Safely terminating a livestream recording

[Wild Willy]

I have looked in on Medici TV every so often since we last posted here
https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/NmWVLQjOwQk. So much of what
they offer is behind their paywall, and I can't see my way to paying them for their
content. But every so often they offer a live performance that I am able to watch for
free. One such happened to be on this afternoon -- actually yesterday now, since I've
had such trouble posting this. I was busy with other things so I set VDH to record it as
it was happening. I've checked & it appears that it is has been archived on their site
for replay & you don't need a paying subscription to watch it. A simple free ID/password
will let you watch it. It's a piano recital by Yoav Levanon.

There is one trick to ending the VDH recording. I got burned a few weeks ago with a golf
tournament. I was recording the round of golf as it was being played. It happened to be
a 3-hour broadcast. When the 3 hours were up, I saw that VDH was still recording. Not
too surprising, since Golf Channel always tacks a few minutes of "Coverage has concluded"
on the end of their live feeds. But I checked in over a half hour later & VDH was still
recording what was by then dead air, not even "Coverage has concluded." So I stopped VDH
using the STOP button in the blue dot active download status monitor menu. Bad idea.
Because VDH keeps some critical information in storage & writes it into the file on disk
only when the download completes, that step got short circuited. I had a file of about
8G or whatever it was that was completely useless. I even tried using a couple of video
repair tools I found online but they both said this critical bit of information wasn't
present so they couldn't repair the video. ffmpeg couldn't deal with it, either. I
can't remember the exact name of the thing that was missing. It was a rather specific
bit of arcane terminology that has slipped my mind. But that thing wasn't there because
stopping VDH does not make VDH write the critical piece that makes the video playable.

So yesterday with the piano recital, I thought I would try something different. The
stream was still recording several minutes after it had ended & it didn't look like VDH
was ever going to recognize that it was done. Instead of telling VDH to stop, I ran this
command in a command prompt:

ipconfig /release

This has the effect of disconnecting your computer from the Internet. VDH saw this as
the stream terminating, after a short delay, & I had a good MP4. I have played it all
the way through last night, not sampling it, in VLC & it was all there, video & audio.

Once VDH had terminated its recording, I reconnected to the Internet with this command:

ipconfig /renew

This works for both IPV4 & IPV6 connections. Response to the commands is almost
immediate for IPV4 connections but there's a bit of a delay before IPV6 connections
respond to the commands, so a bit of patience is required. Just monitor your Internet
connection in the Local Area Connection Status display that you can find in Control Panel
on Windows. On my Windows 7, I find it by navigating Control Panel -> Network and
Internet -> Network and Sharing Center -> under the View your active networks heading,
click the Local Area Connection button on the right. I have attached an image of the
last part of the Control Panel navigation. I have also attached an image of what you get
when you click the button I indicate in the first image.

I don't know what other tools are available on other platforms. I suppose powering your
Internet modem off or pulling your Internet cable out of your computer would have the
same effect, but those seem a bit drastic. I prefer something you can do under program
control since you want to disconnect for only as long as it takes VDH to realize the
stream is gone.

[Wild Willy]

I came across the bit of terminology I couldn't remember when I posted above. The term
is:

moov atom

Apparently, it is this moov atom that VDH fails to write when you stop a livestream using
the blue dot download status menu of VDH. Absence of the moov atom makes the MP4 totally
unusable, and it seems repair tools can't deal with a file that is missing this bit.

[Wild Willy]

I have a little more experience with my technique & it doesn't always work.
Specifically, ipconfig /release doesn't seem to disconnect my IPV6 connection.  The
documentation says that you don't have to specify ipconfig /release6, that ipconfig
/release is supposed to release both IPV4 & IPV6 connections.  But I have found that is
not true, at least on my Windows 7 system.  Neither /release nor /release6 seems to drop
my IPV6 connection.  Maybe it works on a more up to date Windows but it doesn't work for
me.  I have tried to use my technique & it works fine if the site I'm downloading from
has an IPV4 address.  But when it has an IPV6 address, I found that the only thing that
would get VDH to stop the download & do the normal saving of the moov atom was to
physically unplug the electricity feed to my Internet router & then wait for VDH to give
the completion notification.  I observed the rather odd situation in which my IPV4
connection said it had no Internet signal while VDH was still merrily downloading on the
IPV6 connection.  Oh well.  It was a nice idea while it lasted.

[Jaymo]

Ending the download by clicking the VDH icon then clicking the blue circle to show current downloads then clicking anywhere on the download has always has always ended the download of the stream, have messed with ipconfig since reading this and the same streams fail either way, the problem seems to be that some streams are handled differently and some streaming protocols means you will end up with nothing unless the stream ends at the server side, perhaps there's data not received to build the file, as some files are built as they are received and some files are entries in VDH's download folder and are built from cached data kept in a temp folder when VDH receives the last of the data and probably an instruction that lets VDH know it has the whole file.

Whether a live stream or a file being streamed, if a certain protocol is used and the stream is ended early from what I've seen, you will not be left with a playable file., if the live stream is continuous 24/7 and a certain protocol is used ... you screwed from what I can find, a screen recorder is your option.

Some streams end early for whatever reason, server ended the transfer, data not received or corrupted, server rebooted or taken out for service somewhere etc ... sometimes I've not got something complete till the 3rd try

[Jaymo]

The new beta deals with this

Video DownloadHelper new beta 7.6.3a5 for Firefox

Not an early adopter, but if the problem persists I will try it.