occasional failures converting flash to mp3

[dinkypumpkin]

On 06/07/2012 12:09, Alexis Huxley wrote:
>      ERROR: Failed to get iphone URL from iplayer site

An update to v2.82 will get rid of this obsolete error message

>      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$

Try the equivalent of:

get_iplayer --info 12998

to see if the modes (streams) are actually there.  I've found that 
sometimes the streams do go AWOL temporarily, presumably due to server 
glitches at the BBC end.

> If I use '--modes=best' then I do get it:
> ...
>      WARNING: Your version of flvstreamer/rtmpdump does not support SWF Verification
>      FLVStreamer v1.9
> ...
> The download is much slower than normal and in any case eventually the actual

This is difficult to assess since your version of FLVStreamer is 
obsolete.  I would suggest trying rtmpdump (>= 2.3) instead.  At a 
minimum, you won't get the occasional drop/resume cycles due to lack of 
SWF Verification.  Any resulting overlaps in the output file could be 
causing problems for ffmpeg.

> 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.
> ...
>      /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

This is difficult to assess since your version of ffmpeg is also 
obsolete.  Something could actually be wrong with the file due to 
FLVStreamer problems, or it may be that more recent versions of ffmpeg 
are more robust in handling FLV files.  Since you only have occasional 
glitches, it seems more likely to be the former.

> 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
> ...
> 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)?

Removing iphone (long dead) will also get rid of the "ERROR: Failed to 
get iphone URL from iplayer site" message.  Otherwise it looks OK.  You 
could add flashhd and flashvhigh if you want higher quality video.