Sopcast GUI for Ubuntu/Debian

[Jarulf]

Hello everyone.

I use Sopcast on Linux and got tired of gtk-sopcast not working, and wanted something more appealing than a commandline shell script, so I made a GUI for sopcast using wxWidgets and I built a .deb-package that can be found on Launchpad

http://launchpad.net/soplaunch

Installing:
Download and install the latest version from Launchpad.
Also, starting with SopLaunch 0.23 you will need sp-sc-auth in your /usr/bin, so head over to www.sopcast.com , download and install sopcast.

Using:
Type in the command soplaunch in a terminal or something.
The soplaunch GUI should now start. Type in the address to the stream and press launch.
The program will "freeze" for 20 seconds, because soplaunch waits 20 seconds for the stream to buffer before launching VLC/MPlayer/other and opening the stream.

Known bugs:
*The program "freezes" when opening a stream. There probably is a simple workaround for this, but for now I just want to see if someone is actually going to use this program.
The way Soplaunch handles the sp-sc-auth process is awful. The stream is launched as a separate process, so when you want to close the stream you manually have to look up and kill the process sp-sc

Source code:
Avaliable on Launchpad

Screenshot
http://pici.se/170190/

Note
*The code looks like crap.
This version is only a beta, mostly to see if anyone seems to use the program. I will fix the bugs, process handling and dependencies if anyone shows interest in the program.

[AdAm123]

underprocess paste was killed of cue ( broken tube )

[Jarulf]

underprocess paste dödad av signal (brutet rör) vad ska jag göra??

Does the whole program crash?
If so, when does it crash? When you paste a url or when you press launch?
You did install the gtk-spocast package, right?

Everone that downloads and tests the application, please report if it works or not!

[AdAm123]

underprocess paste dödad av signal (brutet rör) vad ska jag göra??

Does the whole program crash?
If so, when does it crash? When you paste a url or when you press launch?
You did install the gtk-spocast package, right?

Everone that downloads and tests the application, please report if it works or not!

it crash when i install it

[Jarulf]

underprocess paste dödad av signal (brutet rör) vad ska jag göra??

Does the whole program crash?
If so, when does it crash? When you paste a url or when you press launch?
You did install the gtk-spocast package, right?

Everone that downloads and tests the application, please report if it works or not!

den crashar när jag ska installera den

There really shouldn't be a problem installing the package, if that's the case I hardly think it's my code or .deb-package.

Notice that this program is only tested on Ubuntu Gutsy 32-bit so it probably won't work on a x64-version.

[AdAm123]

can you make a for feisty fawn?

[Jarulf]

kan du gör en till feisty fawn?

No, i will not make a .deb for Feisty Fawn. If you want to, you can always download the source code and compile it yourself.

Why don't you type in english? You can apparently read and understand what i'm writing, and it would help other people with the same problem as you.

[Jakadinho]

First of all THX for this it was realy needed.
Just i have one problem. When i start it it plays fine for like a minute and then it just stops


And what i would like to ask is if u can make it to chose wich player program uses or to use mplayer instead of vlc. Im much more satisfied with it.

I woud make it myself but i dont know how to compile this source?

[Jarulf]

First of all THX for this it was realy needed.
Just i have one problem. When i start it it plays fine for like a minute and then it just stops

That seems a bit odd. It should work just fine as long as the sopcast stream is working good. Does the process sp-sc close itself?

And what i would like to ask is if u can make it to chose wich player program uses or to use mplayer instead of vlc. Im much more satisfied with it.

That's a good idea. I will definatley look into it, the only problem is that I haven't used mplayer to watch any sopcast streams. Is it the same syntax as VLC?

mplayer http://localhost:8908/tv.asf

For the record, I am also looking in to getting the program log the sp-sc process into logfile so people can easily see i the stream is working.

[Jakadinho]

The syntax for mplayer is the same like for VLC . I prefer mplayer thou. I didnt have troubles (with VLC i have few)

I also find one thing that would be nice somehow to add to the program.

