This is a Kodi input stream addon for streams that can be opened by either FFmpeg's libavformat or Kodi's cURL. Common stream formats such as plain TS, HLS and DASH are supported as well as many others. Note that the only DASH streams supported are those without DRM.

The addon also has support for Archive/Catchup services where there is a replay window (usually in days) and can timeshift across that span.

1. git clone --branch master https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc.git
2. git clone https://github.com/xbmc/inputstream.ffmpegdirect.git
3. cd inputstream.ffmpegdirect && mkdir build && cd build
4. cmake -DADDONS_TO_BUILD=inputstream.ffmpegdirect -DADDON_SRC_PREFIX=../.. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../../xbmc/build/addons -DPACKAGE_ZIP=1 ../../xbmc/cmake/addons
5. make

The addon files will be placed in ../../xbmc/build/addons so if you build Kodi from source and run it directly the addon will be available as a system addon.

In order to build the addon on mac the steps are different to Linux and Windows as the cmake command above will not produce an addon that will run in kodi. Instead using make directly as per the supported build steps for kodi on mac we can build the tools and just the addon on it's own. Following this we copy the addon into kodi. Note that we checkout kodi to a separate directory as this repo will only only be used to build the addon and nothing else.

1. Get the repos

• cd $HOME
• git clone https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc xbmc-addon
• git clone https://github.com/xbmc/inputstream.ffmpegdirect

2. Build the kodi tools

• cd $HOME/xbmc-addon/tools/depends
• ./bootstrap
• ./configure --host=x86_64-apple-darwin
• make -j$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)

3. Build the addon

• cd $HOME/xbmc-addon
• make -j$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN) -C tools/depends/target/binary-addons ADDONS="inputstream.ffmpegdirect" ADDON_SRC_PREFIX=$HOME

Note that the steps in the following section need to be performed before the addon is installed and you can run it in Kodi.

1. cd $HOME/inputstream.ffmpegdirect
2. ./build-install-mac.sh ../xbmc-addon

If you would prefer to run the rebuild steps manually instead of using the above helper script check the appendix here

Contains the settings for how the proxy is configured when opening with FFmpeg. Note that the setting has no effect when opening using Kodi's cURL. In that case it will use the proxy configured in Kodi.

• Use HTTP proxy when opening with FFmpeg: Whether or not a proxy should be used when opening with FFmpeg.
• Server: Configure the proxy server address.
• Port: Configure the proxy server port.
• Username: Configure the proxy server username.
• Password: Configure the proxy server password.

The addon can be accessed like any other inputstream in Kodi. The following example will show how to manually choose this addon for playback when using IPTV Simple Client with the following entry in the M3U file (Note that the IPTV Simple Client will in fact automatcially detect a catchup stream and use the addon based on configured settings).

#KODIPROP:inputstream=inputstream.ffmpegdirect
#KODIPROP:mimetype=video/mp2t
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.program_number=2154
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.is_realtime_stream=true
#EXTINF:-1,MyChannel
http://127.0.0.1:3002/mystream.ts

Note that the appropriate mime type should always be set. Here are the some common ones:

• TS: video/mp2t
• HLS: application/x-mpegURL or application/vnd.apple.mpegurl
• Dash: application/dash+xml

The field program_number can be used to indicate the Program ID to use for TS streams.

If enabling archive/catchup support there are a number of other properties that needs to be set as shown in this example.

