Re: OT Downloading BBC radio shows with ANDROID.

[Christopher Woods]

On 2 June 2020 14:41:53 CJB  wrote:


YouTube-dl doesn't even work for me on Windows ...

C:\YouTube-dl>youtube-dl
"https://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Bob-Davenport-Archive/025M-C1047X0003XX-1500V0;
[generic] 025M-C1047X0003XX-1500V0: Requesting header
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
[generic] 025M-C1047X0003XX-1500V0: Downloading webpage
[generic] 025M-C1047X0003XX-1500V0: Extracting information
ERROR: Unsupported URL:
https://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Bob-Davenport-Archive/025M-C1047X0003XX-1500V0

CJB

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Did it ever support the British Library site? ;-)



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Re: Off-line conversion- M4A toMP3

[Christopher Woods]

On 13 May 2019 09:28:32 get_ipla...@big-tick.co.uk wrote:


On 13/05/2019 03:32, Doug Faunt N6TQS +1-510-717-1197 wrote:

What's a good Windows program for batch converting a group of M4A
files to MP3's?


I'm sure there are other options out there, but I find LameXP both quick 
and easy to use


http://lamexp.sourceforge.net/

Cheers, Dave


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As I use it to listen and manage my music collection, I rate the foobar2000 
audio player with a recent lame.exe for ease of use. It can perform DSP 
chain processing (EQ, ReplayGain, etc) or just transcode straight - as well 
as things like filename transforms. It's a very competent audio file 
manager. Just drop files into a playlist, select one or more, right-click 
and use the convert menu.


I tend to use Mp3Tag (the author's capitalisation, not mine) for more 
complex tagging of audio files.


For command-line batch processing, just use ffmpeg - you should already 
have it if get_iplayer is installed. A simple 'for' loop in a batch file 
(various examples available online) will let you transcode an unlimited 
amount of files in a folder very efficiently.




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Re: Joint UK streaming platform

[Christopher Woods]

The original Kangaroo was scaled back (it became Youview) because OFCOM
thought it was anti-competitive. Does Youview even exist any more? I
don't recall ever seeing it in the wild after I did quite a bit of
annoying work to publish programme information to it from the iPlayer
back-end.


It does indeed, it's what you get when you subscribe to BT, TalkTalk,
or PlusNet TV packages


And it's rather spiffy. I do enjoy being able to intuitively scroll back on 
the EPG for on-demand, the interface is fairly sensible and the ease of 
accessing multiple providers' programmes with only limited commercial 
interruption is exactly how it should be.


Tangentially related - I read recently that BT Vision's going unicast for 
their IP streams soon, ditching multicast :(




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Re: Europe

[Christopher Woods]

Indeed. Hosting on one's own connection is often impractical. Sites like 
lowendbox feature deals at pretty bargain basement prices fairly regularly, 
including services which are ok with OpenVPN use.


A friend has one of these just for tunnelling to his dev servers (for work) 
without getting blocked by a weird corporate firewall setup.


Trick is to find a service which gives you an IP geolocated to the Uk, but 
far less likely to get caught in a dragnet ban than if using commercial VPNs.


On 23 December 2018 20:10:00 Dave Widgery  wrote:


Hi

That's fine if you have access to somewhere that has a good enough
upload speed to install a server, otherwise it is back to a VPN DNS or
Proxy solution's, I have never known Hotspot shield or SmartDNS  be
unavailable for more than a few days.

Dave

On Sun, 23 Dec 2018 at 20:48, Christopher Woods
 wrote:


There's various techniques services can use to detect inconsistencies.
Browsers still give a lot away...

With your DNS redirection enabled, run the tests on http://ipleak.net and
see whether you pass things like the WebRTC IP leak tests. If so, great,
but it doesn't guarantee problem free access.

Netflix, Amazon and various other services including the BBC gather details
of VPN providers and their IP ranges. It's not hard to identify client IPs
proxying traffic, so even if you carefully obfuscate your usage you might
find VPNed traffic gets blocked in future.

Best off running your own Linux VPS on a private IP geolocated to the UK
and SSH / VPN through it. :-)

On 22 December 2018 22:45:33 Dave Widgery  wrote:

> I started out using Hotspot shield very successfully for many years,
> then had a problem as the BBC managed to block it for a short while,
> so started using smart DNS proxy, because I didn't cancel my
> subscription on HSS I now pay for both, which still isn't very
> expensive but handy if one gets blocked I can use the other.
> I don't see much difference in performance between them, but Smart DNS
> proxy is a lot more flexible as you only have to change network
> settings and do not have to run a client on every machine which is not
> always available (unix based systems for example).
>
> Dave
>
> On Fri, 21 Dec 2018 at 15:28, Paul Thornett  wrote:
>>
>> VPNs are often very slow. Much faster, and a solution that works well
>> for me, is something called Smart DNS, which is essentially a
>> different set of  DNS
>> addresses. Both VPNs and DNS redirection will cost you a small amount
>> of money - ignore the so-called free offerings, they are usually very
>> slow and often not to be trusted.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Paul Thornett
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Paul Thornett
>>
>>
>> On Sat, 22 Dec 2018 at 00:33, Chris Marriott  wrote:
>> >
>> > That's the way it's always been. TV programmes are geo-restricted, but 
radio

>> > programmes are not. You need to use a VPN which makes you appear to be in
>> > the UK if you want to download TV programmes.
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> >
>> > Chris
>> >
>> >
>> > -Original Message-
>> > From: CJB
>> > Sent: Friday, December 21, 2018 1:06 PM
>> > To: get_iplayer-request
>> > Subject: Europe
>> >
>> > Hi - we were in Budapest recently with a fast wifi connection at the
>> > IBIS hotel!!!
>> >
>> > I tried the GiP PVR and did a cache refresh quickly and easily both
>> > for Radio & T.V.
>> >
>> > Then I ran the PVR list and this too went OK. For example it
>> > downloaded the latest 'Beyond Our Ken' for 16-12-2018 which ended up
>> > as:
>> >
>> > Beyond_Our_Ken_-_From_4_6_1959_m0001k9d_original.m4a
>> >
>> > File size : 69.1 MiB
>> > Duration : 30 min 4 s
>> > Overall bit rate mode : Variable
>> > Overall bit rate   : 322 kb/s
>> >
>> > Just the same as in the UK.
>> >
>> > BUT ... no t.v. downloads.
>> >
>> > CJB
>> >
>> > ___
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>> >
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Re: Europe

[Christopher Woods]

There's various techniques services can use to detect inconsistencies. 
Browsers still give a lot away...


With your DNS redirection enabled, run the tests on http://ipleak.net and 
see whether you pass things like the WebRTC IP leak tests. If so, great, 
but it doesn't guarantee problem free access.


Netflix, Amazon and various other services including the BBC gather details 
of VPN providers and their IP ranges. It's not hard to identify client IPs 
proxying traffic, so even if you carefully obfuscate your usage you might 
find VPNed traffic gets blocked in future.


