Download problems

Sun Feb 14 18:22:08 PST 2016

On Sun Feb 14 23:35:09 GMT 2016, Alan Milewczyk wrote:

> My downloads seem to have stopped.
> (snip)
> Anyone else having these problems?

Most sadly it's a repetition of events from Jan 13th 2016:

http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/get_iplayer/2016-January/008598.html

Today's (14/02/2016) support forum thread:

https://squarepenguin.co.uk/forums/thread-658.html

Announcement from dinkypumpkin:

https://squarepenguin.co.uk/forums/announcement-6.html

He wants us to shift to youtube-dl, a python script.

https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/README.md#readme

http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html

Downloads repo:
https://yt-dl.org/downloads/?C=M;O=D
(Windows users should fetch the standalone executable,
"youtube-dl.exe", no need to install Python first; bookmark
the repo page and check manually for updates, it does get
updated pretty often; just overwrite previous executable.
For iPlayer, you'd also want FFmpeg/rtmpdump, as per:

https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/README.md#on-windows-how-should-i-set-up-ffmpeg-and-youtube-dl-where-should-i-put-the-exe-files

But of course, you first have to familiarise yourself with a
totally (to most of you) new app (CLI only), with a new
(& long) set of options/arguments.

Personally, I'll wait for a few days to see how things unfold;
in the meantime, and against the recommendations of dinkypumkin,
I will continue using specific commits of the main perl script from
the (2.95dev) develop branch of GiP:

https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/commits/develop/get_iplayer

The following commit:

https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/commit/b9adeaa

made downloading via --pid possible even in the event
the .xml/.rdf programme pages are down (like currently);

I mainly fetch radio, the radio.cache still builds fine:

get_iplayer --type=radio -f --force

and although GiP 2.94 is broken when trying to execute, e.g:

get_iplayer --type=radio 13101 -g

2.95dev (commit git-488ab9b) succeeds:

perl get_iplayer-295dev-g488ab9b.pl --type=radio 13101 -g

=================================================
Matches:
13101:  The Official Chart with Greg James - Scott Mills sits in, BBC Radio 
1,

INFO: 1 Matching Programmes
WARNING: Could not download programme metadata from 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/program
mes/b06zqhtr.xml
INFO: Checking existence of default version
INFO: flashlow1,flashlow2 modes will be tried for version default
INFO: Trying flashlow1 mode to record radio: The Official Chart with Greg 
James
- Scott Mills sits in
INFO: File name prefix = 
The_Official_Chart_with_Greg_James_-_Scott_Mills_sits_i
n_b06zqhtr_default
INFO: Begin recording file: D:\Vangelis\iPlayer 
Recordings\The_Official_Chart_wi
th_Greg_James_-_Scott_Mills_sits_in_b06zqhtr_default.m4a
RTMPDump v2.4 GIT-2015-12-14 (Compiled by KSV)
(c) 2010 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu, The Flvstreamer Team; license: GPL
Connecting ...
INFO: Connected...
Starting download at: 0.000 kB
INFO: Metadata:
INFO:   duration                7398.40
INFO:   moovPosition            28.00
INFO:   audiocodecid            mp4a
INFO:   aacaot                  2.00
INFO:   audiosamplerate         24000.00
INFO:   audiochannels           2.00
INFO: trackinfo:
INFO:   length                  177561600.00
INFO:   timescale               24000.00
INFO:   language                und
INFO: sampledescription:
INFO:   sampletype              mp4a
46229.042 kB / 7398.36 sec (99.9%)
Download complete
INFO: Begin converting file: D:\Vangelis\iPlayer 
Recordings\The_Official_Chart_w
ith_Greg_James_-_Scott_Mills_sits_in_b06zqhtr_default.partial.m4a.flv
size=   44029kB time=02:03:18.40 bitrate=  48.8kbits/s speed=1.44e+003x
INFO: Converted file: D:\Vangelis\iPlayer 
Recordings\The_Official_Chart_with_Gre
g_James_-_Scott_Mills_sits_in_b06zqhtr_default.partial.m4a
INFO: Recorded file: D:\Vangelis\iPlayer 
Recordings\The_Official_Chart_with_Greg
_James_-_Scott_Mills_sits_in_b06zqhtr_default.m4a

INFO: MP4 tagging M4A file

 Started writing to temp file.
 Progress: =============================================>100%|
 Finished writing to temp file.
=================================================

Caveat:
 Because the main programme metadata pages
are down, tag metadata are sparse/incomplete/wrong;
the embedded thumbnail is also wrong in the case of this
specific programme (showing Reggie Yates (!) instead of
Scott Mills).
 JSON playlist page is still online:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06zqhtr/playlist.json
(probably the reason 2.95dev achieves the
download) with a "recipe" to the correct thumbnail (e.g.
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640x360/p02n3p5h.jpg ),
so this may be yet another bug, but ATM correct M4A
metadata is not my main worry (I can always amend manually...).

Please, don't flood me with questions about how to
obtain/use the dev version, search the January 2016 list archives:
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/get_iplayer/2016-January/date.html
where I (and others) have already posted
crude guides (that usually work...).
In addition:
If on Linux, see:
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/get_iplayer/2016-January/008541.html
If on Windows,
a now removed guide by DP can be found at:
https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/wiki/githeadwin/d6452129dbfa3dad1d18d8c067dff8a4e0948f0c

Replace the script download URL with:
https://raw.github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/develop/get_iplayer

PROCEDE AT YOUR OWN RISK,
taking preventive measures to undo any changes made
to your original installation!

The safest thing to do right now is wait and see
if the beeb induced issue is self-fixed like before
(it lasted two days, maybe three...) - I would begin to
seriously worry after it has persisted for more than a week...

Off to bed now,
regards,
Vangelis. 