#KODIPROP:inputstream=inputstream.ffmpegdirect
#KODIPROP:mimetype=application/x-mpegURL
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.is_realtime_stream=true
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.stream_mode=catchup
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.open_mode=ffmpeg
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.manifest_type=hls
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.default_url=http://mysite.com/streamX
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.playback_as_live=true
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.programme_start_time=1111111
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.programme_end_time=2111111
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.catchup_url_format_string=http://mysite.com/streamX?cutv={Y}-{m}-{d}T{H}:{M}:{S}
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.catchup_buffer_start_time=1111111
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.catchup_buffer_end_time=1111111
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.catchup_buffer_offset=1111111
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.timezone_shift=0
#KODIPROP:inputstream.ffmpegdirect.default_programme_duration=3600
#EXTINF:-1,MyChannel
http://127.0.0.1:3002/mystream.m3u8

• stream_mode: If the value catchup is supplied the inputstream will start in catchup mode. Any other value or if omitted will open as a regular stream.
• open_mode: If the value ffmpeg is supplied the inputstream will be opened with AVFormat. If the value curl is supplied the inputstream will be opened with cURL. If neither value is supplied the default is to open HLS, Dash and Smooth Streaming with AVFormat and anything else as a kodi file. Note that a mimetype or manifest_type property is required to be able to tell if a stream is HLS or Dash. If using Smooth streaming only a manifest_type property will work as Smooth Streaming does not have a mimetype.
• manifest_type: Allowed values are hls for HLS, mpd for Dash and ism for Smooth Streaming.
• default_url: The URL to use if a catchup URL cannot be generated for any reason.
• playback_as_live: Should the playback be considerd as live tv, allowing skipping from one programme to the next over the entire catchup window, if so set to true. Otherwise set to false to treat all programmes as videos.
• programme_start_time: The unix time in seconds of the start of the programme being streamed - optional.
• programme_end_time: The unix time in seconds of the end of the programme being streamed - optional.
• catchup_url_format_string: The URL including format specifiers to use to generate catchup URLs when seeking the stream.
• catchup_url_near_live_format_string: Some providers require a different catchup URL when close to live playback so the stream does not stop.
• catchup_buffer_start_time: The unix time in seconds of the start of catchup window.
• catchup_buffer_end_time: The unix time in seconds of the end of catchup window.
• catchup_buffer_offset: The offset from the catchup buffer start time where playback should begin.
• catchup_terminates: Indicates with a value of true or false if a catchup stream will specify an end time and will stop eventually. Essentially means that the provider does not support delayed live streams. Value used by the addon to try and restart with a new end time near the end of the stream.
• catchup_granularity: The granularity the catchup source can seek to in seconds. Generally a value of 1 or 60 is used.
• timezone_shift: The value in seconds to shift the catchup times by for your timezone. Valid values range from -43200 to 50400 (from -12 hours to +14 hours).
• default_programme_duration: If the programme duration is unknown use this default value in seconds instead. If this value is not provided 4 hours (14,400 secs) will be used will be used.
• programme_catchup_id: For providers that require a programme specifc id the following value can be used in the url format string.

Notes:

• Setting playback_as_live to true only makes sense when the catchup start and end times are set to the size of the catchup windows (e.g. 3 days). If the catchup start and end times are set to the programme times then playback_as_live will have little effect.
• For catchup streams that terminate there is a minimum distance from live a stream can seek to/from. For streams with a 1 second granularity it's 1 minute, and for stream with a 60 second granularity it's 2 minutes. The reason for this window on terminating streams is to allow the restart functionality to work.
• For all catchup streams any seek to within 10 seconds of live would be considered live and will switch to the default URL. For this reason seeking from live to less than 10 seconds has no effect.

The following steps can be followed manually instead of using the build-install-mac.sh in the root of the addon repo after the initial addon build has been completed.

To rebuild the addon after changes

1. rm tools/depends/target/binary-addons/.installed-macosx*
2. make -j$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN) -C tools/depends/target/binary-addons ADDONS="inputstream.ffmpegdirect" ADDON_SRC_PREFIX=$HOME

or

1. cd tools/depends/target/binary-addons/macosx*
2. make

Copy the addon to the Kodi addon directory on Mac

1. rm -rf "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Kodi/addons/inputstream.ffmpegdirect"
2. cp -rf $HOME/xbmc-addon/addons/inputstream.ffmpegdirect "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Kodi/addons"