The 'arse that Jack Built

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Wed Oct 31 22:19:08 GMT 2012, Don Grunbaum wrote:

>I've tried Geoff's search and failed, although the programme shows as
>available for a year on the BBC iPlayer website.

>However, that programme does not show up in any search results and
>using the URL directly fails to find the PID.

>Some anomaly? Searching for the programme on the iPlayer website won't
>find it which begs the question how Geoff found it in the first place?
>The Radio 4 schedule doesn't go back that far, only the past seven days.

 Hello to all :-)

 I have stumbled upon the same problem with the BBC News Channel TV show 
"Click".
This is first broadcast on Saturdays at 0130 GMT (and repeated many times 
after),
the latest episode is available on the iPlayer (also with WMV and MP4 
encrypted
downloads) for the normal 7 day period, but then is available "to stream 
only" for a
whole year...
 So, a search for "Click" on the  iPlayer site 
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=Click]
yields only last Saturday's episode (Click_27_10_2012, pid=b01nr47n). No 
sign of a year's
worth previous episodes...So it is expected that get_iplayer can't provide 
any info about past
Click episodes, the data just isn't there in the tv cache...
 Sadly, I never use the Web GUI, only the CLI; and with that I am able to 
download those
past episodes via the PID route - this involves a bit of manual search:
E.g., for Click 25/02/2012 google easily yields the iPlayer URL:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01czcnh/Click_25_02_2012/

Another "never-fail" method is to go to the BBC News Channel Schedules page:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcnews/programmes/schedules
and from there find your way through the calendar on the right to the 
broadcast day of choice
(this method can also be applied for radio programmes, too!)

Once the pid is retrieved:
get_iplayer --type=tv -i --pid=b01czcnh --modes=flashvhigh --force -w --file-prefix="Click 
25 02 2012[b01czcnh]"

C:\Program 
Files\get_iplayer>get_iplayer --type=tv -i --pid=b01czcnh --modes=fla
shvhigh --force -w --file-prefix="Click 25 02 2012[b01czcnh]"
get_iplayer v2.80, 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.

WARNING: Please download and run latest installer or install the XML::Simple 
per
l module to use the Series and Brand pid parsing functionality
INFO: Trying pid: b01czcnh using type: tv
INFO Trying to stream pid using type tv
INFO: pid not found in tv cache
INFO: Checking existence of default version
INFO: flashvhigh1,flashvhigh2 modes will be tried for version default
INFO: Trying flashvhigh1 mode to record tv: Click - 25/02/2012
INFO: File name prefix = Click 25 02 2012[b01czcnh]
RTMPDump v2.4 GIT-2012-02-24 (Compiled by KSV)
(c) 2010 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu, The Flvstreamer Team; license: GPL
Connecting ...
INFO: Connected...
Starting download at: 0.000 kB
INFO: Metadata:
INFO:   duration              1457.07
INFO:   moovPosition          32.00
INFO:   width                 832.00
INFO:   height                468.00
INFO:   videocodecid          avc1
INFO:   audiocodecid          mp4a
INFO:   avcprofile            77.00
INFO:   avclevel              30.00
INFO:   aacaot                2.00
INFO:   videoframerate        25.00
INFO:   audiosamplerate       24000.00
INFO:   audiochannels         2.00
INFO: trackinfo:
INFO:   length                36424000.00
INFO:   timescale             25000.00
INFO:   language              eng
INFO: sampledescription:
INFO:   sampletype            avc1
INFO:   length                34969600.00
INFO:   timescale             24000.00
INFO:   language              eng
INFO: sampledescription:
INFO:   sampletype            mp4a
2114.091 kB / 12.44 sec (0.8%)

NB the info printed:
INFO: pid not found in tv cache
and the warning:
WARNING: Please download and run latest installer or install the XML::Simple 
perl
 module to use the Series and Brand pid parsing functionality.

This latter warning is misleading, since I fear the version of perl that 
comes with get_iplayer
doesn't allow for additional modules to be installed (or, of cource, I am 
totally mistaken :-) !).
However, I have Strawberry Perl Portable x86 installed on an external HD & 
used it to
fetch the XML::Simple perl module... then copied the "XML" folder generated 
to the
"C:\Program Files\get_iplayer\lib" folder; but then get_iplayer failed 
miserably with a series
of compilation errors! Anyhow, the warning can be easily ignored! (any idea 
why it is printed
in the first place?)
 There exist other TV programmes with 1 year availability (e.g. Panorama) 
and many BBC World
Service radio programmes also fall into that category... So a convenient fix 
for the WebPVR
users would be to allow for recordings by inputting a specific PID, much 
like the CLI version...

 As always, congrats and many thanks to developers & maintainers of this 
programme
(and I fear additional labour will be needed with the announced - and 
partially implemented -
iPlayerRadio changes... :-(  ).