Problems downloading Winter Olympics

[Paul Phillips]

The change in video quality available is described on this page for
version 3.29.
https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/wiki/release320to329#release329

I've seen a doubling in file sizes to approx 4GB per hour when
selecting fhd video quality
Whether it is true full HD or not, I'm not sure, but the files seem to
report they are 1080p

On Sun, 6 Mar 2022 at 17:43, MacFH - C E Macfarlane - News
<news at macfh.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On 06/03/2022 02:25, MacFH - C E Macfarlane - News wrote:
> >
> > On 05/03/2022 21:00, Paul Phillips wrote:
> >>
> >> Where you downloading in HD or Full HD (1080) ?
> >>>
> >>> FWIW, I downloaded all the above using the following command ...
> >>>
> >>> perl <path>\get_iplayer.pl --profile-dir=<profile path> --type tv
> >>> --tvmode hlshd,dvfhd,hvfhd,dvfsd,hvfsd,dvfxsd,hvfxsd --pid <pid>
> >>> --file-prefix "<as appropriate>" -g
> >>>
> >>> ... noting that at one time my mode list was giving warning messages,
> >>> though still working, but that I think this is a corrected version that
> >>> did not.
> >
> > The answer to your question is in the command-line above.  I wasn't
> > aware that you might be able to download any higher than 1280*720 at 50p,
> > but the '--info' command for your first download above ...
> >
> >      --info --pid p0blc3vb
> >
> > ... gives ...
> >
> >      modesizes: original:hvfhd1=14877MB,[...],dvfhd1=3986MB,[etc]
> >
> > ... suggesting that hvfhd might well be 1280*1080 at 50p, while my
> > parameter for '--tvmode' above tries to get the old hlshd (720 at 25p) mode
> > if available, then tries dvfhd (720 at 50p) if there's no 25p, so it would
> > never have tried to download hvfhd, and my size for that file is the
> > same as for dvfhd above.  Perhaps I should try changing my default order
> > for some things such as films, but I certainly won't for the Winter
> > Olympics, which essentially are mostly throwaway items.
> >
> > However, out of interest, I've just tried giving the parameter as ...
> >
> >      --type tv --tvmode hvfhd
> >
> > ... but the result was not touted to be 14GB or so ...
> >
> > INFO: Downloading tv: 'Winter Olympics: Beijing 2022 - Mixed Doubles
> > Curling - Great Britain v Italy (p0blc3vb) [original]'
> > 2.9% of ~4332.24 MB @  15.4 Mb/s ETA: 00:36:44 (hvfhd1/un) [audio+video]
> >
> > ... so it began normally enough, but didn't actually seem to be
> > downloading at significantly better quality than I already have, so I
> > stopped it.
>
> A further thought ... if the hvfhd mode above was really 1080p, one
> would expect that its filesize would be approximately that of a 720p
> mode x 1080 / 720 or about 6GB, so I have no idea where the figure of
> 14GB is supposed to come from and suspect that it's a software error.
>
> JOOI, I've investigated this further by downloading the first episode of
> Green Planet in hvfhd, just to see if it would be 1080p, but it wasn't,
> it was 720p, so I'm still not aware of anything that suggests that
> iPlayer downloads are available in 1080p.  AFAAIA, apart possibly from
> some test downloads, they've always been available only in 720p or
> below, never 1080p.



-- 
Paul Phillips