.. title: Linux, mplayer and the ZDF Mediathek
.. slug: linux__mplayer_and_the_zdf_mediathek
.. date: 2010-04-21 12:00:00 UTC+02:00
.. tags:  linux, scripts, perl
.. category:  linux
.. link: 
.. description: 
.. type: text


While the idea behind the `ZDF
Mediathek <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZDFmediathek>`_ is not so bad at
all, the actual implementation is a pain in the ass - especially the
flash version of the website, which causes my Firefox to crash again and
again...
So I tried the HTML version of the site, which has two major
advantages:
1.) Firefox doesn't crash anymore and
2.) one can watch the videos with any external program like vlc or
mplayer.
However, there's still a huge drawback: The videos are streamed via the
`Real-Time Streaming
Protocol <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_Streaming_Protocol>`_
or the `Microsoft Media Server
Protocol <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Media_Services>`_, so
basic operations like fast-forwarding, rewinding or pausing should be
avoided. Additionally, as no (significant) buffering is performed, your
internet connection will be in use for the whole runtime of a video,
limiting other online activities.
Looking for an easy solution for this, I checked mplayer's manpage and
found the *-dumpstream* option. The rest was some elementary bash
scripting:

.. code-block:: bash

    mplayer -dumpfile "$(date +%y_%m_%d_%H_%M.dump)" -dumpstream "$(curl -s "$(curl -s "$LINK" | egrep "<li>DSL\s*2000\s*<a href=.*asx" | sed -r 's#.*href="([^"]+)".*#\1#')" | egrep -o 'mms://[^"]+')"



This will save any(?) video from the Mediathek to a local file called
*\*current\_date\*.dump*. If you didn't figure it out by yourself,
*$LINK* must be set to / replaced by the actual URL pointing to your
video (you'll need the URL to the HTML version, or do some additional
preprocessing first).
Before you ask: Of course I wrote an easy-to-use, ready-to-run script
for this - it even does some limited error checking. It can be found
`here <http://pdes-net.org/x-haui/scripts/perl/mediathek.pl>`_.
**Update:** Seems like this only works for just a few videos, so don't
be too disappointed if it fails...