Best off running your own Linux VPS on a private IP geolocated to the UK 
and SSH / VPN through it. :-)


On 22 December 2018 22:45:33 Dave Widgery  wrote:


I started out using Hotspot shield very successfully for many years,
then had a problem as the BBC managed to block it for a short while,
so started using smart DNS proxy, because I didn't cancel my
subscription on HSS I now pay for both, which still isn't very
expensive but handy if one gets blocked I can use the other.
I don't see much difference in performance between them, but Smart DNS
proxy is a lot more flexible as you only have to change network
settings and do not have to run a client on every machine which is not
always available (unix based systems for example).

Dave

On Fri, 21 Dec 2018 at 15:28, Paul Thornett  wrote:


VPNs are often very slow. Much faster, and a solution that works well
for me, is something called Smart DNS, which is essentially a
different set of  DNS
addresses. Both VPNs and DNS redirection will cost you a small amount
of money - ignore the so-called free offerings, they are usually very
slow and often not to be trusted.

Regards,

Paul Thornett

Regards,

Paul Thornett


On Sat, 22 Dec 2018 at 00:33, Chris Marriott  wrote:
>
> That's the way it's always been. TV programmes are geo-restricted, but radio
> programmes are not. You need to use a VPN which makes you appear to be in
> the UK if you want to download TV programmes.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: CJB
> Sent: Friday, December 21, 2018 1:06 PM
> To: get_iplayer-request
> Subject: Europe
>
> Hi - we were in Budapest recently with a fast wifi connection at the
> IBIS hotel!!!
>
> I tried the GiP PVR and did a cache refresh quickly and easily both
> for Radio & T.V.
>
> Then I ran the PVR list and this too went OK. For example it
> downloaded the latest 'Beyond Our Ken' for 16-12-2018 which ended up
> as:
>
> Beyond_Our_Ken_-_From_4_6_1959_m0001k9d_original.m4a
>
> File size : 69.1 MiB
> Duration : 30 min 4 s
> Overall bit rate mode : Variable
> Overall bit rate   : 322 kb/s
>
> Just the same as in the UK.
>
> BUT ... no t.v. downloads.
>
> CJB
>
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>
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Re: Certificate verify failed

[Christopher Woods]

On 18 October 2018 15:27:43 Az  wrote:


On Thursday 18 October 2018 14:50,
Chris Woods  put forth the proposition:

On Thu, 18 Oct 2018 08:35:05 +0100
Az  wrote:

> On Tuesday 9 October 2018 16:16,
> Nick Lord  put forth the proposition:
> > After a lengthy pause I've now installed get_iplayer 3.17 on my
> > openSUSE Leap 42.3 system. Previously I was using 3.14. Now when
> > attempting to download a programme I repeatedly get the message:
> >
> > ERROR: Response: 500 Can't connect to www.bbc.co.uk:443 (certificate
> > verify failed)
> >
> > and the download fails. Trying to refresh the pvr cache brings a
> > similar message:
> >
> > ERROR: Connection error: SSL connect attempt failed error:14090086:SSL
> > routines:ssl3_get_server_certificate:certificate verify failed
> >
> > Can anyone tell me what I'm missing?
>
> I just got a bunch of these.
>
> ERROR: Response: 500 Can't connect to
> vod-dash-uk-live.bbcfmt.hs.llnwd.net:443 (certificate verify failed)
>
> --
> Az
>
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Try

openssl s_client -CAfile /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt -connect 
bbc.co.uk:443


and

openssl s_client -CAfile /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt -connect 
vod-dash-uk-live.bbcfmt.hs.llnwd.net:443


You should ultimately see "Verify return code: 0 (ok)".


Both those return 0 (ok)


export PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0

However, this is widely regarded as a bad move - any subsequent connection 
will never actually be verified as safe until that env variable is reset.


The files did actually download after those warnings, so I'm not too
upset. I may temporarily set that if it gets too noisy, then unset it
after.

I use CentOS. Using the curl.haxx.se PEM CA bundle (in combination with the 
Fedora/RHEL/CentOS update-ca-trust tool) I verified TLS connections to both 
that VOD endpoint and the main bbc.co.uk site OK.


I don't use GiP on Linux though so can't check atm - and OpenSUSE's method 
for updating certs (and where they're stored in the filesystem) will differ 
from CentOS.


If you haven't already got it installed, try installing 
ca-certificates-mozilla:

# zypper install ca-certificates-mozilla


If that doesn't work, you'll need to set about manually updating the CA bundle.
I usually recommend the curl.haxx.se bundle - 
https://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html


I don't use OpenSUSE Leap, but there's plenty of discussions about CA 
bundle location, update method etc...


https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/530383-Looking-for-ca-certificates-crt-file-where-is-it
https://blog.hqcodeshop.fi/archives/157-Installing-own-CA-root-certificate-into-openSUSE.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/498efy/updating_root_certificates/
https://github.com/openSUSE/ca-certificates (README in 
/usr/share/doc/packages/ca-certificates/)

https://forums.suse.com/showthread.php?9465-How-to-install-a-SSL-certificate=38033#post38033

CA bundles are a pain but important to get right. Easy to get yourself tied 
up in knots, so if you make any changes back up the entire /etc/pki/tls 
folder tree (/etc/ssl/certs is a symlink). Don't overwrite or delete CA 
files before you do this.


Be mindful of symlinks and recreate them where necessary (ls -a to see 
them.) Usually they're there for legacy purposes, certain files may be 
referenced by specific apps/libraries, and certs are sometimes not 'picked 
up' unless they go in certain anchor folders, etc.



If you use update-ca-certificates (recommended I think!) try starting by 
grabbing the latest CA bundle, putting it into the right folder and let the 
system do its thing.


I haven't done this manually for some years. I do have have a daily
cron job for expiration checks, which came with the package.

I'll run the update command before I download anything else.


glhf,
Chris


Thanks

--
Az

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Excellent. Apologies if you're already familiar with the ins and outs, no 
intention to condescend. I like that it continues fine after whingeing :-)


(I really should spin up an openSUSE box...)



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Re: no more hslv format ?

[Christopher Woods]

Curious - 25p @ 1/50th is the generally accepted 180° rule, unless they're 
doing weird stylistic stuff in post? Or does it all just look smooshy and 
motion is really badly defined?


Personally I wish people would shoot 50p and frame drop instead of shoot 
25p, I think it's more flexible.


(Making me feel old now. The last yoof soap I watched regularly was Byker 
Grove)


On 7 May 2018 18:14:40 Lucy Walker <lucywalke...@yahoo.com> wrote:


On 07/05/2018 17:09, Christopher Woods wrote:


Steve is right on the doubled technique, this is the filmic look you
see on documentaries and dramas. That source material will be likely
be captured as progressive frames, then upconverted to 50 fields per
second, 'progressive segmented frame' format (PsF) in the edit.



At least one "yoof soap" shoots 1080p25 shuttered to 1/50th - looks like
shit, but the head of cameras is a fucking moron. No more processing
than that

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Re: no more hslv format ?

[Christopher Woods]

On 3 May 2018 21:38:23 RS  wrote:


On 03/05/18 12:18, Steve Dodd wrote:


Is it possible it depends on the source material? From the BBC quote
earlier it sounds like their "source" material is still mostly HD
interlaced, but perhaps some of their sources are all also
progressive, and those ones get doubled identical frames (which might
be a logical result of feeding 25p material into something that's
designed to interpolate interlaced fields into frames)?

