Announce: PlayHLS Plugin - plugin to play Apple HLS m3u8 stream

[Paul Webster]

HLS 5.1 Enhanced AC-3 stream from Ö1Austria Ö1

https://oe1dd.mdn.ors.at/out/u/oe1dd/manifest.m3u8

mplayer can play it (although it does list a few tags that it is skipping) but PlayHLSv2 does not like it.

The service is primarily for Smart TVs (hbbTV in particular)
background info at
https://oe1.orf.at/artikel/583273/Oe...0von%20%C3%961.

[bpa]

HLS 5.1 Enhanced AC-3 stream from Ö1Austria Ö1

https://oe1dd.mdn.ors.at/out/u/oe1dd/manifest.m3u8

mplayer can play it (although it does list a few tags that it is skipping) but PlayHLSv2 does not like it.

The service is primarily for Smart TVs (hbbTV in particular)
background info at
https://oe1.orf.at/artikel/583273/Oe...0von%20%C3%961.

ffmpeg ( more correctly ffplay - the mplayer equiv) may be better than mplayer as it give better control and easier to put into conv file.
Many HLS streams of V3 or higher are now including "proprietary" tags which are a real pain but AFAICT "allowed".

The PlayHLSv2 plugin just unpack audio and then lets LMS handle according to audio code.
AFAIK There is no "standard" handling for AC-3 within LMS so I didn't allow it within PlayHLSv2.

Not sure if AC-3 can be streamed by other (i.e. non HLS) transport mechansims.
I think the approach would be to have a plugin to add AC-3 support (i.e. a custom-convert and custom-type files).
Should it be handled like DTS (i.e. wrap up in Flac) to be handled by AV Receiver or transcoded into a stereo stream ?

The stalled PlayHLSv3 - handled more formats including "TV" stream which often separate video and audio. I never did AC-3 as I could not find streams to test real world implementation.

[bpa]

I may have done some of the AC-3 work already.

https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum/user-forums/general-discussion/107029-dvb-streaming-ac3-support?p=1372679#post1372679

[Paul Webster]

Stream that causes some problems (PlayHLSv2)
station KRTU

https://www.trinity.edu/krtu

It plays a small number of chunks - with progress bar for each - and then stops.

Header of the m3u8 has
#EXT-X-INDEPENDENT-SEGMENTS

wostreaming (ex-Wide Orbit now Audacy)
stream url - https ... live.wostreaming.net/manifest/krtu-krtufmaac-hlsc1.m3u8

Works ok in ffplay

[bpa]

Stream that causes some problems (PlayHLSv2)
station KRTU

https://www.trinity.edu/krtu

It plays a small number of chunks - with progress bar for each - and then stops.

LMS/plugin scanning has decided it is a m3u playlist and not a HLS one - so lots of small files are played and playlist is not updated.
The MIME audio/mpegurl has taken precedence over the suffix m3u8.
I have a memory that I had tried early on for playing to grab all m3u/m3u8 MIME type stream but it broke some other LMS functionality.
With a bit more time and knowledge, I'll look again.

[bpa]

The station play ion V2.08 - because of some issue with 2.08, I made a change making to assume "audio/mpegurl" is not HLS
I need to go back to look at the issues that required change to 2.08 and see whether this change is actually part of the solution.

[Karlos24]

Just installed the plugin to receive BBC 6 radio via LMS ... working fine at all, but not able to get logo artwork or additional station info (station name, played song titles, etc). What can I do to enable these additional meta info or is there no additional info sent within the m3u8 stream? thanks for help, and thanks for the plugin as well ;-)

[slartibartfast]

Just installed the plugin to receive BBC 6 radio via LMS ... working fine at all, but not able to get logo artwork or additional station info (station name, played song titles, etc). What can I do to enable these additional meta info or is there no additional info sent within the m3u8 stream? thanks for help, and thanks for the plugin as well ;-)

The BBC Sounds plugin is the best way to listen to BBC and it doesn't require the PlayHLS plugin.

[Paul Webster]

Just been trying out some newly listed streams at HiresAudio.online - Max Radio Society (Canada)

https://www.hiresaudio.online/max-radio-society/

Player at https://www.maxradio.ca/StreamsHiFi/...yer/index.html

I tried a few in LMS (8.3) with PlayHLSv2.9 and I didn't hear anything (but no errors reported).
However, I am not at my usual setup and have limited player types (only Airplay via plugin) and tracing tools.

Looks like I will not be able to add them to RNP anyway because the song metadata is embedded in the m3u8 stream.

[slartibartfast]

Just been trying out some newly listed streams at HiresAudio.online - Max Radio Society (Canada)

https://www.hiresaudio.online/max-radio-society/

Player at https://www.maxradio.ca/StreamsHiFi/...yer/index.html

I tried a few in LMS (8.3) with PlayHLSv2.9 and I didn't hear anything (but no errors reported).
However, I am not at my usual setup and have limited player types (only Airplay via plugin) and tracing tools.

Looks like I will not be able to add them to RNP anyway because the song metadata is embedded in the m3u8 stream.

I tried the FLAC stream and LMS thinks it is AAC. Probably because it is m3u8.

[bpa]

Just installed the plugin to receive BBC 6 radio via LMS ... working fine at all, but not able to get logo artwork or additional station info (station name, played song titles, etc). What can I do to enable these additional meta info or is there no additional info sent within the m3u8 stream? thanks for help, and thanks for the plugin as well ;-)

IIRC BBC doesn't put metadata or cover images into any of its stream - I think BBC wants users to use its Sounds player.

IIRC The BBC Sounds plugin uses the DASH stream - different transport but same audio stream.

[bpa]

I tried the FLAC stream and LMS thinks it is AAC. Probably because it is m3u8.

The stream is HLS V6 and sending Flac in MPEG-4.

The PlayHLS V2.* was developed to support HLS V3 (AAC, MP3 & MPEG2-MP3 & MPEG2-AAC) and didn't support MPEG-4 as LMS didn't have MPEG4 internally at the time.

PlayHLS V1 uses ffmpeg and should probably the play the stream but no metadata.

Before Covid, I was working on a V3 which supported MPEG4 (and a big rewrite) but for a variety of reason (time, technical issues, Covid etc) , I stopped worked on it
Out if curiousity I'll test the stream with the last build of PlayHLS-V3. AFAIK I'm sure it won't work as HLS MPEG-4 Flac streams didn't exist to test (I don't even remember Flac being in the HLS RFC-spec) so it'll probably need to work to add Flac.