I found how to open links in firefox. You just have to edit about:config with

network.protocol-handler.warn-external.sop user set boolean false
network.protocol-handler.external.sop user set boolean true
network.protocol-handler.app.sop user set string yourdirectoryforsopcast/sopcast.sh

and make sopcast.sh with
#!/bin/bash
# Script to start totem mediaplayer using sopcast streams from firefox

sp-sc $1 3908 8908 &
sleep 30
totem http://localhost:8908/tv.asf &

But the problem is u have to manualy close sp-sc.
i think this would be good to somehow include into your program and make it prefect.

[Jarulf]

Jakadinho: I will definitely add support for mplayer, and maybe an option where the user can enter a custom program to open the stream with.

I am aware of the sh-script, and as I pointed out in my first post i want this to be an alternative to the sh-script. The main goal is to get my program to do the same things as the sh-script(if you look at the code you will notice it does the same stuff), but eventually with better handling of the processes.

Thank you for the feedback!

[Jarulf]

Version 0.21 out now. All the dependencies of the .deb-package is now removed, so make sure you have sp-sc installed. The package gtk-sopcast is NOT required anymore as long as you have the sp-sc executable.

http://launchpad.net/soplaunch

Click on the 0.21 release, download the deb-file and install it. Probably won't work on anything else than Ubuntu Gutsy.

Jakadinho, can you check if the mplayer-thing is working?

edit: Also, can a moderator add a note in the topic that a new version is avaliable?

edit: Hotfix so MPlayer will work. 0.22 out.

edit: 0.23 out
Managed to get rid of the problem that the stream only worked for 40 seconds.
Changed sopcast version from the "sp-sc" one to "sp-sc-auth", which can be downloaded from sopcast.com

[Jakadinho]

Good job on new verson. I tried it and it looks like the stream doesnt turn off.

But there are some issues

Mplayer doesnt work. I was discovering what could went wrong and i find aut that the command is wrong
execvp(mplayerhttp://localhost:8908/tv.asf) failed with error 2!

it should be with spacebetween mplayer and http...... like this :

mplayer http://localhost:8908/tv.asf

I tried this comand manualy in terminal and it worked. I also tried to enter is as custom command and it didnt work.



I would also recomend to somehow include sp-auth in the deb package becouse it might be difficult for most of the users. I also have to search few websites to find out. And for example if u dont have sp-auth the program doesnt warn u that u dont have it it just doesnt work and for the most of the users i think this is the problem. The best thing would be to include it in the deb package or at least writhe the exact installation manual.


Otherwise keep up the good work. Im happy that finaly things are moving foward for linux users in this area. I just wish to see linux client for TVU someday also.

[Jarulf]

Thanks for the feedback. Must be a typo from me with the mplayer-command. Easy to fix, and i will do it tonight ^^

I've been thinking about including the sp-sc-auth-command, but with the software being GPL i'm not sure if it's OK to include proprietary software in the .deb-package.
Also, i'm not sure about the license on sopcast either, maybe they won't be that happy if i redistribute it without them knowing.

Look out for a new and fixed version tonight. Btw, if you choose custom and enter mplayer in the textbox, does that work?

[Jakadinho]

I see. I didnt know about the license.

If i put mplayer for custom command still doesnt work. It shows the same error.

[Jarulf]

Fixed now, version 0.24 avaliable on http://launchpad.net/soplaunch

[Scaps]

Just tried it the first time, works great, better than the windows version! Cool! Thx a lot Jarulf!

[Jarulf]

Scaps: My pleasure. Seeing that i programmed this because i "needed" it myself, sharing is the natural thing to do :)

Feedback is great, so don't hesitate to contact me about the program.

[magnav0x]

Just tried your application today on Ubuntu Gutsy and I get the following error:

soplaunch: error while loading shared libraries: libwx_gtk2u_xrc-2.6.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory


I'm not sure what the issue is. I have gtk-sopcast working just fine, but I wanted to try out soplaunch, because I don't care much for gtk-sopcast.

[Jarulf]

magnav0x:
Try installing the package libwxgtk2.6-0( sudo apt-get install libwxgtk2.6-0 ) and then try to start soplaunch again.