MLBPLAY-HELP

MLBPLAY - JUST GIVE ME MY GAME

The motivation for mlbplay is simple.  Most of the time, you just want to
watch your team (or teams) and, of course, you want your team's broadcast
streams.  The other games of the day are of secondary concern.

So wouldn't it be great to have a command that says, "I don't care about the 
listings, just give me my team's game"?

That's what mlbplay does.  And so much more.

LEVERAGING THE POWER OF MLBVIEWER WITHOUT THE CURSES

Mlbplay is written using the same MLBviewer library that mlbviewer uses.  It 
uses the same configuration file, writes the same log, and supports many of 
the same features without the curses GUI.  Think of mlbplay as shorthand for 
mlbviewer.

Features supported in mlbviewer that are also supported in mlbplay:

audio_follow
video_follow
speed selection
condensed games
debug (network debugging)
zdebug (media listings debugging)
nexdef
adaptive streaming (through configuration file)

BASIC USAGE

mlbplay <streamtype>=<team> [name=value] [name=value] ...

All arguments take the form of name=value (no "-"'s)  All arguments have both
a long name and a short key.  The short keys, whenever possible, are mapped to 
the same keys used in mlbviewer.

At least a streamtype=team pair needs to be specified.

Streamtypes are (long name, short key):

'audio' or 'a'
'video' or 'v'
'condensed' or 'c'

Teams are specified using the teamcodes that are used in audio_follow, 
video_follow, blackout, and favorite config file options.  

Teamcodes are:

     'ana', 'ari', 'atl', 'bal', 'bos', 'chc', 'cin', 'cle', 'col',
     'cws', 'det', 'fla', 'hou', 'kc', 'la', 'mil', 'min', 'nym',
     'nyy', 'oak', 'phi', 'pit', 'sd', 'sea', 'sf', 'stl', 'tb',
     'tex', 'tor', 'was'

Additionally, 'al' and 'nl' are supported for the All-Star Game, and 'uft'
and 'wft' are supported for the Futures Game (held during All-Star week.)

By specifying a team, it is also implied that this team should be used
for selecting the broadcast stream.  In other words, specifying the team 
automatically implies audio_follow or video_follow.  For national broadcasts
(Game Of The Week) and condensed games, there is only one stream available 
and this is the stream that will be selected.

FULL LIST OF OPTIONS (long name, short key):

audio, a     : value should be a team, implies audio_follow
video, v     : value should be a team, implies video_follow
condensed, c : value should be a team, follow doesn't apply here
startdate, j : value should be a date in mm/dd/yy format
speed, p     : value is the speed of the stream to select in Kbps
debug, d     : True/False (or 1/0) value that enables network debugging
zdebug, z    : True/False (or 1/0) value that enables media listing debugging
nexdef, n    : True/False (or 1/0) value, implies video_follow
event_id, e  : value should be event-id which can be found from mlblistings.py
inning, i    : value should be 't' (top) or 'b' (bottom) plus inning number
               e.g., t9 for top of 9th or b5 for bottom of 5th


Valid speeds are 200, 500, 1200, 1800, or 2400.  Additionally, nexdef provides
speed values of 3000 and 4500 through the max_bps setting in ~/.mlb/config.

EXAMPLES

To watch today's Boston game:

mlbplay v=bos

To listen to today's Texas game:

mlbplay a=tex

To watch today's Detroit condensed game:

mlbplay c=det

To watch the Yankees broadcast of Boston @ New York for the 5/14/2011 game:

mlbplay v=nyy j=05/14/11

To watch the same game in nexdef:

mlbplay v=nyy j=05/14/11 n=1


ADDITIONAL OPTIONS SUPPORTED

Since the mlbplay code utilizes the MLBviewer library, there are a few 
additional options supported through the configuration file.

show_player_command (True/False): displays the command used to play the media

video_player, audio_player, top_plays_player : the player commands to use

If not specified on mlbplay command-line, these values are taken from config
file or mlbviewer defaults:

debug, use_nexdef, speed, use_librtmp

NEW LIBRTMP SUPPORT (EXPERIMENTAL)

Recent versions of FFMpeg have LibRTMP support.  This is the ability to stream
RTMP without the need of using external programs like rtmpdump or flvstreamer.
The media URL passed to mplayer or VLC has to be formatted with the RTMP
connection parameters appended.  Mlbviewer support of librtmp is still 
experimental.  It is recommended to enable this option only if you know how
to build and install librtmp.so from rtmpdump source and rebuild either 
mplayer or vlc to include librtmp support.  As Linux distributions get their 
annual refreshes, they will hopefully include pre-built versions of mplayer,
vlc, and librtmp to make this less of a hacker option.  To test librtmp
with mlbplay (or mlbviewer), include "use_librtmp=True" in ~/.mlb/config.