Python iView on Ubuntu

This is the Ubuntu counterpart to my earlier post about deploying python iView on Windows (python iView homepage).

Fortunately, it is much easier than Windows, everything is achieved with a single shell script.

#!/bin/bash
# Installs python-iview including all dependencies
# Script assumes /usr/bin in on the path (is with default installs)
# Brendan Graetz 20100521
#
# python-iview by Jeremy Visser: http://jeremy.visser.name/2009/08/30/python-iview/

#install bazaar and python library
sudo apt-get install bzr
sudo apt-get install python-beautifulsoup

#install dev dependencies in order to be able to compile
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev

#download rtmpdump source
wget http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/download/rtmpdump-2.2d.tgz ~/Downloads/rtmpdump-2.2d.tgz

#compile rtmpdump & create softlink on path
cd /usr/local/
tar -xzf ~/Downloads/rtmpdump-2.2d.tgz
cd rtmpdump-2.2d
make posix
sudo ln -s `pwd`/rtmpdump /usr/bin/rtmpdump

#check out python iview from repository
cd /usr/local/
bzr branch http://jeremy.visser.name/bzr/python-iview/ ./python-iview

#create softlinks on path
sudo ln -s `pwd`/python-iview/iview-gtk /usr/bin/iview-gtk
sudo ln -s `pwd`/python-iview/iview-cli /usr/bin/iview-cli
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/iview-gtk /usr/bin/iview

The only somewhat tricky bit here is that you need to compile rtmpdump, because it does not distribute binaries (not .deb‘s anyway). For that you will need to install a couple of dependencies which are not immediately obvious: libssl-dev and zlib1g-dev.

Python antigravity easter egg

Was reading some old XKCD, and I came across this one:

So, on a whim, I decide plug it in. I would encourage you to try it too:

import antigravity

Spoiler: python antigravity easter egg as evidenced in python’s source code (circa 2008)

Deploying python iView on Windows

I have recently been getting rather annoyed with the streaming problems with ABC’s iView. It started with intermittent cut outs, and then soon degraded to really bad lags and even audio and video getting out of sync, and playing at half or quarter speed. In a nutshell, it became unwatchable. I complained to the support of my ISP, iiNet, however they did not help – and maybe it isn’t entirely their fault either. Since streaming was broken, I thought why not buffer the entire program at a time instead, at least until iiNet and ABC fix their servers.

At first I used Yanksy’s iViewFox. However it ran incredibly slowly. So I decided to get Jeremy Visser’s python iView instead. The problem with that is that while python is theoretically cross platform, it is extremely hard to get working on a non-Linux, non-Mac box, and especially so when the application in question has multiple 3rd party dependencies. Judging from the comments on Jeremy’s blog, I think no one has managed to get it working on Windows yet, so I am posting a how-to for the benefit of those whose primary machine is a Windows box. Note that this requires your to install nine pieces of software in total to get working, and you need to edit environment variables, etc, so it can take a while.

Full instructions after the jump. Enjoy.

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