BBC Archives ....

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Thu Sep 18 16:12:44 BST 2014, Chris J Brady wrote:

> Wonder if get_iplayer can handle these?
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/programme/index.shtml

Greetings, Chris :-)

 I took as an example the first (video) entry in the list you linked to, 
i.e.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/gay_rights/12028.shtml

Load this page in Mozilla Firefox, go to
Tools -> Web Developer -> Web Console
and in the filter box in the mid right type "xml"
(without the quotes).
Delete Firefox's cache, reload the page and in the Console field
you'll get the "playlist URL" for the video in question;
place your cursor on this URL, right-click -> Copy link location;
the clipboard now has the URL you are after:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/xml/12/028.xml

These videos are older encodes (this one was first broadcast in 2002),
so they are not employing modern codecs; expect RealVideo/RealAudio
and/or Sorenson Spark (for video) / MP3 (for audio). These older codecs
are not compatible with the MP4 container, so one should use the --raw
switch to be on the safe side...If you don't use --raw, you won't get an 
.MP4
as the end video file but an .AVI one (which is significantly larger in size
compared to the FLV you'll get with --raw, due to increased muxing 
overhead...).
 I eventually downloaded the archived clip via this command:

get_iplayer --url="http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/xml/12/028.xml" --modes=best 
 --force -w --file-prefix="Gays Couples Given Similar Rights as Married 
Couples" --raw

INFO: Trying pid: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/xml/12/028.xml 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: flashnormal1 modes will be tried for version default
INFO: Trying flashnormal1 mode to record tv:  -
INFO: File name prefix = Gays Couples Given Similar Rights as Married 
Couples

RTMPDump v2.4-78-g26c4637-4GB
(c) 2010 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu, The Flvstreamer Team; license: GPL
Connecting ...
INFO: Connected...
Starting download at: 0.000 kB
INFO: Metadata:
INFO:   duration              211.84
INFO:   width                 512.00
INFO:   height                288.00
INFO:   videodatarate         375.00
INFO:   canSeekToEnd          FALSE
INFO:   videocodecid          2.00
INFO:   audiodatarate         128.00
INFO:   audiocodecid          2.00
INFO:   framerate             25.00
INFO:   creationdate          Fri Jul 09 11:44:12 2010
13458.805 kB / 211.83 sec (99.9%)
Download complete

(NB: The majority of the archived content is geo-blocked for non-UK IPs,
so it won't playback in a browser / record with get_iplayer if  tried from
an overseas physical location - I had to temporarily circumvent this in 
order
to conduct this "academic" experiment; video deleted right after the 
download
finished ;-) )

Hope I've shown you the way to go!

Regards.