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I am using Streamlink to help some of my technically challenged older friends watch streams from selected sites that webcast LIVE two or thee times a week and are ingested into Youtube. In between webcasts, it would nice to show the User when the next one will begin via the apps Status page.

The platform is Raspberry Pi 3 B+. I have modified the Youtube plugin to allow/prohibit non-live streams. If '--youtube-live-required' is in the command line, then only LIVE streams will play. This prevents the LIVE webcast from re-starting after it has ended, and also prevents videos that Youtube randomly selects, from playing. I have also applied a 'soon to be released' patch that fixes a breaking-change that Youtube made recently. I mention these so you know that I have at least a minimal understanding of the Streamlink code, and am not looking for a totally free ride. But for some reason, I cannot get my head around how to add a feature to get the 'scheduledStartTime' value from the Youtube.py plugin. I am hoping someone with a deep understanding of the Streamlink code can toss me a clue or two.

Once the 'scheduledStartTime' value is obtained (it is in epoch notation), a custom module will send that value to the onboard Python server, via socketio, which can then massage the data and push it to the Status page of connected clients.

Within an infinite loop, Popen starts Streamlink. The output of Popen is PIPEd and observed in order to learn what is happening, and then sends that info to the Server, again using socketio. It is within this loop that the 'scheduledStartTime' data would be gleaned (I think).

How do I solve the problem?

Emma
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David McKay
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1 Answers1

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I have a solution to this problem that I am not very proud of, but it solves the problem and I can close this project, finally. Also, it turns out that this solution did not have to utilize the streamlink youtube.py plugin, but since it fetches the contents of the URL of interest anyways, I decided to hack the plugin and keep all of this business in one place. In a nutshell, a simple regex gets the value of scheduledStartTime IF it is present in the fetched URL contents. The Hack: That value is printed out as a string 'SCHEDULE START TIME:epoch time value', which surfaces through streamlink via Popen PIPE which is polled for such information, in a custom module. Socket.io then sends the info to the on-board server, that sends a massaged version of the info to the app's Status Page (Ionic framework, typescript, etc). Works. Simple. Ugly. Done.

David McKay
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