BBC videos outside main iPlayer site

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Mon Aug 29 01:29:16 BST 2016, James Herbert wrote: 

> I know this may be a really silly question. 
> Can get_iplayer be used to download videos 
> such as the one at the bottom of this page?

Hello James and welcome to the list :-)

Why do you reckon your question might be silly? 
The truth of the matter is that the code maintainer 
of GiP has only left limited support for embedded 
audio/video BBC clips, apart from content on the main 
iPlayer TV/Radio pages. 

(Some) BBC News & BBC Sports clips are still supported 
in the latest GiP 2.96 but downloading those clips is now 
a deprecated feature and the coder has stated that 
when the beeb breaks it again, no more effort 
will be undertaken on his part to restore that broken 
GiP functionality...

> http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/z8d2mp3/revision/3
> 
> I've tried searching for that short code and URL 
> using the web PVR but to no avail.

Since the "Bitesize" pages are not supported, 
what you need to realise is that in order for GiP 
to fetch such a clip, it has to be fed the clip's PID; 
unfortunately, this is not always a straightforward task... :-( 

With flash installed, when you right-click the player 
you sometimes get the video's PID; but not in this case: 

p0233186 / programme / 0

The first string is the versionPID (vpid), it's still useful 
for downloading streams but not with GiP; you would need 
the second string (after "programme"), but in this case 
it's empty...

A sure way to retrieve the clip's PID is by 
scavenging the Page Source (accessing page source 
varies depending on browser used...).
Then search Page Source for "pid"; the first instance 
matched will give you the clip's PID: 

data-pid="p023317q"

=> --pid=p023317q

Using the retrieved PID you can access that clip's 
main iplayer page: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p023317q

You can use that URL in the Web PVR Manager's 
"Quick URL" input field to download it or use 
the CLI to fetch (I don't use the GUI myself...):  

get_iplayer --type=tv --pid=p023317q --modes=hlsbest 

(fetches hlsvhigh1 - if you prefer flashmodes, 
use --modes=flashbest).

Regards, 
Vangelis.