occasional failures converting flash to mp3

[Alexis Huxley]

Hi, about once per month 'get_iplayer --pvr' downloads something from Radio 4
for me, attempts to convert it mp3 and fails, leaving it as flash, which I 
always have trouble playing or manually converting. I've tried manual 
downloads (i.e. not cron calling 'get_iplayer --pvr') but still there are
problems. So I figured it was finally time to ask.

Here I am trying to manually download the same program:

    alexis at cercis$ get_iplayer --refresh
    ...
    alexis at cercis$ get_iplayer --long | grep -i 'the dog it was'
    12998:	radio, Tom Stoppard - The Dog It Was That Died - -, BBC Radio 4 Extra, Drama,Radio, 4 days 3 hours ago - Rupert is a spy, a counter-spy and a counter-counter-spy. No wonder he's suicidal.
    alexis at cercis$ get_iplayer --force --get 12998
    get_iplayer v2.80, Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Phil Lewis
      This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty.
      This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
      conditions; use --conditions for details.
    
    Matches:
    12998:	radio, Tom Stoppard - The Dog It Was That Died - -, BBC Radio 4 Extra, Drama,Radio
    
    INFO: 1 Matching Programmes
    ERROR: Failed to get iphone URL from iplayer site
    
    INFO: Checking existence of default version
    INFO: No specified modes (flashaachigh,flashaacstd,flashaudio,flashhigh,iphone,flashstd,flashnormal,realaudio,flashaaclow) available for this programme with version 'default' (try using --modes=)
    ERROR: Failed to record 'Tom Stoppard - The Dog It Was That Died - Tom Stoppard - The Dog It Was That Died (b007jnhb)'
    alexis at cercis$ 

If I use '--modes=best' then I do get it:

    alexis at cercis$ get_iplayer --force --modes=best --get 12998
    get_iplayer v2.80, Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Phil Lewis
      This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty.
      This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
      conditions; use --conditions for details.
    
    Matches:
    12998:	radio, Tom Stoppard - The Dog It Was That Died - -, BBC Radio 4 Extra, Drama,Radio
    
    INFO: 1 Matching Programmes
    INFO: Checking existence of default version
    INFO: flashaacstd1,flashaaclow1,flashaaclow2 modes will be tried for version default
    INFO: Trying flashaacstd1 mode to record radio: Tom Stoppard - The Dog It Was That Died - Tom Stoppard - The Dog It Was That Died
    INFO: File name prefix = Tom_Stoppard_-_The_Dog_It_Was_That_Died_-_Tom_Stoppard_-_The_Dog_It_Was_That_Died_b007jnhb_default                 
    WARNING: Your version of flvstreamer/rtmpdump does not support SWF Verification
    FLVStreamer v1.9
    (c) 2009 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu, The Flvstreamer Team; license: GPL
    Connecting ...
    Starting download at: 0.000 kB
    Metadata:                  
      duration              4860.05
      moovPosition          36
      audiocodecid          mp4a
      aacaot                2
      audiosamplerate       44100
      audiochannels         2
    tags:
      ©alb                 Tom Stoppard - The Dog It Was That Died
      aART                  BBC Radio 4 Extra
      ©ART                 BBC Radio 4 Extra
      ©cmt                 Rupert is a spy, a counter-spy and a counter-counter-spy. No wonder he's suicidal.
      cprt                  British Broadcasting Corporation © 2012, all rights reserved.
      ©gen                 Podcast
      ©nam                 Tom Stoppard - The Dog It Was That Died 02 07 2012
      ©day                 2012
    trackinfo:
      length                214328320
      timescale             44100
      language              und
    sampledescription:
      sampletype            mp4a
    27512.494 kB / 1683.68 sec (34.6%)

The download is much slower than normal and in any case eventually the actual
conversion still fails:

    Download complete
    FFmpeg version SVN-r0.5.1-4:0.5.1-1ubuntu1.3, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
      configuration: --extra-version=4:0.5.1-1ubuntu1.3 --prefix=/usr --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --disable-stripping --disable-vhook --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --enable-shared --disable-static
      libavutil     49.15. 0 / 49.15. 0
      libavcodec    52.20. 1 / 52.20. 1
      libavformat   52.31. 0 / 52.31. 0
      libavdevice   52. 1. 0 / 52. 1. 0
      libavfilter    0. 4. 0 /  0. 4. 0
      libswscale     0. 7. 1 /  0. 7. 1
      libpostproc   51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
      built on Dec 21 2011 18:37:21, gcc: 4.4.3
    /home/alexis/opt/OSI/get-iplayer/var/spool/partial/Tom_Stoppard_-_The_Dog_It_Was_That_Died_-_Tom_Stoppard_-_The_Dog_It_Was_That_Died_b007jnhb_default.partial.mp3.flv: Unknown format
    INFO: Command exit code 1 (raw code = 256)
    WARNING: flv conversion failed - retaining flv file
    INFO: Recorded /home/alexis/opt/OSI/get-iplayer/var/spool/partial/Tom_Stoppard_-_The_Dog_It_Was_That_Died_-_Tom_Stoppard_-_The_Dog_It_Was_That_Died_b007jnhb_default.partial.mp3.flv
    
    INFO: Downloaded Thumbnail to '/home/alexis/opt/OSI/get-iplayer/var/spool/partial/Tom_Stoppard_-_The_Dog_It_Was_That_Died_-_Tom_Stoppard_-_The_Dog_It_Was_That_Died_b007jnhb_default.jpg'
    alexis at cercis$ 

My 'command mv' then moves the retained flv to a mp3, which for clarity
I manually move back to a flv. 'file' reports:

    alexis at cercis$ file *Died.flv
    Tom Stoppard - The Dog It Was That Died - Tom Stoppard - The Dog It Was That Died.flv: Macromedia Flash Video
    alexis at cercis$ 

In my config file (besides 'output', 'command mv ...' and a hideously long 
'exclude' regexp) I have:

    channel ^BBC (Radio (3|4|4 Extra)|(One|Two|Three|Four))$
    modes flashaachigh,flashaacstd,flashaudio,flashhigh,iphone,flashstd,flashnormal,realaudio,flashaaclow
    type tv,radio
    sortmatches timeadded
    sortreverse 1
    aactomp3 1
    
The 'modes' line is ancient. Should I be using something else these days or is there
another explanation for the failing download (with the options above) or the slow
download (when mode overruled on command line)? 

This happens on only about 1 in 100 downloads, but somehow it always seems to be the
ones I most want to listen to :-/

Advice sought please. Thanks!

Alexis