The satellite broadcasts I have seen from the BBC and other broadcasters
are 1920x1080i25 for HD and 720x576i25 or 704x576i25 for SD.  Everything
that is broadcast is in an interlaced format at some stage, however it
is generated.  Some programmes are only produced for the iPlayer, so
they may be generated in a different way.



A handful of HD is still 1440x1080i25 :( the non-square pixel format is a 
great cheat for bandwidth saving. The chroma compression on current 
generation terrestrial broadcasting also makes everything look bad. Once 
you watch uncompressed HD-SDI you never want anything else :) Some SD is 
way below what we would accept as SD resolution as well, all in the name of 
cost saving.



Steve is right on the doubled technique, this is the filmic look you see on 
documentaries and dramas. That source material will be likely be captured 
as progressive frames, then upconverted to 50 fields per second, 
'progressive segmented frame' format (PsF) in the edit.


The same image is stored across every two fields that constitute one frame, 
meaning you're being shown one effective whole full resolution image, 25 
times a second.


With standard interlaced footage, you're being shown overlapping effective 
'images' at half-resolution, 50 times a second. Persistence of vision 
(well, nowadays, flat panel processing circuitry) bob deinterlaces the 
fields to produce 50 images per second.



However, TVs sometimes do this artificially by taking true progressive 
sources and interpolating the footage to a higher refresh rate (100/200 
Hz). This inherently looks dire and should be disabled.


On some TVs with poorly written image DSP (or badly chosen settings) you'll 
see the picture suddenly go 'filmic' as the deinterlace method changes to 
blend, which literally blends together pairs of fields to produce 25 frames.


Some explainers of fields, frames and progressive segmented format interlaced:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_segmented_frame

https://wolfcrow.com/blog/understanding-terminology-progressive-segmented-frames-psf/
https://wolfcrow.com/blog/understanding-terminology-progressive-frames-interlaced-frames-and-the-field-rate/



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Re: Podcast sample rate

[Christopher Woods]

As far as I'm aware, the BBC's audio estate runs at 48 KHz (well, except 
the Archers studio - and probably a handful of other studios - for legacy 
purposes).


Looks like podcasts are still encoded to 44.1 KHz via iBroadcast (the MP3s' 
encoder tag indicates ffmpeg (currently Lavc57.24)). Except where a podcast 
is generated programmatically from a broadcast programme (e.g. World at One 
on Radio 4), the podcast guide instructs to upload WAVs directly to 
iBroadcast. I suppose it must still have a separate encode and publish 
workflow from Audio Factory.


(I don't have anything to do with podcasts, mind...)

Years ago when they started, 44.1 was part of the defined spec for BBC 
podcasts and I presume nobody's ever really cared enough to change it. I'm 
listening to one at the moment and its audio quality is perfect fine.


iPlayer audio is provided / encoded through a different process so will be 
48, and also a higher bit rate (and AAC). Podcasts were designed to be 
listened to on average earbuds while on the go and have to remain 
compatible with devices potentially over a decade old. So, er, go figure.




On 17 July 2017 3:44:31 p.m. "RS"  wrote:


From: Jim web
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2017 14:05



In fact every BBC podcast I have seen, admittedly a tiny sample of the
population of podcasts, has used a 44.1kHz sample rate.



Are there are recent examples I could get using GiP?


I have a feeling that GiP support for podcasts has been withdrawn, but here
are four recent examples which you can download directly.

http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/http/vpid/p058rwkw.mp3

http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/http/vpid/p057xbn0.mp3

http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/http/vpid/p058pxd2.mp3

http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/http/vpid/p058rm6r.mp3

Three of them are Radio 4 and one Radio 3.  If you download the .m4a files
using GiP and the following PIDs the sample rate is 48kHz, so the BBC is
using both, which seems crazy.

b08xx96m
b08xcqwf
b08wr7ss
b08xcwz4




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Re: Offtopic noise: Re: BBC iPlayer viewers now need a...

[Christopher Woods]

To wit, at this point I think I speak for most recipients in declaring that 
this thread's run its course. It's now serving no use except to sustain a 
circular conversation and add to my inbox.


Please, let's all move on to more useful discussions. Have a good evening all.

Chris



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RE: Offtopic noise: Re: BBC iPlayer viewers now need a...

[Christopher Woods]

(large volume of prior replies removed)

I don't like change. ;) I like this list. I learn stuff on it. It's so easy 
to read and participate. List discipline just requires a modicum of self 
restraint, though we all like to indulge occasionally.


This list for me is also somewhat of a spiritual successor to the old 
backstage list which I also learned a lot from; it'd be a shame if it went 
away.




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Re: How good is HD supposed to be?

[Christopher Woods]

Yes, I could have been clearer. This depends on the deintelacing algorithm.

Aside from the very first frame of a 50p video, which can only ever be the 
first two fields (...well, that or black), every frame after that is 
effectively taking two adjacent fields and saying 'make a frame out of 
those', so each field is a part of one frame but it doesn't just go 1+2, 
3+4 etc.


IF you're making a full resolution frame 1, you'd use field 1 and field 2. 
For frame 2, field 2 and field 3. For frame 3, field 3 and field 4 etc.


Otherwise, it's black and field 1 for frame 1, field 1 and 2 for frame 2, etc.

I think of the process of capturing interlaced video as a constantly 
shuffling (up-down) grill which alternately covers even, then odd, lines of 
the CCD (just for conceptualising, not how it actually works). As you're 
freezeframing that point in time for half of your frame, the next field 
will be slightly advanced in time by microseconds so it's not the same as  
'taking a picture' every 25th of a second.


You're actually taking 50 shots per second and immediately discarding half 
the resolution, relying on persistence of vision and the inherent 
properties of the TV to mask this. The two half-resolution images 
interleave neatly and produce a full resolution image, and do so rapidly 
enough that everything works. You get pseudo-50fps as a happy by-product.


http://www.100fps.com has a good explanation and screenshots of various 
scenarios if you're interested in what raw interlaced video looks like and 
the problems you can have working with it.


(I hate interlaced video.)

200, no, 300 fps 4K video for all! It divides nicely with 25 and 29.97 fps 
standards, it's got the temporal and dimensional resolution, what's not to 
like... Except the transmission and storage costs... But H.265 will solve 
all of that ;)


Chris


On 2 May 2016 8:52:25 p.m. "Dave Liquorice" <allso...@howhill.com> wrote:


On Sat, 30 Apr 2016 22:49:01 +0100, Christopher Woods wrote:


The deinterlacing algorithm is doing no resizing - it's interpolating
between the frames and then 'printing' that to 50 progressive frames. The
resulting image will have slightly lower definition due to the bob
artifacts as it's reconstructing the frame from two sequentially
interlaced fields, but it hasn't changed resolution.


Sorry, I'm still missing what is actually going on but I think I'm getting
there.

Is the first reference to "frames" refering to a frame constructed from the
two fields designed to be shown at 25 fps? Lets call this F1.

At 50 fps we need twice as many frames so an F1 and an F2. F2 doesn't exist
and is created by interpolation between the current F1 and the next F1.

--
Cheers
Dave.



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Re: How good is HD supposed to be?

