected to Hi-Fi Amp and I could easily listen to National Radios
in very good quality...
 Recording the icy (aac) streams with VLC was a plus, too!
Previously, I had experimented with the RTMP streams and
get_iplayer (both for streaming to VLC and downloading),
but in practice this was quite unreliable... :-(
 I do not lament the demise of the WMA live streams;
the overseas version was just 48kbps, which sounded
considerably worse than AAC-LC at 56kbps or even
HE-AACv2 at 48kbps ! (It has to be said though that
the [UK] version of wma at 128kbps - quite difficult to access
from overseas - was comparable (better?) to the
shoutcast aaclc at 128kbps one!).
Recording and editing those WMA streams
was a hassle too!

While the mediaselector/5 API continues to produce
icy stream data for all available AAC mediasets
(http-icy-aac-lc-a, http-icy-aac-lc-b, http-icy-he-aacv2-a), e.g.

http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/mediaset/http-icy-aac-lc-a/vpid/bbc_radio_two/
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/mediaset/http-icy-aac-lc-b/vpid/bbc_radio_two/
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/mediaset/http-icy-he-aacv2-a/vpid/bbc_radio_two/

when those stream data (href=) are fed to Winamp,
it prints: [HTTP/1.0 404 File Not Found]
There is one notable exception to this
at the time of writing: BBC Radio 3!

http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/mediaset/http-icy-aac-lc-a/vpid/bbc_radio_three/
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/mediaset/http-icy-aac-lc-b/vpid/bbc_radio_three/
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/mediaset/http-icy-he-aacv2-a/vpid/bbc_radio_three/

all produce still working AAC streams (mediaset=http-icy-aac-lc-b is 
UK-only).

>> We are retiring our SHOUTcast streams that use the AAC codec.
>> The AAC SHOUTcast streams were only available for the national networks.

While I was well aware of the foretold death of the WMA (live+AOD) streams,
this came in as a true surprise and caused me grief...

>> We have retained a single SHOUTcast stream of each service using the mp3 
>> codec

For anyone interested, this can be accessed by using 
mediaset=http-icy-mp3-a;
a template URL would be:

http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/mediaset/http-icy-mp3-a/vpid/[vpid]/format/pls.pls

For National Radios, [vpid]= any of:
bbc_radio_one
bbc_radio_two
bbc_radio_three
bbc_radio_fourfm
bbc_radio_four_extra
bbc_radio_five_live
bbc_radio_five_live_sports_extra
bbc_6music
bbc_asian_network
bbc_world_service

These MP3 streams are all @128kbpsCBR/44.1KHz
(even for Radio 3), except for World Service, which is
a measly 48kbps!

>> All our services are now available in HLS and HDS, using the AAC codec.
>> By the summer we hope to have these streams available
>> in the non-proprietary DASH format.
>> (snip)
>> we are concentrating our efforts around HLS, HDS and DASH.

1. Recording HLS streams is feasible via FFmpeg.
2. HDS (capture) support in FFmpeg is still in its infancy:
http://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/1964
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.ffmpeg.devel/171211
http://lists.ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2014-February/154612.html
https://www.mail-archive.com/ffmpeg-devel@ffmpeg.org/msg03387.html
https://gitorious.org/neutrino-hd/martiis-buildsystem-cs/commit/421cdc974a89838c521e217e244183cbcd4d95ef
The nightly VLC 3.0.0 has also some HDS recording capabilities...
But I find that AdobeHDS.php script (by KSV) is working
wonders with the Beeb's HDS streams!
3. Does anyone know of a way to capture MPEG-DASH live streams?
"By the summer", though vague, is not too far in the future!

Most kind regards,
Vangelis.