Help requested - using get_iplayer on Mac OS X 10.6

Fri Oct 22 12:07:26 EDT 2010

Ok,

There's a bunch of things here.

Firstly: please always use the reply-to-all button, then remove my address from the headers, and reply directly to get_iplayer at lists.infradead.org

The list owner and I disagree on the best way to configure a mailing list. I believe the optimal default should be that replies go straight to the list, and the current configuration encourages people to mistakenly reply off-list, thus concealing helpful discussion and solution from the general list-reading public.

Unless marked as "off-list" in the subject line, I will tend to treat all replies directly to myself as if they were intended for the list and I will reply in public, but it's still a nuisance.

Secondly: you're probably best off following Jeff's advice to use the Automator. I know nothing about it.
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/get_iplayer/2010-October/000239.html

You should probably do that before reading the remainder of my comments (below). And you should certainly read all of them before following any of them.

On 22 Oct 2010, at 11:05, Ian McDonald wrote:
> On 22 Oct 2010, at 00:36, Andy Bircumshaw wrote:
> 
>>> ln -s flvstreamer_macosx_intel_32bit_latest flvstreamer
> 
> Andy - Thanks very much for your response.  I am impressed and very grateful that, after I had posted the question and gone to bed ,  you were willing to stay up so late to help.
> 
> I followed your second suggestion, and downloaded successfully Try a Triangle.  
> 
> However, I am still not through to the end of the tunnel.  I am trying to record from local radio, which is not available to download from the BBC iPlayer.  Your last command 
> --pid b00vjgxf --get  
> is for tv, if I put d00vbzz2 in it won't find it.

Often "--type radio" is required for radio downloads. The reason "--type tv" wasn't required for "Try a Triangle" is that TV is default.

It took me a moment to realise what was wrong, because I searched for the PID you gave:
http://www.google.com/search?q=d00vbzz2

$ get_iplayer Pipeline -g --type radio
get_iplayer v2.78, Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Phil Lewis
  This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty.
  This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
  conditions; use --conditions for details.

Matches:
12019:  Pipeline - 16/10/2010, BBC Radio Scotland, Folk,Music,Radio,Scotland

INFO: 1 Matching Programmes
ERROR: Failed to get iphone URL from iplayer site

INFO: Checking existence of default version
INFO: flashaudio1,wma1 modes will be tried for version default
INFO: Trying flashaudio1 mode to record radio: Pipeline - 16/10/2010
INFO: File name prefix = Pipeline_-_2010-10-16_b00vbzz2_default                 
RTMPDump v2.3
(c) 2010 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu, The Flvstreamer Team; license: GPL
Connecting ...

I have never known a correct PID not to hit in Google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=b00vbzz2

Note that `get_iplayer 12019 -g` also works - no "--type" is required using that expression.  

> I have tried the old command I used on my Windows version, which was
> --get 11990  --modes=flashaudio, but that seems to lose the flstreamer which I had just installed.

Referring to my previous comments, using "--flvstreamer flvstreamer_macosx_intel_32bit_latest" does not *install* flvstreamer, but tells get_iplayer where to find it *on this occasion*.

The format is "--flvstreamer /path/to/flvstreamer" where "/path/to/ls" is actually "/bin/ls" or "/path/to/mdutil" is actually "/usr/bin/mdutil":
$ which ls
/bin/ls
$ which mdutil
/usr/bin/mdutil
$ 

If you want to tell get_iplayer permanently the location of flvstreamer you would use:
$ get_iplayer --flvstreamer flvstreamer_macosx_intel_32bit_latest --prefs-add

or 
$ get_iplayer --flvstreamer /path/to/flvstreamer_macosx_intel_32bit_latest --prefs-add

Note the last parameter of each line above, "--prefs-add". Thereafter it would not be necessary to use "--flvstreamer" each time, as it will be saved in get_iplayer's configuration files. See the output of `get_iplayer --prefs-show`.

