bugLinterna Mágica - Bugs: bug #36627, Wishlist: Add support for Gawker...

 
 

bug #36627: Wishlist: Add support for Gawker Network's videos

Submitter:  Carlos Solis <csolisr>
Submitted:  Sun 10 Jun 2012 06:40:02 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  None Severity:  1 - Wish
Item Group:  None Status:  Fixed
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  valkov
Open/Closed:  Closed Release:  None
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Sun 22 Jul 2012 10:20:35 AM UTC, comment #8: 

I consider the changes commited in r295 to be stable enough.  I'm closing this bug report.

Ivaylo Valkov <valkov>
Group administrator
Sun 15 Jul 2012 05:28:16 PM UTC, comment #7: 

Trunk revision 295 adds partial support for Viddler.com. The site's embedded player should be recognized at remote websites as well.

The code only works with clips for which download links are provided. As explained in my previous comments, adding support for the decryption method used in JDownloader is too complicated (because of technical limitations) for the current state of Linterna Mágica.

The embedded Viddler player at the link in the original submission is detected, but the clip at its dedicated page is forbidden.

If possible, please test and report any issues with this new code.

Thanks.

Ivaylo Valkov <valkov>
Group administrator
Sun 10 Jun 2012 06:41:59 PM UTC, comment #6: 

Switching to bugs only tracker. The Support tracker is deprecated.

Ivaylo Valkov <valkov>
Group administrator
Sun 10 Jun 2012 06:40:02 PM UTC, comment #5: 

This item has been reassigned from the project Linterna Mágica support tracker to your tracker.

The original report is still available at support #107924

Following are the information included in the original report:

[field #0]                  Item ID: 107924
[field #1]                 Group ID: 10711
[field #2]              Open/Closed: Open
[field #3]                 Severity: 1 - Wish
[field #4]                  Privacy: Public
[field #8]                         : Unknown support Field Display Type
[field #9]                 Category: Feature request
[field #10]             Submitted by: csolisr
[field #11]              Assigned to: valkov
[field #12]             Submitted on: Fri 30 Dec 2011 01:43:34 AM GMT
[field #13]                  Summary: Wishlist: Add support for Gawker Network's videos
[field #14]      Original Submission: Gawker Network (which includes sites like Kotaku, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker) uses a custom video player that Linterna Mágica currently does not support.

An example of the video player: http://kotaku.com/5783590 />[field #16]               Item Group: None
[field #17]                   Status: Need Info
[field #18]        Component Version: None
[field #19]         Operating System: None
[field #20]          Reproducibility: None
[field #21]               Size (loc): None
[field #22]            Fixed Release: None
[field #23]          Planned Release: None
[field #24]                   Effort: 0.00
[field #28]                 Priority: 2
[field #31]         Percent Complete: 0%
[field #33]                  Release: trunk
[field #58]     Custom Select Box #1: None
[field #59]     Custom Select Box #2: None
[field #60]     Custom Select Box #3: None
[field #61]     Custom Select Box #4: None
[field #62]     Custom Select Box #5: None
[field #63]     Custom Select Box #6: None
[field #64]     Custom Select Box #7: None
[field #65]     Custom Select Box #8: None
[field #66]     Custom Select Box #9: None
[field #67]    Custom Select Box #10: None

Ivaylo Valkov <valkov>
Group administrator
Thu 19 Jan 2012 10:45:13 AM UTC, comment #4: 

The user-agent hack (iPhone/iPad) works only for pages that provide download links for clips. It seems for the rest the only solution is the JDownloader decryption method.

Ivaylo Valkov <valkov>
Group administrator
Sun 15 Jan 2012 04:38:02 PM UTC, comment #3: 

It seems Viddler is blocking HTML5 videos to browsers with user agents that do not match iPhone and probably iPad.

When I set the user agent in Midori (Edit/Preferences/Network) to iPhone I can watch the clips. Midori version 0.4.0 on Trisquel is kind of unstable and constantly crashing though.

There is another HTML5 link they use:
http://www.viddler.com/file/<key>/html5mobile/

Downloading with wget:


$ wget --spider --user-agent "iPhone" "http://www.viddler.com/file/de11006f/html5mobile/"
Spider mode enabled. Check if remote file exists.
--2012-01-15 18:33:20--  http://www.viddler.com/file/de11006f/html5mobile/
Resolving www.viddler.com... 69.25.171.239
Connecting to www.viddler.com|69.25.171.239|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Moved Temporarily
Location: http://mainstreamvideo.a.ec.viddler.com/MainStreamVideo_asejf4sw3sqg108jw6tbdd962b4mi6.mp4?fd9f2a1c14aadf1069f046c36af41e2bff3b97d654f6daee83189ed72de8cd5177bfee7424a560ed8c16d6cdd4f106e46bca2c12c29f20677807e3 [following]
Spider mode enabled. Check if remote file exists.
--2012-01-15 18:33:21--  http://mainstreamvideo.a.ec.viddler.com/MainStreamVideo_asejf4sw3sqg108jw6tbdd962b4mi6.mp4?fd9f2a1c14aadf1069f046c36af41e2bff3b97d654f6daee83189ed72de8cd5177bfee7424a560ed8c16d6cdd4f106e46bca2c12c29f20677807e3
Resolving mainstreamvideo.a.ec.viddler.com... 93.184.221.133
Connecting to mainstreamvideo.a.ec.viddler.com|93.184.221.133|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 10289645 (9.8M) [video/mp4]
Remote file exists.

