F1Viewer

Watch any F1TV VOD or live stream.

Table of Contents

• Usage
• Flags
• FAQ
• Config
• Custom Commands

Usage

1. get F1Viewer

   download pre-compiled binaries

   or

   build it yourself

   $ git clone https://github.com/SoMuchForSubtlety/F1viewer/
   $ cd F1Viewer
   $ go build
   

2. Download MPV

   Download it from here (Windows users please download from here) and either put it in the same folder as the F1Viewer binary or add it to your PATH environment variable.

   (You can also use other players, see Custom Commands)

Flags

-d

shows debug information

FAQ

F1Viewer is not showing a live session / loading very slowly

This can happen if the F1TV servers are overloaded. There is nothing I can do to fix this. Start your stream as soon as possible at the start of the session and you can usually avoid this.

I downloaded a .m3u8 file but can't play it

F1TV now requires a cookie to be set to open the links in a .m3u8 file. You can get the cookie with $cookie through a custom command or completely circumvent this issue by using the url to the .m3u8 instead (custom command $url). If you need a local file put the url in a .strm file.

MPV is opening but I'm not getting audio

Please make sure you are using the latest version of MPV. If you use Windows please download it from here.

Config

The config is is optional. It is used to set a preferred audio language and custom commands. It can also be used to stop checking for updates. It should look like this.

{
    "preferred_language": "en",
    "check_updates": true,
    "custom_playback_options": [
        {
            "title": "Play with MPV custom",
            "commands": [
                ["mpv", "$url", "--alang=de"]
            ],
            "watchphrase": "Video",
            "command_to_watch": 0
        }
    ]
}

Save sample-config.json as config.json in the same Folder as the F1Viewer binary and edit it so it fits your needs.

Custom Commands

You can execute custom commands, for example to launch a different player. These are set in the config under custom_playback_options. You can add as many as you want.

title is the title. It will appear next to the standard Play with MPV and Download .m3u8.

commands is where your custom command goes. There can be one or more. Commands are saved as a list of args, like ["mpv", "$url", "--alang=de"].
$url will be replaced with the playback URL.
$file will be replaced with the path to a local copy of the .m3u8 file.
$cookie will be replaced with the cookie you get by downloading a .m3u8 file with $file, this needs to be set or you will get 403 errors when you try and play the file.

With concurrent you can set whether one command should finish before the next one is executed, or they all launch simultaneously. It defaults to false and is only needed if there is more than one command. (see sample-config.json for example)

watchphrase is optional. it is used to play a loading... animation. F1Viewer can parse the output of your command and stop the animation once the watchphrase is found. This can be useful if your command takes a while to execute.

command_to_watch belongs to watchphrase. It defines what command to parse if there are multiple. It is indexed at 0 so if you only have 1 command, command_to_watch should be 0.

If command_to_watch is out of range or watchphrase is an empty string, the loading animation will be skipped.