[Christopher Woods]

Replied inadvertently to some of this in my other response, but everyone 
may find this interesting if they've not read before:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2015-07-the-development-of-new-video-factory-profiles-for-bbc-iplayer

There's an 8 mbit 1080i created which I strongly suspect is what's 
delivered to Sky for their on-demand iPlayer offerings, certainly from 
watching some stuff on my Sky+ box. The DOG was smaller and "1080 crisp" 
(as was the picture content) on my panel which it never is using the web 
iPlayer.



From the R blog:


"The [encoding] profiles were designed to be encoded with a 3.84 second 
chunk size. This enables video and audio access units to be aligned for 
HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), where audio and video frames are multiplexed 
together within a single MPEG-2 transport stream, thereby helping some 
decoders have a clean switch between profiles. During subjective evaluation 
done within R, we identified that large screen devices such as TVs 
benefited more from higher frame rates than small screen devices such as 
tablets, where spatial resolution is of greater importance. In addition 
higher framerate 50Hz television streams still exhibit motion artefacts on 
most mobile, tablet and desktop devices due to their 60Hz screen refresh 
rate. So separate profile sets were developed for the two classes of devices."



On 30 April 2016 22:36:51 Tony Quinn  wrote:


On 30-Apr-16 9:15 PM, Dave Liquorice wrote:


But does a frame have the same number of lines as a field? It doesn't
in the analog world. 625 line frame, comprising two 312.5 line fields.
Frame rate 25 per second, field rate 50 per second but half the
vertical resolution. If a digital field only has half the vertical
resolution, which I think it must have or you can't interlace them,
then to create true 50 *frames* per second each field needs to be
upscaled and the missing lines interpolated from the existing ones. If
you just construct a frame from the two fields you have to repeat that
frame or playback at double speed... I missing something but don't
know what.


1080p50 (720p50) is exactly what it says, 50 full 1920x1080 (1280x720)
progressively scanned frames per second (naturally this generates twice
as much information as 25p (although 720p50 is the same raw data rate as
1080p25)).

Going back to an earlier comment on the thread regarding eastenders
being available at 720p50, given that EE is originated at at 1080
resolution, is the implication that it is being shot at 1080p50 and down
converted to 720p50 or that interpolation is being carries out to
generate a 720p50 stream?

FWIW, in interlaced origination (for example 625i50) temporal resolution
is increased at the cost of spatial resolution (twice as many images
with half the vertical resolution). Also bear in mind that (in the 625
analogue world) only 575 lines actually contain picture information


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Re: How good is HD supposed to be?

[Christopher Woods]

Indeed, half the vertical resolution per field but they're composited to 
make one whole frame. Yes, the field resolution is half a frame - It's 
basically analogue compression. And although 625 lines per frame, there's 
timing, blanking and audio lines too - picture content gets 576 lines, 288 
lines per field.


The fact analogue TVs essentially gave you some free motion interpolation 
from interlacing is a fortunate, quirky byproduct of the old mechanical 
process. Even with the quick scanning process (both on capture and 
reproduction) you were always capturing that microsecond in time for each 
line, then the electron gun scanned at the same rate so you actually see 
more of a 'fluid' representation of the light as captured. In practice your 
eyes can't keep up with microsecond shifts in picture position between 
lines, but they can easily see 25 vs 50 pictures per second.



The deinterlacing algorithm is doing no resizing - it's interpolating 
between the frames and then 'printing' that to 50 progressive frames. The 
resulting image will have slightly lower definition due to the bob 
artifacts as it's reconstructing the frame from two sequentially interlaced 
fields, but it hasn't changed resolution.


Downsizing to 720p50 gives you a resolution saving which can be put into 
the higher fps with less of a net cost on bandwidth and disk space. Losing 
absolute 1080 pixel definition but getting smoother motion is a win for me!



25i analogue video never has quite the per-frame definition of 25p video, 
but it wins for motion accuracy and suited the constrained bandwidth 
environment of analogue telly.


The bandwidth savings translate to the digital domain, so it "costs" a 
little less to transmit interlaced. IMO it's a pain to work with and is 
computationally more complex to decode and foremost.


Why they didn't just ditch interlaced encoding in the DVB-T standard and 
let the boxes interlace for old TVs is a bone of contention for me! I think 
it almost was the case that interlacing was almost dropped from the DVB 
spec until fairly late in the day too... Trying to recall a discussion with 
a fellow engineer from many months ago but struggling now...



On 30 April 2016 21:19:35 "Dave Liquorice" <allso...@howhill.com> wrote:


On Fri, 29 Apr 2016 20:42:06 +0100, Christopher Woods wrote:


"Upscaling" is a misnomer in this context. That implies a change of
picture resolution, ...


Agreed.


... when there's no resizing going on.


Not convinced.


25 interlaced frames per second yields 50 interlaced fields per second
(due to odd and even line scanning),


But does a frame have the same number of lines as a field? It doesn't in the
analog world. 625 line frame, comprising two 312.5 line fields. Frame rate
25 per second, field rate 50 per second but half the vertical resolution.

If a digital field only has half the vertical resolution, which I think it
must have or you can't interlace them, then to create true 50 *frames* per
second each field needs to be upscaled and the missing lines interpolated
from the existing ones. If you just construct a frame from the two fields
you have to repeat that frame or playback at double speed...

I missing something but don't know what.

--
Cheers
Dave.



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RE: How good is HD supposed to be?

[Christopher Woods]

Vieras are nice. Perhaps your panel is doing frame rate interpolation, 
where it upconverts low frame rate source material to high frame rate for 
display. This is something panels which can operate at higher refresh rates 
offer (100 Hz, 120 Hz, 200 Hz etc).


This is also something I immediately turn off if I'm ever setting up a 
screen, because it makes everything look like a soap opera and annoys me 
after a while (unless it's true high frame rate source material, like The 
Hobbit HFR).


Check in your options for something like 'True Motion', 'Cinema Smoother', 
Motion Estimation / Motion Compensation... And turn it off. Manufacturers 
call it various nonsense marketing names including 'Truemotion Plus', 'Auto 
Motion Plus', 'ClearFrame' etc. Essentially it's pulldown, and it's not the 
original picture, and I don't like it. ;)


Often the chipset doesn't get it quite right, or it gets confused with 
picture content, and you can end up with the option smoothing suddenly 
stopping - or kicking in - midway through a camera pan or actor moving 
slowly in a scene, which is incredibly jarring.


Also (depending on your panel options) set local dimming off, turn 
brightness down to about halfway, turn contrast to about 3/4 and set your 
colour balance or screen temperature to 'warm' or 'warm 1' (usually much 
closer to the calibrated D65 reference white used in broadcast). Almost 
every TV I've ever seen is FAR too blue out of the box on its defaults. Set 
Sharpness to as low as possible, on almost all screens this is ADDITIONAL 
sharpness and makes everything look foul. Your eyes will thank you!


Cheers
Chris


On 30 April 2016 2:23:40 p.m. "Simon Morgan" <s.mor...@skm.org.uk> wrote:


Thanks for your helpful explanation. Demystified a few points for me. I have
a new Panasonic Viera (is this "high end"?) and I find the 25fps from my GiP
downloads more than adequate - perhaps because I know no better!
RGds
Simon Morgan

-Original Message-
From: get_iplayer [mailto:get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org] On Behalf
Of Christopher Woods
Sent: 29 April 2016 20:42
To: Dave Lambley; Dave Liquorice
Cc: Get_iplayer List
Subject: Re: How good is HD supposed to be?

