Some YouTube live channels are not working

[siliconhippy]

Hi 😊

Good to see updates...great job.

I recall using SendToKodi couple years ago , after conversing with you, so need to jog my memory.

I am using AlexElec.tv Nexus PCx86 builds forked from Coreelec.

Below points are edited from yesterday as I setup your addon and ran the playlists as below.

Here is my Kodi log: https://paste.kodi.tv/tehobobosu.kodi

1. The following URL structure also works in a m3u playlist, besides the usual video _id= $videoid one:

plugin://plugin.video.sendtokodi?https://www.youtube.com/c/CNBC/live

2. So I disabled TVLINK from AlexElec.tv PVR addons and also Pseudo TV Live.

TVlink works nicely with live YouTube and other live streams, being based on Streamlink for live streams. But cannot handle YouTube VOD.

3. I setup SendToKodi playlist (both live and VoD from YouTube and other sources) and merged with Plex Live and Pluto TV playlists via IPTV Merge addon.

Result is that 5-6 live YouTube channels played via SendToKodi , and another 5-6 did not, as the log says. The last YouTube live channel froze the screen and I decided to quit, so I could send you a log.

Looks like Nexus Py 3.11+ issues. I kept SendToKodi settings as default ( so the experimental manifest was enabled.)

4. Never got to the YouTube VOD channels or the Plex or Pluto channels!

But YouTube VOD channels work fine with plugin.video.youtube addon in a separate playlist in IPTV Merge along with Plex and Pluto channels.

The plugin.video.youtube addon problem is that it cannot handle live channels format as in point 1 above. Only streams video_id= $videoid standard format channels; but these $videoid channels change URLs frequently compared with the /live ones.

5. I see a long list of websites supported by yt-dlp and yt-dlp GitHub saying it has merged with yt-dl and another package. So is support for streaming these websites already included in SendToKodi or do I need more?

6. Is there a way to hide the (i) SendToKodi notification appearing in top right of screen?

Cheers 😹, Shippy.

[nullket]

Hello,

unfortunately, I do not understand you issue completely. Maybe the reason is that you summarize multiple problems in one github issue? If yes try to split individual and independent problems in to multiple issues.

It seems you have an Issue with Youtube Live Streams

• Am I right that you have issues playing YouTube live streams?
• your provided CNBC link plays fine on my fresh installation with the default settings (using the original manifest and yt-dlp)
• If this url https://www.youtube.com/c/CNBC/live is not working for you, please provide a log where you restart kodi and send this link to it using kore, sendtokodi ios app/plugin, etc.
• If the above URL is working please provide another live stream here in the comments which does not work

It seems like you have an Issue with with live tv

• This is something I do not completely understand. What has YouTube live links to do with IPTV?
• I have never heard of Plex Live, Pluto TV, IPTV Merge Addon and thus do not understand your approach

It seems like not all websites listed by yt-dlp are working for you

• All listed websites should work if you dowload the video outside of kodi, but as we try to stream them not all are working. The main reason for this is that for adaptive streaming website maintainer tend to obfuscate the stream manifests

It seems like you want to hide the sendtokodi notifications

• That is currently not possible. But I like the idea of adding a setting for that

Also it seems like you installed the addon by cloning this repo? Please install the addon via the official repo!

[siliconhippy]

I was basically saying that I want to use SendToKodi because the Kodi YouTube plugin cannot handle the /live format but SendToKodi does. However SendToKodi seems to give errors with many streams, live or VoD, on my Nexus build. So I wonder if SendToKodi is updated for Nexus ?

Anyway, does SendToKodi work with Nexus? Can you kindly provide me with the correct link so I can test again ? This is where I installed the SendToKodi zip.

[nullket]

SendToKodi works on Nexus. We had an issue with the repo and nexus (which will then not update) but that is solved. Install it by installing the repo and then within Kodi select the repo and install sendtokodi from there. The repo link is in the readme https://github.com/firsttris/repository.sendtokodi.python3/raw/master/repository.sendtokodi.python3/repository.sendtokodi.python3-1.0.0.zip

If there are some links working and others not that is indeed an issue with the addon and should not be a nexus issue. Please provide a live link which does not work and I try to have a look at it.

[siliconhippy]

Ok thanks, will try and inform you of issues ! 🙂

1. Re: obfuscation of stream manifests, is this selective or overall for a particular website?

For example, plugin.video.youtube streams most channels fine. So does this mean other YouTube channels also should stream correctly, or there might be selective obfuscation still for some YouTube channels?

How about for SendToKodi?

2. Is there a reason SendToKodi streaming is slower than for plugin.video.youtube ?

[nullket]

1. Nowadays streams are usually split up in several audio, video, subtitle segments/sub-streams. This allows things like adaptive streaming (e.g. if you have suddenly a worse internet connection the receiver can automatically choose a lower resolution or bitrate). Information about those sub-streams are usually stored in a manifest file. The receiver/player can use this file to present you the final video/audio. Some websites (!) hide this manifest file, some do not have one (as their custom player communicates with their backend in a different way) and some websites simply expose their manifest files (e.g. they use them for their players etc.). Sendtokodi currently has the option (turned on by default) to use adaptive streaming if an existing manifest file can be found on the provided website. In case of Youtube there is no official manifest file or least it is not publicly available. Therefore sendtokodi falls back to using the "best stream that has audio and video in one file". In case of youtube this is a 720p stream. And this might also be the issue why some live streams work for you and others do not. The kodi youtube plugin manually builds a manifest file for a video/url and provides it to kodi via the input stream adaptive plugin. This offers way more flexibility (selecting different qualities), higher overall quality etc. Unfortunately manually creating manifest files is quite challenging for the wide range of different ways different websites are implementing their streams.
2. I have not encountered any stuttering or buffering for which I must wait during playback when I use sendtokodi with youtube or the youtube addon. Both work quite fast for me. I mean it could be the case that the all in one stream used by sendtokodi is not available on servers near you (vs the adapative streams are) but in my opinion that is highly unlikely.

As mentioned please provide a live stream url which does not work for you and I can check the reason.

[nullket]

Closing due to inactivity to the requested details.