alecgdouglas

@fireworksordie: Hm, the only thing I can think of is if you're feeling extra keen then next time there's a live stream going on you can visit this URL in your browser to get the HLS stream URL:

https://www.giantbomb.com/api/video/current-live/?api_key=[YOUR API KEY]

(replacing [YOUR API KEY] with your actual API key from https://www.giantbomb.com/api/ )

You should see a response that looks something like this:

{

"success":1,

"video":{

"title":"Giant Bombcast 479",

"image":"static.giantbomb.com\/uploads\/original\/23\/233047\/2924879-onair.jpg",

"stream":"https:\/\/cbsigameslive2-lh.akamaihd.net\/i\/bombcast050217_1@37386\/master.m3u8?b=1-5000"

}

}

(though it might not formatted as nicely)

Grab the "stream" URL from the response (in this case, "https:\/\/cbsigameslive2-lh.akamaihd.net\/i\/bombcast050217_1@37386\/master.m3u8?b=1-5000") and load that in your browser. You can remove the backslashes if you like, but Chrome doesn't seem to mind if you leave them in.

That should cause an .m3u8 file to be downloaded (usually "master.m3u8"). Open the downloaded file in a text editor and you should find something like this:

#EXTM3U

#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=1128000,RESOLUTION=640x360,CODECS="avc1.77.30, mp4a.40.2"

https://cbsigameslive2-lh.akamaihd.net/i/bombcast050217_1@37386/index_1000k_av-p.m3u8?sd=10&b=1-5000&rebase=on

#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=3128000,RESOLUTION=1280x720,CODECS="avc1.64001f, mp4a.40.2"

https://cbsigameslive2-lh.akamaihd.net/i/bombcast050217_1@37386/index_3000k_av-p.m3u8?sd=10&b=1-5000&rebase=on

That's the data the app is basing its quality selection on, more or less. If you find that the app's options don't match what's in the m3u8 file, try backing out of the stream in the app and relaunching it to see if it changes. If the app is still missing any options then definitely let me know and include what the app was offering you versus what was inside the m3u8 file.

Thanks!

I get this warning erroneously all the time, but it has never actually had any effect on my requests so unless it actually is blocking you then I wouldn't worry about it much. Seems like there's a bug on the GB side since I've seen a few different people report this issue but to my knowledge nobody's key was actually blocked when they got the warning.

@wcarle: Any plans to add the ability to delete/reset progress on a video?

I currently have that functionality in my app with saved time stored locally and I'm not sure how provide the same functionality with the save-time API since passing in time_to_save=0 fails (returns success = false).

Using time_to_save=-1 works fine (I could ignore results from get-saved-time/get-all-saved-times if savedTime = -1) but I don't want to be using the API in an unintended way and modifying user data to invalid values.

@wcarle:That get-all-saved-times API is exactly what I was hoping for.

Quick question: the "savedOn" field - does that have a fixed timezone? (PST I'm guessing?)

@doctorsmirnoff: Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad you've found it useful!

@fireworksordie: I missed that stream entirely - did the quality options change once UPF actually started?

@flammabled: In the Google Play developer portal I can only see two options for Sony devices ("BRAVIA 4K 2015 - SVP-DTV15" and "BRAVIA 4K GB– BRAVIA_ATV2") and neither of them match yours so I'm honestly not sure how I would add support for your TV through Google Play. Sorry!

@ltgrimdark: Unfortunately the app stores the video database in secure storage, so it will be unavailable through ADB unless you manage to root your device. However, my plan for this weekend involves spending a bit of time trying to integrate with the new progress syncing API so depending on how long that takes (and how patient you feel like being ;) ) you might be able to save at least some of your data by having it synced with your account on the website. Unfortunately, I don't have an ETA for this feature yet (I haven't had much time to work on the app lately due to work/life/...Zelda).

@fireworksordie: That's a totally fair assumption - it's really just the difference between parsing what the API returned (status indicating success, a title, an image URL, and a stream URL) and parsing what is actually available through the stream URL.