"Upscaling" is a misnomer in this context. That implies a change of picture
resolution, when there's no resizing going on. What iPlayer does for the 50p
streams is double frame rate deinterlacing, using what looks like a bob
deinterlace technique.

If you watch content originated in 25i, you will (once the stream steps up
to 720p50) see the deinterlaced 50p content and you'll notice immediately
how fluidic motion is - "just like TV", because that's exactly what CRTs
used to do.

25 interlaced frames per second yields 50 interlaced fields per second (due
to odd and even line scanning), with the resultant persistence of vision
effect inducing a pseudo 50 frames per second on viewing as each field's
worth of capture by the camera sensor 'sees' a slightly different point in
time. This renders as smoother motion, with a slight loss of sharpness due
to the low overall temporal resolution, but as it overall appears more
lifelike the eye prefers it.

25psf (progressive segmented frames) is the "filmic" look, where there's
only 25 distinct 'captures' of motion per second; the video simply
'transported' as interlaced. Each field 'sees' its half of the same source
frame. When decoded properly, you get 100% progressive output. However as
this gives you half the temporal resolution, motion is visibly less fluid.

Modern flat panels all deinterlace all interlaced source material to display
a progressive image, but only the higher end panels do quality deinterlacing
(Yadif or similar) Cheaper screens will usually bob deinterlace
(computationally less demanding) and porbably convert to 60p as their panels
and processing will be running internally at 60Hz.

You can even spot some cheap screens doing this as they'll add or duplicate
frames periodically to equal 60 fps from 50 fps source material, or they'll
do weird interpolation which can result in jumpy credits or news ticker
scrolling artifacts.

For an example of 720p50 iPlayer content, watch any episode of EastEnders
(be sure to enable HD), full screen it and wait for the bandwidth to step up
to max - you'll need 5 megabits per second minimum to stream (... Or just dl
it with gip).

For an example of progressive scan material, just about any documentary
(e.g. Horizon) or episode of Click will do. The latest Horizon about dating
is 25 PsF: you can see the deinterlacing 'interline twitter' on high
contrast edges during the programme - an example being the leaves of the pot
plant moving on the windowsill at around 22 minute mark.


On 29 April 2016 12:44:31 p.m. Dave Lambley <d...@lambley.me.uk> wrote:


On 29 April 2016 at 00:57, Dave Liquorice <allso...@howhill.com> wrote:

On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 07:07:33 -0500, artisticforge . wrote:

Re: How good is HD supposed to be?

[Christopher Woods]

"Upscaling" is a misnomer in this context. That implies a change of picture 
resolution, when there's no resizing going on. What iPlayer does for the 
50p streams is double frame rate deinterlacing, using what looks like a bob 
deinterlace technique.


If you watch content originated in 25i, you will (once the stream steps up 
to 720p50) see the deinterlaced 50p content and you'll notice immediately 
how fluidic motion is - "just like TV", because that's exactly what CRTs 
used to do.


25 interlaced frames per second yields 50 interlaced fields per second (due 
to odd and even line scanning), with the resultant persistence of vision 
effect inducing a pseudo 50 frames per second on viewing as each field's 
worth of capture by the camera sensor 'sees' a slightly different point in 
time. This renders as smoother motion, with a slight loss of sharpness due 
to the low overall temporal resolution, but as it overall appears more 
lifelike the eye prefers it.


25psf (progressive segmented frames) is the "filmic" look, where there's 
only 25 distinct 'captures' of motion per second; the video simply 
'transported' as interlaced. Each field 'sees' its half of the same source 
frame. When decoded properly, you get 100% progressive output. However as 
this gives you half the temporal resolution, motion is visibly less fluid.


Modern flat panels all deinterlace all interlaced source material to 
display a progressive image, but only the higher end panels do quality 
deinterlacing (Yadif or similar) Cheaper screens will usually bob 
deinterlace (computationally less demanding) and porbably convert to 60p as 
their panels and processing will be running internally at 60Hz.


You can even spot some cheap screens doing this as they'll add or duplicate 
frames periodically to equal 60 fps from 50 fps source material, or they'll 
do weird interpolation which can result in jumpy credits or news ticker 
scrolling artifacts.


For an example of 720p50 iPlayer content, watch any episode of EastEnders 
(be sure to enable HD), full screen it and wait for the bandwidth to step 
up to max - you'll need 5 megabits per second minimum to stream (... Or 
just dl it with gip).


For an example of progressive scan material, just about any documentary 
(e.g. Horizon) or episode of Click will do. The latest Horizon about dating 
is 25 PsF: you can see the deinterlacing 'interline twitter' on high 
contrast edges during the programme - an example being the leaves of the 
pot plant moving on the windowsill at around 22 minute mark.



On 29 April 2016 12:44:31 p.m. Dave Lambley  wrote:


On 29 April 2016 at 00:57, Dave Liquorice  wrote:

On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 07:07:33 -0500, artisticforge . wrote:



NB hvfhd DOES NOT OFFER HIGHER RESOLUTION (CLARITY), only doubled
framerate (25FPS x2), which results in smoother scenes where motion is
involved!


How does repeating frames improve smoothness of movement? Or does this
encode upscale each field(*) and encode that to increase the temporal
resolution?


It is the frames per second that provide the human eye with the
persistence of vision, the illusion of motion.


I could show you 100 fps but if there where only 4 different images
displayed the illusion of motion would be no smoother than 25 fps. You only
get smoother movement by increasing the number of different images
displayed.

So if this hvfhd only repeats each frame to get a higher frame there is no
increase in smoothness. How ever if they take each field, upscale it and
encode as a frame that would inrease the smoothness.


I believe the frame repeating idea is a red herring. Real 50 frame/s
computer video is a thing which exists. If your browser's up to it you
can see for yourself here,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmNapQdWFKg

You'll need to choose one of the "p50" resolutions on the Quality menu.

Dave

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RE: Outlook Express 6 on WinXP and this list

[Christopher Woods]

If there is anyone on this list using an ISP or free provider account, I 
recommend getting your own package and domain. The flexibility and privacy 
is well worth it.


Go with someone like bhost.net or heartinternet.uk for their value hosting 
packages. Get an email account set up. Migrate web site accounts across. 
Sit back and relax forever because that email address is now yours until 
you stop renewing!


Nowadays it's all fairly easily done and if you buy all from the same place 
the setup is automated (or assisted by them) and managed through a web 
portal, easy peasy.


The cost really is pennies a day and you can use as you like across your 
devices. You could even get rolls-royce Hosted Exchange email for proper 
push notification and Exchange integration if you want to splash out...



I have VPS hosting (for business) with BHost (amongst other providers) and 
various domains registered with Heart. Both I endorse for their good 
customer service and value. I've not solely relied upon ISP or free email 
services for two decades! Plus having a vanity domain is cool, all the cool 
kids are doing it now.




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Re: Using FFMPEG to extract video loses sync between sound and vision

[Christopher Woods]

Not tried on iPlayer stuff, but with FLVs I now always try the -copyts 
flag, this gave me success remuxing an FLV to MP4 (non-iPlayer) with a 
variable video frame rate.