$ wget --spider "http://www.viddler.com/file/de11006f/html5mobile/"
Spider mode enabled. Check if remote file exists.
--2012-01-15 18:33:26--  http://www.viddler.com/file/de11006f/html5mobile/
Resolving www.viddler.com... 69.25.171.239
Connecting to www.viddler.com|69.25.171.239|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 500 Internal Server Error
--2012-01-15 18:33:28--  (try: 2)  http://www.viddler.com/file/de11006f/html5mobile/
Reusing existing connection to www.viddler.com:80.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 500 Internal Server Error
Remote file does not exist -- broken link!!!

$ wget --spider --user-agent "iPad" "http://www.viddler.com/file/de11006f/html5mobile/"
Spider mode enabled. Check if remote file exists.
--2012-01-15 18:34:50--  http://www.viddler.com/file/de11006f/html5mobile/
Resolving www.viddler.com... 69.25.171.239
Connecting to www.viddler.com|69.25.171.239|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Moved Temporarily
Location: http://mainstreamvideo.a.ec.viddler.com/MainStreamVideo_7rj11n8qjxirxg9j6vk50ruu1tslil.mp4?fd9f2a1c14aadf1069f046c36af41e2bff3b97d654f6daee83189ed72de8cd50ed36167df2463212eb53cee543b36e32d2071d898bed9ec43b8764 [following]
Spider mode enabled. Check if remote file exists.
--2012-01-15 18:34:51--  http://mainstreamvideo.a.ec.viddler.com/MainStreamVideo_7rj11n8qjxirxg9j6vk50ruu1tslil.mp4?fd9f2a1c14aadf1069f046c36af41e2bff3b97d654f6daee83189ed72de8cd50ed36167df2463212eb53cee543b36e32d2071d898bed9ec43b8764
Resolving mainstreamvideo.a.ec.viddler.com... 93.184.221.133
Connecting to mainstreamvideo.a.ec.viddler.com|93.184.221.133|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 10259722 (9.8M) [video/mp4]
Remote file exists.



Oh, poor proprietary vendors!

Ivaylo Valkov <valkov>
Group administrator
Sat 31 Dec 2011 02:09:32 PM UTC, comment #2: 

So far it seems it will be next to impossible (or very very very hard) to support Viddler.

Viddler exchanges data about the video and its path in proprietary binary Flash-related format, called Action Message Format (AMF). [1][2] Even worse the data seems to be encrypted [3] with Blowfish. [4]

There is a thing called JDownloader [5] that seems to be free software (GPL license) and has support for it. [3] A Wikipedia article about it states that: [6]




Contrary to the license some source files are not publicly available. The developers stated that the license may change—the program will remain open source, but will get a license which allows closed source parts.




Which is bad, if true. Luckily, the file with support for Viddler has GPL headers. [3]

There are few JavaScript Blowfish libraries out there, but they seem to be with unclear licenses.

The AMF message could be passed over XHR with binary headers, I think. There is an AMF JavaScript library, [7] if needed at all. It is licensed under the two-clause BSD license. The AMF message is only one and it is small, so I guess there is no need for library.

My conclusion is that even if I implement the JDownloader algorithm and if it works, it might be too much effort for one site. The Blowfish libraries are 20-30 KB. I guess one with clear license (free software) will have the same size. The AMF library, if needed is 28KB. This adds 20-60KB of code without the actual code that will use the libraries and will provide support for Viddler. Linterna Mágica is already ~230KB - loaded on every page.

In Epiphany some Viddler introduction clips are played with HTML5. The video URL for such clips is
http://www.vidler.com/file/<key>/html5/,
 where <key> is a video identifier available in the HTML body of the dedicated video page. I've tested with some random clips, but it did not work.

Viddler provides download links for some clips, but not all. Another option is to use this links with Linterna Mágica, but only part of the videos will work.

Viddler provides [8] oEmbed API that returns JSON string that might be used in remote pages to create the Linterna Mágica button, If they support JSONP (callback parameter). It seems they don't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Message_Format
[2] http://wiki.gnashdev.org/AMF
[3] svn co svn://svn.jdownloader.org/jdownloader/trunk/ ; less trunk/src/jd/plugins/hoster/VddlrCm.java
[4] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Blowfish_%28cipher%29
[5] http://www.jdownloader.org/
[6] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/JDownloader#License
[7] https://github.com/jamesward/JSAMF/tree/master/web
[8] http://developers.viddler.com/documentation/services/oembed/

Ivaylo Valkov <valkov>
Group administrator
Sat 31 Dec 2011 09:34:11 AM UTC, comment #1: 

Hello Carlos,

The example page you refer to has an embedded video player from viddler.com.

Video pages at Viddler have some hints about the clips, but not enough. They (Viddler) have developers pages, but I haven't checked yet how useful they are.

I've tested few random pages at the other websites and all I got were players for YouTube, which should be detected properly - a button directing to the original video page.

Will check the developers pages.

Ivaylo Valkov <valkov>
Group administrator
Sun 10 Jun 2012 06:40:02 PM UTC, original submission:  

Gawker Network (which includes sites like Kotaku, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker) uses a custom video player that Linterna Mágica currently does not support.

An example of the video player: http://kotaku.com/5783590

Carlos Solis <csolisr>

 

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    Follow 9 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2012-07-22 valkov StatusReady For Test Fixed
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2012-07-15 valkov StatusIn Progress Ready For Test
        Assigned toNone valkov
    2012-06-10 valkov Open/ClosedClosed Open
    2012-06-10 valkov StatusFixed In Progress
    2012-06-10 valkov StatusNone Fixed
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2012-06-10 valkov Reassign itemLinterna Mágica, sr #107924 Linterna Mágica, bug #36627

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