@tmm1 is there a way to change the error message that shows up on screen? for example, can i show a different error for blackouts vs games that have ended or not started yet, or am i stuck with the generic "stream not available?"
Not at the moment, but we could figure something out. Would you be retuning the error from the m3u8? Maybe a header like X-Channels-Stream-Error
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i'm open to any ideas...right now in the three error conditions i've seen so far (game not started, game already ended, and blackout) i just have it send an "empty" playlist (one fake segment then #EXT-X-ENDLIST) which handles it fine because it triggers the "stream not available" message, but i'd love to be able to display some sort of error on screen to indicate exactly what's going on.
example: stream not available makes sense if the game hasn't started yet or is over, but if it's a blackout sending that message could be confusing. people who aren't familiar with how mlb blackouts work are going to think "hmm, the game is going on...why can't i watch it?"
just found a huge bug that i'm working on fixing right now. this is why i want a few beta testers first before releasing this into the wild...
@tmm1 now i'm getting context canceled errors pretty often...
2021/04/10 18:44:56.847078 [ERR] Error during stream M3U-mlb ch793 Baltimore Orioles: Failed to download file: http://192.168.88.189/ts?url=xxx": context canceled
xxx is redacted because it has keys in it...anyway though the stream will play for a while and then it'll freeze, and the logs show this error. this didn't happen when i watched the mets this morning, but that was the only game on at that point...not sure if this is a MLB issue or something that can be handled by channels. any thoughts?
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Try the prerelease
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seems better so far, thanks. still having the occasional hiccup but at least it's not crashing the entire stream now (it picks back up after more data comes in). i'll keep an eye on it and report back if there are any more issues...
I’m interested in being a tester as well.
woke up this morning to a bunch of SSL handshake errors, so i am not sure this will be ready today. trying to run these down now...at the same time, this is what i was talking about when i said yesterday i didn't want to release this publicly until it's solid. want to avoid putting it out there and having something like this happen the next day...
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so, i think i've fixed the SSL errors...but it's still having buffering issues. still trying to figure those out...i watched the entire mets game yesterday and didn't have a single hiccup, but now it's buffering more than i'd like. not a lot (one or two hiccups every few minutes), but enough that it's noticeable and bothering me. one possible solution is that if you see buffering issues, just pause for a second or two and that usually takes care of it (same as you would on any other TVE channel)...but i'm still trying to see if i can't speed this up a bit and stop most of the buffering.
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You’re doing the lords work son. Keep up the good work and let us know how we help.
@tmm1 strange question, but is there a way from within the playlist file to tweak the length of buffer channels uses? this is still buffering a little more than i'd like (probably because it takes some time for the php app to hit the mlb api and do what it needs to do before sending it out as a playlist)...but if i pause for even just a second or two, it usually completely eliminates the buffering issues. it's not even enough for channels to complain about being behind the guide on a channel change, but it makes the stream so much more fluid...
would be nice to have it do that automatically, if that's possible...
having all kinds of issues tonight. getting very frustrated...might need to take a break from this for the night. the streams keep hanging on me right now and i can't figure out why.
alright guys, last update for tonight: i think i might have sped it up a little, less buffering now and the streams have stopped hanging randomly - but i'm not sure if that's something i did or if it's the fact there are only two games still going on right now after 9pm on the west coast. i'll do some more testing tomorrow and see where we're at.
if i can figure this thing out, i will...but after thinking i was pretty much done over the weekend and that ended up being very much not the case, just wanted to let everyone know where i was at with the issues i've had both yesterday and today. i'll keep at it, but i do have a day job too...so it may take a bit longer than we were thinking on saturday.
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Oh the joys of bleeding edge software engineering. 
Just understanding the entirety of what you don't control in this situation, makes my head hurt. I don't watch MLB but I watch this thread! I miss these days from my career, sometimes, but not usually.
Something tells me you'll crack this.
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It's gonna been a great feeling when you bust this bad boy wide open!
buffering issues seem fixed, but now i'm getting occasional 403 errors from the mlb api. not all the time, but every once in a while the stream won't load because the mlb api won't let me get the stream. usually reloading the channel fixes the issue, but obviously i want to figure out what's going on with this now...
it never ends...ugh.
You think it could be your testing and starting a bunch of streams in a short amount of time, maybe rate limiting or something?
possible, but i haven't really seen any sort of pattern. i'll see a 403 on 3-4 responses in a row, then it'll go a while without one. it seems completely random.
example, here are the timestamps on the last few:
184689:[2021-04-13 16:25:41] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
185566:[2021-04-13 16:29:31] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
185691:[2021-04-13 16:55:00] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
185738:[2021-04-13 16:56:34] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
185745:[2021-04-13 16:56:42] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
185752:[2021-04-13 16:56:43] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
185759:[2021-04-13 16:56:53] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
185902:[2021-04-13 16:57:29] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
186493:[2021-04-13 16:59:46] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
194156:[2021-04-13 17:31:00] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
194171:[2021-04-13 17:31:02] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
214651:[2021-04-13 18:51:22] local.ERROR: Client error: `GET
@tmm1 random thing i just saw: i had to completely restart the channels docker container. i closed out of a stream but channels thought it was still running (this is after channels started buffering even though the stream was still running, i could see the decoding messages in my mlb app logs and the buffer bar was filling up to the right of the current time icon)...
edit: updated to pre-release and it's working again. i have no idea what happened, though...this has been working all day and then suddenly it just refused to load any of my mlb streams (even though i could see the php app i wrote was still loading and sending them to channels in my own logs). i tried several channels restarts, none of which solved the issue...but updating to pre-release fixed it.
any ideas what went wrong there?