Also a single "-codec copy" will save you some keypresses.

Chris


On 10 February 2016 14:13:27 Tony Scholl  wrote:


On 9 February 2016 at 18:37, C E Macfarlane  wrote:

As per subject line, using this version of ffmpeg under Windows XP ...

ffmpeg version 2.2.3 Copyright (c) 2000-2014 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Jun 19 2014 20:24:25 with gcc 4.8.3 (GCC)
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --disable-w32threads --enabl
e-avisynth --enable-bzlib --enable-fontconfig --enable-frei0r --enable-gnutl
s --enable-iconv --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libcaca --enabl
e-libfreetype --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libilbc --enable-libm
odplug --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-a
mrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopus --enable-librtmp --enable-libschr
oedinger --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libt
wolame --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --e
nable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enabl
e-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxavs --enable-libxvid --enable-deckli
nk --enable-zlib

... and trying to extract a section of this ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z8cxd

... with the following command ...

FFMPEG -i CuirmCeltic-2016-1.mp4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy -ss 1211.5 -to
1465 Chieftains.mp4


You could try putting the -ss option before -i. The seeking is done in
a different way -
see http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Seeking - which might give better
results (or maybe worse).

In any case, placing -ss before the input file should be much faster.

Tony


... leads to a result where the sound is out of sync with the vision.  Can
anyone suggest a fix?

C E Macfarlane
www.macfh.co.uk/CEMH.html


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Re: Bit rate from --aactomp3

[Christopher Woods]

On 31 May 2015 23:54:18 Vangelis forthnet northmed...@the.forthnet.gr 
wrote:



[Slightly OT content!]

On Sun May 31 17:16:28 BST 2015, Jim web wrote:

 when I have had to transcode aac or mp3
 I convert it to LPCM (wave) or flac
 so I'm losing as little as possible.
 In effect the result sounds like the source.
 Has its flaws, but without additional damage.

Could be highly impracticle though, at times... :-{
I do own an old and cheap portable audio player,
that can only cope with MP3 (has to be CBR),
WMA  WAV; its internal Flash Memory is only
1GB, its write speed barely borders 1MBps.

When flashaudio radiomode was available for
roughly all BBC Radio, all was fine. Then
National Radios changed to flashaac, flashaudio
left only for Nations Radio (which was true until
very recently, just before the Audio Factory changes...).

I try to avoid transcoding as much as possible,
so for National Radio I turned to the compatible
wma radiomodes (which I downloaded via
specialised software, not GiP, because mplayer,
used inside GiP to dump wma, was very fickle...).

Now the WMA modes are also gone, I have to either
transcode flashaac radiomodes or - as you said -
bin my otherwise working player...

Transcoding (or decoding?) to WAV is simply
out of the question for me, because either the huge
file size of the uncompressed audio file would not fit
inside the memory storage (a 3hr long programme
would be  1.5 GiB) and even if it would fit, it
would take excrutiatingly long to transfer from my
laptop at  1MBps!...



For your setup I'd batch transcode (I'd do jt manually, but that's just me) 
to 64 kbps mono MP3 from the source files. That'll give you effective 128 
kbps quality with basically zero significant difference through the 
transcode. Not ideal, but probably the best you can do in your setup to 
accommodate your device.




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Re: Bit rate from --aactomp3

[Christopher Woods]

Space considerations aside, why would you want to do that? A transcode to a 
128 kbps MP3 will sound bad enough, never mind adhering to a 48 kbps bit rate.


IMO the only way it might sound even barely listenable would be if the 
resultant MP3 was a mono transcode, then you're not far from quality of a 
128 stereo.


Apologies if I didn't get the gist of your question!

Chris


On 31 May 2015 11:28:44 RS richard...@zoho.com wrote:


Is there any way (apart from running ffmpeg manually) to get get_iplayer to
respect the --radiomode flashaaclow option when --aactomp3 is used?
In get_iplayer v2.91 --radiomode flashaaclow causes the download to be
at 48kbit/s as expected.  The --aactomp3 conversion then changes the bit
rate to 128kbit/s.


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Re: OT Live Streaming Radio 4 News

[Christopher Woods]

Is the interruption during an OK stream, or from the first moment you connect?

Some highlights or clips from sporting events may not come with requisite 
rights to be broadcast online, even when part of a news bulletin (given 
FM's restricted coverage versus worldwide reach of Internet).


It's not preferred editorial practice to include non-clear material in news 
bulletins, but wouldn't be unheard of. I can ask around with some people; 
they may be able to blank on a per-second level which is handy


There's always the chance it could be technical whoopsies but I think 
that's small.



On 26 May 2015 20:47:22 CJB chrisjbr...@gmail.com wrote:


Maybe try connecting via a VPN app. like Hola? This would allow
viewing of t.v. progs too. CJB

On 26/05/2015, Derek Kaye de...@dezzanet.co.uk wrote:
 On 26 May 2015 at 10:11, Budgie aje...@errichel.co.uk wrote:
 Please forgive the OT.  Most mornings I listen to Radio 4 using a
 networked
 Linn device which I also use to play my GiP recordings.  The Linn device
 offers various radio channels directly so I do not need to use GiP.

 I do the same with my Kodi media centre on Raspberry Pi.

 On several occasions recently the news stream has been interrupted and all
 I
 get is a recorded loop telling me that due to rights restrictions the
 programme is not available.

 I have experienced this too. The last time it happened, I did a
 twitter search for radio 4, and saw several other people complaining
 about it.

 Rights restrictions on the News???  Before 08:00!!!  What is going on
 here.
 Is the problem with BBC or Linn?

 I'm afraid I can't answer that, but perhaps someone with a more
 detailed knowledge of how the streaming works can? My suspicion is
 either a broken feed, or restrictions on one station accidentally
 being applied to all.

 On 26 May 2015 at 10:35, Derek Kaye de...@dezzanet.co.uk wrote:
 On 26 May 2015 at 10:11, Budgie aje...@errichel.co.uk wrote:
 Please forgive the OT.  Most mornings I listen to Radio 4 using a
 networked
 Linn device which I also use to play my GiP recordings.  The Linn device
 offers various radio channels directly so I do not need to use GiP.

 I do the same with my Kodi media centre on Raspberry Pi.

 On several occasions recently the news stream has been interrupted and
 all I
 get is a recorded loop telling me that due to rights restrictions the
 programme is not available.

 I have experienced this too. The last time it happened, I did a
 twitter search for radio 4, and saw several other people complaining
 about it.

 Rights restrictions on the News???  Before 08:00!!!  What is going on
 here.
 Is the problem with BBC or Linn?

 I'm afraid I can't answer that, but perhaps someone with a more
 detailed knowledge of how the streaming works can? My suspicion is
 either a broken feed, or restrictions on one station accidentally
 being applied to all.

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Re: radio sample rates.

[Christopher Woods]

On 2015-03-15 22:23, Tris wrote:

I'm not sure if this is connected but two or three weeks ago I was
still on v2.89 (I think) and all radio downloading suddenly became
unavailable.

Things all started working again after I updated to 2.91 which had
all the changes in it for the upcoming changes to BBC streaming
methods (which had obviously just happened when things stopped for
me).

