Downloading Subtitles-Only

[dinkypumpkin]

On 10/01/2013 15:05, Kapitano wrote:
> When I run this:
>
> get_iplayer --type tv --subtitles-only --terse --search .*
> --file-prefix="<name> - <episode> - <dldate>"
>
> ...GiP doesn't just list what subtitles are available, it downloads the
> srt files. And if I run it again, it downloads them again.
>
> If I run it on different days, I get identical srt files with different
> datestamps in the filenames. If I do that with only
> --file-prefix="<name> - <episode>", it overwrites the previous downloads
> without asking.
>
> Is there a way to prevent all of these happening? Or am I missing
> something incredibly obvious?

The only thing you're missing is that get_iplayer is working as 
intended.  From the man page:

--subtitles-only
       Only download the subtitles, not the programme

The --subtitles-only option means "download only the subtitles for the 
programmes which match the search condition or programme ID".  You can't 
search for only those programmes which have subtitles.  The programme 
metadata used for searching does not include any indicator of whether or 
not a particular programme has subtitles.  To get that information 
requires retrieving the stream information for each programme, which 
would mean another ~1000 web requests for BBC TV, 3000+ for BBC radio - 
not practical or efficient.  Instead, you just add the --subtitles 
option to --get or --pid and get_iplayer will grab the subtitles if they 
exist.  The --subtitles-only option effectively works the same way.