How do I download - A Narrow Sea - from BBC Ulster-Scots web site?

[dinkypumpkin]

On 26 Mar 2011, at 23:16, Nic Siddle wrote:

> The latest episodes of -A Narrow Sea- are available as podcasts on BBC Radio Ulster and get-iplayer also recognises them. The earlier episodes are no longer available there, but are still available on the BBC Ulster-Scots website as embedded audio tracks (eg Episode 1 is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ulsterscots/library/a-narrow-sea-episode-01). I have so far been unable to use get-iplayer to pick up this and the other early episodes. (I have previously managed it for a BBC Mundo video clip from the website by right clicking on the relevant page, clicking ‘page source’ and copying the content line into get-iplayer).
[snip]

I don't think any of the URLs you were trying to access point to the programme you're looking for (Ep 1 of A Narrow Sea).  If you view the source of the page you cited (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ulsterscots/library/a-narrow-sea-episode-01), you'll see the embedded player for the episode specified with:

<script type="text/javascript">
	var emp = new embeddedMedia.Player();
	emp.setWidth('307');
	emp.setHeight('107');
	emp.setDomId('emp_c674ed9bf9a81707eabca3d8375f45dbc6692bb9');
	emp.set("config_settings_displayMode","audio");
	emp.setPlaylist('http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/playlist/p00dn3z8');
	emp.write();
</script>

Embedded clips can often be located in the iPlayer site by taking the playlist URL above and changing "playlist" to "episode".  So in this case:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/playlist/p00dn3z8

becomes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00dn3z8

which redirects to the ridiculously long:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00dn3z8/A_Narrow_Sea_A_Narrow_Sea_Episode_1_The_Classical_World_learns_about_Scotland_and_Ireland/

Ideally you could just feed the one of those URLs to get_iplayer, but it doesn't work out of the box.  It boils down to how embedded clips are classified in the iPlayer universe.  For explanation see the "any way to download this?" thread from earlier in the week, specifically the patch given in:

http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/get_iplayer/2011-March/001083.html

For the programme you're looking for, you don't need the full patch referenced there.  All you need is the second part:

diff --git a/get_iplayer b/get_iplayer
index e13d3ea..bcf957c 100755
--- a/get_iplayer
+++ b/get_iplayer
@@ -5515,7 +5515,7 @@ sub get_pids_recursive {
                        return $prog->{pid};
                }
                # an episode-only pid page
-               if ( $rdf->{'po:Episode'} ) {
+               if ( $rdf->{'po:Episode'} || $rdf->{'po:Clip'} ) {
                        main::logger "INFO: Episode-only pid detected\n";
                        # No need to lookup - we already are an episode pid
                        push @pids, $prog->{pid};

If you're not familiar with that format, it means: Open C:\Program Files\get_iplayer\get_iplayer.pl in Notepad or your favourite editor, then go to line 5518 (may be a few lines off in your version).  Change the line reading:

if ( $rdf->{'po:Episode'} ) {

to:

if ( $rdf->{'po:Episode'} || $rdf->{'po:Clip'} ) {

Then you should be able to:

get_iplayer --url http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00dn3z8