Maybe this change to BBC methods is also when the file rates became 
48k for you?


Tris



Audio Factory encodes at the audio's native 48 kHz; this is what the 
stations operate at internally. 44.1 kHz was a legacy thing and to be 
honest was unnecessary; after stations went all-digital at 48 kHz it 
effectively gave us three resampling steps (48 - 44.1 - 48).


Now we have zero additional resampling steps (save for anything like 
commercial music, which will have been resampled once from 44.1 kHz 
source to 48 kHz).


Don't get confused with the HLS bit rates (of which 48 kbps - 48 
Kilobits per second - is one). :-)


Chris

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RE: Casualty anyone?

[Christopher Woods]

When I ran this on my Win 7 machine at the start of the download I
saw the message:

INFO: Using 'open' version as default

On an XP machine (with 2.91 again), the message was:

INFO: Using 'editorial' version as default

Can someone explain the difference between 'open' and 'editorial' 
versions?



AFAIK the Editorial tag can be applied to describe whether a programme 
is premiere, last chance to see, exclusive to iPlayer and so on - 
was that the case for that episode?


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RE: Anger over BBC radio streaming changes

[Christopher Woods]

On 2015-02-23 13:45, C E Macfarlane wrote:

 The BBC should never have adopted any proprietary format in
the first place.

Back when they first started streaming stuff online, the only
available
products were proprietary. [snip]


When you're in the position of a major official government 
organisation as
well as a public corporation set up by Royal Charter, such as is the 
BBC, if
you can't do something properly with the tools around at the time, 
you don't
do it at all.  You don't waste millions or billions of public money 
which
pays for your very existence on something you can't support 
indefinitely
into the future.  You don't encourage manufacturers to make, and the 
public,
whose 'taxes' are paying your wages, to buy, kit in the belief that, 
if it's
supported by the BBC, it must be safe to spend money on it, and then 
pull

the plug on that kit not long after.


This train of thought doesn't address a key issue: the BBC had full 
control over development of the PAL broadcast standard, and was able to 
develop and refine it prior to using it commercially. New Media (i.e., 
internetty stuff) is the Wild West again, whoever has the most market 
inertia becomes the de facto leader and you have multiple concurrent 
'standards' all of which can be superceded or made obsolete by the Next 
Big Thing.


The Beeb works hard to keep stuff supported - I agree the public 
announcements, and discussions with developers, probably could have been 
coordinated better, but all these Internet radios which no longer work 
are not due to the BBC not coding firmware updates for them, that 
responsibility falls to that of the manufacturer to provide 
functionality according to the agreed specification for the format. If 
they built their equipment to a price point or functional level which 
didn't accommodate for Unknown Future Developments, that's their fault.


I can almost hear all the people who bought first generation black  
white TV sets complaining that the BBC made their unit obsolete by 
beginning to broadcast in colour (but again, because the BBC essentially 
had complete control over the standard and the entire broadcast chain, 
they were able to guarantee a level of backwards compatibility so they 
wouldn't alienate early adopters).


They're still trying to avoid alienating early adopters, but we all 
have to accept that sadly in this day and age we're ALL early adopters. 
If you plotted pace of technical innovation in fields of digital codecs, 
streaming technology, high speed bandwidth, processing power, the 
capabilities of integrated devices like Smart TVs, you would see a curve 
which is rising almost exponentially.


Contrast that with the heady days of PAL 625 line, where it was 
basically a plateau for fifty years (save for some very clever 
innovation that built on the standard in terms of NICAM audio, stereo 
sound, use of blanking fields for subtitles etc).


Smart phones and tablets are driving take-up in newer formats and they 
are just so much more capable of handling and working with more 
computationally complex (and efficient) codecs delivered over more 
cost-effective networks.



And to clarify: the BBC provides a facility to access its systems to 
*third party developers*, who then code their apps. Whilst there's 
significant development expertise internally at the BBC, it doesn't 
(couldn't! wouldn't want to!) code every single Internet Radio or Smart 
TV widget. If these third party devs are lazy (or the companies like 
Samsung, LG etc. don't wish to continue paying for development as 
technology changes) those apps rot until they don't work any more.


Manufacturers also spec devices with underpowered chips - my mum's 
Samsung Smart TV is testament to this, only the iPlayer app plays 
smoothly, the itv Player drops frames and skips like there's no 
tomorrow. If these ARM processors can only barely provide the 
interactive experience needed for the interface and basic H.264 / MPEG 
hardware video decoding on a bare-bones Linux (or VxWorks!) environment, 
there's never going to be enough spare processing power to permit for 
new developments like HLS, HDS or DASH (which WILL be adopted by every 
broadcaster in due course, almost undoubtedly).


Seems appropriate at this point to hark back to the DVB-T spec, the 
development of which the BBC also has a big hand in, and remains rock 
solid and stable. DVB-T2 was initially developed by BBC RD and now sees 
widescale, painfree adoption by industry.


The BBC works immensely hard to maintain support for the widest range 
of devices as is feasible - they only just stopped support for the Wii 
player two weeks ago! They were already supporting 650 devices in 2012, 
that's undoubtedly increased a huge amount since.


There's a list of BBC iPlayer Certified devices on the iPlayer site:
http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/information/

Some manufacturers seemingly do a single version of the 'iPlayer app' 
for a 

Re: BBC Dropping MP3 and garbled downloads ....

[Christopher Woods]

Has anyone else observed any glitchy/skippy/odd on-demand files since 
my last reply to the thread? Trying to get a large enough sample set, I 
can't possibly listen to everything... ;-)


Chris

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Re: BBC Dropping MP3 and garbled downloads ....

[Christopher Woods]

Very curious... I've not noticed that myself, at least since (and this is a 
fair while ago) I stopped downloading things with a very old version which 
was stalling out mid download and causing a break in the file which was 
audible on playback. I've not actually used GiP for the past five or six 
months. (!)


For a while, the audio has been concurrently encoded for multiple formats 
using cloud computing so there's no shortage of physical power available. 
However that's not to say that there is a bug somewhere causing problems.


If anyone could provide PIDs, if they come across a programme with 
glitching (like the RNG episode), that'd be incredibly useful.


(I've been unscientifically listening to a handful of things today and I'm 
beginning to think there's a separate, low level problem with some or all 
of the Audio Factory live streams which may - or may not - also be audible 
in the on-demand versions, but I need to do lots more sleuthing to ensure 
it's not just my brain tricking me)


Thanks
Chris


On 17 February 2015 20:14:20 roadcone roadc...@gmx.com wrote:


On 17/02/15 19:15, Christopher Woods wrote:
 Has anyone else observed any glitchy/skippy/odd on-demand files since my
 last reply to the thread? Trying to get a large enough sample set, I
 can't possibly listen to everything... ;-)

 Chris

For many months, probably since the middle of last year, I have noticed
this effect on random programs downloaded in UK as aacstd files. Some
way in, perhaps 15/20 minutes, the sound sounds as though the sound has
been momentarily interrupted. The interruptions get longer and increase
in frequency then reduce. The whole thing lasts less than a minute and I
don't recall two such instances in one program.

Problem is ... I don't listen to programs in order so I am not sure
whether it was a problem which has now ended or whether it is still
happening.