> Before sending this I tried some more things, and one asked for mplayer.  Sorry to be a nuisancem, but can you point me at the version to use and how to install it as well please.

See Jeff's advice to use the Automator.

> I know that the full text from the terminal is long, but here it is
> 
> Last login: Fri Oct 22 10:01:46 on ttys001
> Ians-iMac:~ ianmcdonald$  /Users/ianmcdonald/Applications/GiP/get_iplayer --type=radio --channel="bbc Radio Scotland"
> get_iplayer v2.78, Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Phil Lewis
> ...
> Ians-iMac:~ ianmcdonald$ /Users/ianmcdonald/Applications/GiP/get_iplayer chmod +xxx flvstreamer_macosx_intel_32bit_latest
> Unknown option: x
> Usage ( Also see http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer/documentation ):

Referring to my previous comments, the `chmod` command only needed to be run once. It's not an argument to `get_iplayer`, but a separate command on it's own.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chmod
In this case it was only to make the flvstreamer binary executable. See:
http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/software/unixgeneral/unix101.html#fileatts
Once the file has been made executable it will stay that way, unless you change it again.

When we're discussing stuff happening at the command line, a "$" at the beginning of the line is just the user's prompt, and when you read it it means "this is a separate command". Your Mac has defaulted to a longer prompt "Ians-iMac:~ ianmcdonald$" (where the ~ is the path to your home directory and ianmcdonald is your username) but it still contains the $ sign, meaning "type the stuff after this".

So:

$ which ls
/bin/ls
$ ls -d D*
Desktop		Documents	Downloads
$ /bin/ls -d D*
Desktop		Documents	Downloads
$ 

... is three commands, `which ls`, `ls -d D*` and `/bin/ls -d D*`. The stuff appearing on lines without a $ at the beginning is the output of those commands. The `which` command takes one parameter, and looks to see if a command of that name is installed on your system (over-simplification); if so it will tell you where the command is located. So running `which ls` looks for a command called "ls", and we can see that just typing `ls` does the same thing as giving the full path to `/bin/ls`.

The backtick quotes are another convention in email, to indicate a single Unix command, but where the writer doesn't intend to show the output.

> Ians-iMac:~ ianmcdonald$ /Users/ianmcdonald/Applications/GiP/get_iplayer  --flvstreamer  flvstreamer_macosx_intel_32bit_latest  --get 11990  --modes=flashaudio
> get_iplayer v2.78, Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Phil Lewis
>  This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty.
>  This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
>  conditions; use --conditions for details.
> 
> Matches:
> 11990:	radio, Pipeline - 16/10/2010, BBC Radio Scotland, Folk,Music,Radio,Scotland
> 
> INFO: 1 Matching Programmes
> INFO: Checking existence of default version
> INFO: flashaudio1 modes will be tried for version default
> INFO: Trying flashaudio1 mode to record radio: Pipeline - 16/10/2010
> WARNING: Required program flvstreamer does not exist (see http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer/installation and http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer/download)
> INFO: skipping flashaudio1 mode
> ERROR: Failed to record 'Pipeline - 16/10/2010 (b00vbzz2)'
> Ians-iMac:~ ianmcdonald$ 
> Ians-iMac:~ ianmcdonald$ 

You say you've downloaded successfully "Try a Triangle", but you haven't shown the output from that, so I don't know how that differed from your attempt to download "Pipeline". I'm guessing that you put flvstreamer in the same folder as get_iplayer, in which case you'd have to use:

$ /Users/ianmcdonald/Applications/GiP/get_iplayer  --flvstreamer /Users/ianmcdonald/Applications/GiP/flvstreamer_macosx_intel_32bit_latest  --get 11990  --modes=flashaudio

But try using the Automator first, and see if that magically fixes it. I'm guessing that puts all the binaries in the right places, either it puts them where  get_iplayer will guess to look for them or it adds the correct path to get_iplayer's .config files.

aB.