Talk:Houla, autopsie d’un massacre

From A Closer Look On Syria
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Viewing and downloading video

Moved from File talk:Houla Armored.png#French documentary

Thanks for the link to the French documentary

The video is still there, seen 51 times. Trouble is it uses MS Silverlight which really sucks. (Especially on Linux.)

I tried to download the video. After playing with URL:s I got a 426 byte .WMV file that I could save to my disk and open in my Linux video player. (Save this to your disk) It streams the video from somewhere, but works far better than the original web page. -- Petri Krohn 09:33, 3 October 2012 (EST)

Download links
Brilliant. I installed that Silverlight crap just for watching the film. At least two of the 51 views are me, maybe the low view count has something to do with that very "technology". I think I watched at least three times as much silly ads they play in the beginning than actually getting something streamed ... Your little wmv puts it up in VLC immediatetly. :oD --CE 09:44, 3 October 2012 (EST)
Do you to use Linux? No one here uses Window. It puts us at a disadvantage :-( Petri Krohn 09:56, 3 October 2012 (EST)
I am on old-school Windows (XP on the desktop and ancient 2000 on my beloved ThinkPad sub) and have Linux installed, but rarely use the latter. --CE 10:09, 3 October 2012 (EST)
Excellent! It opens on my WMP at least. I have an old Mac, OSX 10.4, unable to update some things anymore, etc. Now I can see this. Have another possible French connection to help translate, will share the tip. --Caustic Logic 18:21, 3 October 2012 (EST)
VLC is a really great free program for all things streaming, watching and recording, and also available for Mac (scroll down for version for 10.4). --CE 23:47, 3 October 2012 (EST)
Continued

The 426 byte .wmv file has this simple text content:

VLC refers to its source:

Saving to disk

Used this command:

Don't know what went wrong, it took about the full 34 minutes to download, and I got a 4 byte file :-(
Update: Based on this compatibly matrix i changed the container type from file/ps (MPEG program stream) to file/ts (MPEG transport stream). It now seems to be recording something. I still have to check what the filename extension should be.-- Petri Krohn 23:45, 3 October 2012 (EST)
I got the transport stream in file. I am able to play it on VLC. Sound is still missing. (Now trying Record button.) -- Petri Krohn 01:12, 4 October 2012 (EST)
For me it ended up as .asf on the drive. --CE 23:54, 3 October 2012 (EST)
In Windows you can just click a button "record" in VLC and it eats up what your wmv delivers ... worked great. ;oP --CE 11:40, 3 October 2012 (EST)
Finally found the Record button based on this How To. It is in "Advanced Controls". I still do not think this is the best way, it may somehow transcode or alter the video. Question: What does MediaInfo say about your video file. (You should really have MediaInfo installed.) -- Petri Krohn 23:58, 3 October 2012 (EST)
I canceled the installation after it showed me a terms of service screen without an accept button while trying to phone home to several servers. VLC says it's Windows Media Video 9 (WMV3) codec, 640x360, 25 frames/sec, "decoded format" Planar 4:2:0 YUV --CE 00:19, 4 October 2012 (EST)

Tried this one, seems to work:

This worked. Odd however, that the file will not play with the extension .wmv. Leaving it out with no extension at all works fine. -- Petri Krohn 11:49, 3 October 2012 (EST)

The video works, but very difficult to fast forward. MediaInfo fails to give any information on the stream. On the Linux Totem media player I can almost produce screenshots. The image file says the resolution is 640x360, (original was 382x216, as you see here) so this process must have done some transcoding. -- Petri Krohn 00:06, 4 October 2012 (EST)
P.S.

One step I did not mention in this hack: The Moonlight plugin has some kind of console that lets you see the address of the source stream. You cannot copy or save anything, so I just manually copied the address character by character. (Except for the last 50 character that I managed to find in the HTML source code.) -- Petri Krohn 10:45, 3 October 2012 (EST)

Video sources

I am trying to establish the original sources of the rebel videos used in the documentary. Here is one clue:

The scene is similar to one scene in the documentary. Al Arbad must refer to Al Arbad tomb somewhere in Houla. -- Petri Krohn

Another match with the video: these girls were seen in the demonstration. This is a demonstration at the fake clock tower at Revolution Square in early May. -- Petri Krohn 07:14, 4 October 2012 (EST)

Here is the whole setup. From Houla Media Office guy "Jalal Solomon". (May 21, 2012)

May 25 demonstration: