2.97 failing to produce files

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Sun Dec 11 09:03:24 GMT 2016, Alan Milewczyk wrote:

> it's nearly 24 hours since you posted your query and no replies

... Anyone remembers my last month's post?

http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/get_iplayer/2016-November/009922.html

> > my knowledge of get_iplayer is incomplete :-( ;
>> not only because I am running it (since Dec 2010) on
>> one specific platform only (=> I mean Windows here)
>> (snip)
>> For this list not to die,
>> more members should actively participate
>> into offering help, not just a select few...

With regards to Charles' issue:

> as because of attachments, this mail was queued

 Not only does the list require plain text format
in the body of the e-mail, the type and size
of allowed attachments is limited.
 In the past we had malware issues in zip
attachments, so probably (haven't tested
recently) zip is blocked...
And .txt attachments are limited by size,
off the top of my head I think it's < 100KB
Anyhow, you did the best thing; verbose/debug
logs should be posted on "pastebin" type sites :-)

We'll assume the original GiP 2.97 command is

get_iplayer --type=radio --pid=b084bp81 --modes=flashaaclow

(or some other to the same effect)

> why 2.97 consistently produces empty .flv (or m4a) files for me

No, they are most certainly not empty;
according to your log, rtmpdump succeeds
in downloading your file in its entirety
(radiomode=flashaaclow1)

> DEBUG: Got Play.Complete or Play.Stop from server. Assuming stream is 
> complete
>
> 10416.378 kB / 1666.90 sec (99.9%)

It's just the lossless remuxing to the MP4 (.m4a) container that fails:

> WARNING: Conversion failed - retaining 
> /tmp/Thinking_Allowed_-_Success_and_Luck_-_Cosmopolitanism_and_Private_Education_b084bp81_original.partial.m4a.flv

Have you tried to play the .flv audio file?

> (successful 2.96 log and bad 2.97 one linked instead)

There has been very little change codewise between 2.96->2.97:

https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/compare/v2.96...v2.97

My gut feeling is Timothy is right; you are running a very old
ffmpeg version for your distro (ffmpeg already on v3.2.2).
Your very old ffmpeg version has been probably affected by
the following GiP commit:

https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/commit/9183610030e9e85ff8d2711108feb1c9d6333f97

It appears the combination of  "-loglevel -stats" is that broke
your 0.8.18 FFmpeg version - BTW, with that old version
you won't be able to properly mux hvf tvmodes into MP4;
FFmpeg >=2.5 is required for that...
Follow Timothy's suggestion:

> I suggest you update to the latest FFMpeg first, which should solve all 
> your problems.

Regards,
Vangelis.