The 1080p thing is definitely interesting - I'll try to check in during the next stream to see what they're serving up through the API vs what's available on the site.

Thanks to the beta testing efforts of @crackity_jones and @baag I've officially released the app on the Google Play Store for Nvidia Shield TV devices!

I may not have fixed all of the compatibility issues yet but I feel as if it's close enough to allow anybody to try it out for themselves and I'll continue to update it to improve the compatibility as we go.

I've updated the original post to reflect this and added a new question to the FAQ about Android TV device support so read that if you have a device you'd like to see added to the supported list on Google Play.

The Giant Bomb Enthusiast App on the Google Play Store

@fireworksordie: I considered going that route (letting the user pick a quality before hand) but it's a bit more complicated than for non-live videos. For non-live videos the API returns 3 clearly defined video URLs, one for HD, one for HIGH, and one for LOW. With live streams, the API just returns a single stream URL to an m3u8 file that lets the media player pick different tracks from. It wouldn't be impossible to figure out the qualities from that m3u8 URL but as I was saying, it's just not quite as simple as with non-live videos. That's why I currently have it so the media player library gets fed the m3u8 stream URL when the user starts playing the stream and only then surface up the different tracks through the media player APIs. I'll look into how difficult it would be to get the qualities up front before beginning playback though.

Regarding your first update - I checked out the m3u8 that was being served up during yesterdays stream and only saw those two qualities (640x360 and 1280x720) available so I'm guessing it was probably something on GB's end. I've definitely seen 1080p from their live stream API and had that working in the app previously, but who knows - we'll have to wait until their next stream to see if anything changes.

Regarding your second update - Thanks for the heads up! Sounds like you found a crash. Have you seen that same thing happen with any non-live videos or does it only happen when viewing live streams?

@fireworksordie: Hey there, glad to hear it's working well on that device as well. Unfortunately, the ability to switch the quality track is currently bound to the "menu" button, which is a button that the FTV remote has but the Shield TV remote does not (as far as I'm aware).

From looking at images, the Shield TV remote appears to only have dpad up, down, left, right, back, home, and microphone buttons. Is that correct?

I could maybe add in something like, I dunno, long-press the dpad down (or up?) button to bring up the quality selection menu - but I'm definitely open to suggestions.

The other option would be to implement my own navigate-able video controls bar but I'd have to ditch the slow/fast FF/RW using the FTV FF/RW + dpad left/right buttons, which I'm personally fond of.

I'll give this a bit of thought - maybe there's a better compromise that doesn't involve forking too much work to support devices with more limited remotes.

@ramsaya92: Hm, that sounds like a pretty annoying state for the app to be in. I haven't encountered this issue myself and I'm struggling a bit to come up with a reason why it might be acting this way.

There are a few things you can try to resolve this, in increasing desperation:

1. Force stop the app and clear its cache. You can do this by going into Settings > Applications > Manage Installed Applications > Giant Bomb Enthusiast > Force Stop then Clear cache in the same menu. After you've done this, launch the app and try marking a video as complete or resetting progress. If it works now, great! Otherwise proceed.
2. Clear the app data. Note: you'll need to re-authenticate and will lose any saved progress on videos. You can do this by going into Settings > Applications > Manage Installed Applications > Giant Bomb Enthusiast > Clear data. Once you've done this, relaunch the app and re-authenticate then check to see if it's working now. If it is, that's good (sorry about the data loss!) and hopefully it'll stay that way. Otherwise, the final troubleshooting step is next.
3. Uninstall the app and reinstall it via Settings > Applications > Manage Installed Applications > Giant Bomb Enthusiast > Uninstall. Find the app in the Amazon App Store and reinstall it.

If none of these things work then something very strange is going on and we'll go from there. Let me know if any of these steps worked for you and I'll dig around the code a bit as soon as I get a chance to see if I can find any reason why the progress functionality might break like this. Sorry about the hassle!