Incomplete Downloads

[Chris J Brady]

get_iplayer needs a rock steady and fast Internet connection. And it seems that RTDump occasionally loses track of downloading - or actually loses packets - and then gets lost in the processing? Having done so it does not usually make a reliable restart, gets into a loop, and the whole process has to be closed down manually. This leaves a trail of a corrupted 'partial' file, and a reference to a 'successful' completion in the History file.

RadioDownloader also used to suffer from incomplete - but successfully registered downloads.

It is easy enough to check whether a downloaded file has been completed by using Windows Explorer to examine the time length of the file in question. However I have noticed recently that say 30 minute audio programmes which actually used to be downloaded as 36 minutes long, are now anything from 30 to 32 to 33 to 34 to 36 minutes. For some reason the Beeb staff are truncating the files at in consistent time lengths. 

However if a file is downloaded as less than 30 mins then it is obviously truncated and has to be downloaded again. This means deleting the file if it is 'partial' or 'default', and then forcing a re-download. I do not recommend deleting its entry in the History file!!

I emailed the RadioDownloader guy with some info. that might have helped ascertain whether a file has been fully downloaded, but my idea was not taken up. I offer it here. 

I also use Orbit to download files. This seems to extract the metadata of a file and knows in advance exactly how big a file is. It is also restartable if a download fails say from an Internet connection being broken. Orbit requires the exact URL of the file on the server. I suggested that RadioDowloader could use the same metadata to monitor the download of a file and ascertain its exact length and successful completion.

Maybe get_iplayer could do the same? And it would also be useful if get_iplayer exposed the true URL to a file so that if a download had problems - such as with a large MP4 file over a less than reliable Internet connection - then Orbit could be used to cap the file instead. As I said Orbit is restartable. get_iplayer and RTDump are not.

Perhaps a new feature for get_iplayer could be to generate a list of the true URLs to file(s) in a  PVM list?

CJB.