get_iplayer v.v. Radio Downloader

[Chris J Brady]

Sadly from experience get_iplayer is not a viable alternative to Radio Downloader - largely due to the former's or its associated apps' instability.

1/ I have tried to set up a WebPVM List - it took hours in between crashes of the Perl script - always at line 307 being unable to 'fork' whatever that means. 

2/ Then there are the empty packets reported by RTPDump which always terminates a download. And attempts by the PVM List to restart the download a failed operation always ends up in a cycle of failures that go on and on. To stop this the Perl command window and WebPVM window have to be manually closed / crashed. 

3/ And the latest irritation is that many downloads are apparently completing successfully but when I check the file sizes / recording lengths I find that they are in fact truncated. Deleting these bad files from the download directory doesn't work and runing the PVM List again doesn't work, because the history file already thinks that they have been downloaded successfully and it refuses to let them be downloaded again.

This then means gong into the history file and manually editing out the reference to the bad files, and then trying again. 

An alternative is to use --force but this is only available in command mode not in the Web PVM window; but the Wiki documentation on --force is in the 'still to do' category.

4/ get_iplayer needs a rock steady broadband of wifi connection. Any hiccup immediately results in empty or lost packets which results in a failed download and likely manually termination of the PVM List.

I have about 13 programmes in my PVM List - when I run this I am lucky to get two successful downloads. Then I have to clear up the mess left behind by the failures such as editing the history file or deleting partial files. Then I have to try again and again and again; eventually resorting to --force for the last few rogue downloads.
  
CJB.

Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2013 14:12:23 +0100
From: Jon Davies <jon at hedgerows.org.uk>
To: get_iplayer <get_iplayer at lists.infradead.org>
Subject: Re: Radio Download Alternatives
Message-ID:
    <CAJEH5C2-x=fwDePPVf=83MZ48pgoSLxHgVQ0HAHGLeYHb+vvAw at mail.gmail.com>
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(please reply to the list, not to me)

On 4 July 2013 15:41,  <michael.mpireland at virgin.net> wrote:
> One thing Radio Downloader did that I found useful was to offer a very wide-ranging - maybe
> even comprehensive - list of BBC radio programmes to which one could subscribe on the
> offchance that they might reappear.
>
> In addition if one subscribed to the News Quiz, say, one's subscription was not restricted to
> the current series.
>
> Maybe these features are hidden somewhere in get-iplayer but, if so, I have not found them.

I routinely use get-iplayer to do just this.  I use the command line
because that suits me, so something like




   get_iplayer --type radio "News Quiz" --pvr-add news_quiz




will download everything with "News Quiz" in the name, regardless of
what series it is.




You can do the same through the web interface by entering some search
terms which match the programme/s youre' interested in (without
specifying the series number) and clicking "Add Search to PVR".  (The
"Add Series" link against a programme picks a search that includes the
series number - which matches what the button says but isn't what you
want ;-)




> One could therefore say that get-iplayer is restricted to the current offerings but Radio
> Downloader could be used to be on the watch for repeats of past favourtes.
there are ways of doing pretty much anything with get_iplayer - the
challenge is almost always working out how to, or finding where in the
rather distributed documentation to find out.




> Many thanks to the maintainers of both programs.
that would be almost entirely dinkypumpkin nowadays.




Regards
Jon