Clive


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RE: BBC Ceases To Use MP3...

[Christopher Woods]

On 2015-02-10 20:56, C E Macfarlane wrote:
I'm listening to my get_iplayer download of this right now, and, 
although
it's not as bad as many, probably most, of the January episodes were, 
there
were several little pops in Cathy-Ann MacPhee's unaccompanied 
rendering of

Fath Mo Mhulad from about 6 mins in and since ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050rjwr


I've been listening to the new Radio 3 streams this evening, and 
there's MANY audible glitches on them. Think it's time to do some more 
investigation...


C

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Re: BBC Dropping MP3 and garbled downloads ....

[Christopher Woods]

On 2015-02-13 15:25, CJB wrote:

I am alarmed to learn that after dropping MP3 or for whatever reason
some downloads from the Beeb are garbled due to defective encoding at
the Beeb's end of things. Is this a serious problem and are their
patterns of occurrences?


Listening to http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050rjwr (from about 6mins 
in) the solo singing does definitely have audio problems.


What initially threw me off was that piece of music is clearly a dodgy 
transfer from whatever it was originally recorded to -- possibly 
transferred from tape; there's midrange distortion, excessive background 
his and some weird phasing which isn't present in the Presenter 
microphone when she talks. It may just be a poor quality source file for 
the song.


Picking another random point - 22:00, I started listening and 
everything sounded fine for about five minutes, then I heard more 
pops...


... Then as I wrote another email, I listened to both the MP3 and AAC 
Radio 3 on-demand streams, and sadly they're replete with audio 
glitches. I'll see what I can do.


If people have examples of other on-demand programmes with obvious 
audio problems, please pass them on.


C



On another tack is there any way of capturing the output file to the
PVM Command Window when using the web-based PVM? When things go wrong
such as an interrupted download and consequent imperfect restart, I'd
like to be able to view a log file and do a manual download of any
that failed.

Thanks for all your efforts to keep GiP working.

Chris B.

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RE: BBC Ceases To Use MP3...

[Christopher Woods]

If you can point me to some examples, that'd be useful.

Chris

On 2015-02-10 17:32, C E Macfarlane wrote:
Yes this switch over occurred a few weeks back for Nations 
programming.


I've no objection per se, but unfortunately the switch over has been
accompanied by a huge increase in burbling and even breaks in the 
recorded
sound.  Whether that's because m4a encoding takes more system 
resources and
the system can't keep pace, or some other fault, I don't know enough 
to
tell.  All that I (burble) really know is (burble) that (break) Radio 
Nan
Gaidheal (burble) keeps destroying (break) the music with incessant 
(burble)

glitches, and it's (burble) driving me mad.


-Original Message-
From: get_iplayer 
[mailto:get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org]On

Behalf Of CJB
Sent: 09 February 2015 14:55
To: get_iplayer-request
Subject: BBC Ceases To Use MP3...


... well - at least for the Radio Lancashire folk prog. 'The 
Drift.'
This used to download in MP3 format along with hundreds of #'s. 
Now it
appears to be in M4A - the Beeb's usual format for audios. Just 
an

observation. CJB.

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Re: BBC Ceases To Use MP3...

[Christopher Woods]

This is likely because they're now on Audio Factory. As of right now, 22 of 
the 40 LR stations are now on AF with the rest due to be migrated by Wednesday.


This will bring advantages in terms of a reduction in network complexity 
(seriously, it's a headache-inducing patchwork of different services and 
providers -- plus the audio quality of the old circuits is hugely variable 
and often quite ropey), and it'll bring a cost saving.


However, this means everything is moving to HLS/HDS (eventually also DASH) 
with no more WMA (or MP3). That I'm not so sad about. AAC has completely 
supplanted MP3 and I can't think of many (if any) devices that don't 
support it in hardware or via software update.


That said, there will remain a Shoutcast MP3 stream of Network stations for 
legacy internet radio devices - which won't be around for ever. I use 
(used!) the AAC Shoutcast streams and it'll be a loss to me as they're also 
being canned. But it's like arguing with the wind to expect a Shoutcast CDN 
to be kept running just so me and half a dozen others can listen to unicast 
AAC... ;)


More info published today from the manager of Audio Factory: 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/977a1954-658f-4fb2-a23c-71680c49882f



On 9 February 2015 15:04:47 Steven Carr sjc...@gmail.com wrote:


On 9 February 2015 at 14:55, CJB chrisjbr...@gmail.com wrote:
 ... well - at least for the Radio Lancashire folk prog. 'The Drift.'
 This used to download in MP3 format along with hundreds of #'s. Now it
 appears to be in M4A - the Beeb's usual format for audios. Just an
 observation. CJB.

I add the following flags to get it back to MP3 (and in a format where
iTunes recognizes it as a podcast and doesn't screw with it)...

--tag-podcast-radio --aactomp3

Steve

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Re: Support for live radio Shoutcast streams

[Christopher Woods]

They're already available (but as AAC, not MP3), search for 'BBC AAC 
streams'. You need to point your player to the .pls playlist URL for each 
stream, the access token contained within is uniquely generated per access 
and has an immediate expiry.


IIRC the playlist files basically link to the CDN P  Q endpoints through a 
couple of different routes. Most stations are 128kbps AAC LC, Radio 3's 
also available as 320kbps.



On 13 December 2014 06:03:30 Vangelis forthnet 
northmed...@the.forthnet.gr wrote:



Now that I remembered,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/BBC-Radio-to-stop-supporting-Windows-Media-on-December-31st

 We will provide a SHOUTcast mp3 stream of all our radio stations
 so that live radio will continue to work on internet radio devices
 for another year or two.
 This mp3 stream will be up and running before support
 for Windows Media is switched off.

 Has anyone been able to find more info on this/sniff any of those streams?
Or is it still too soon?

V.


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Re: iplayer audio to lpcm

[Christopher Woods]

On 8 November 2014 13:32:51 Owen Smith owen.sm...@cantab.net wrote:

Blasted mailing list, I sent the message below as a personal reply, AGAIN. 
I simply cannot get my brain to accept how this list works. I'm on half a 
dozen other mailing lists all of which work the other way round ie. replies 
go to the list. Mutter.

--
Owen Smith owen.sm...@cantab.net
Cambridge, UK

On 8 Nov 2014, at 12:54, Owen Smith owen.sm...@cantab.net wrote:

 This is decoding a lossy format (AAC), not encoding. Provided there are 
no digital volume controls or similar being applied, the results should be 
identical regardless of which software is used to decode it. It's the 
definition of AAC that dictates what an AAC stream decodes to. Encoding yes 
there is plenty of room for different implementations to produce different 
results, but not decoding. Otherwise it wouldn't be a correct decode of the 
AAC.

 --
 Owen Smith owen.sm...@cantab.net
 Cambridge, UK

 On 8 Nov 2014, at 12:26, Jim Lesurf j...@audiomisc.co.uk wrote:

 Thanks, I'll look at the above. One of the things I'm curious about is the
 relative performance (in terms of quality, etc) of ffmpeg versus avcodec. I
 come to this from being a long term user of ffmpeg, but knowing nothing
 about the forking or its effects. Given my past I tend to go for using
 ffmpeg as my first intent. But would/will change if it is advantageous.

 Jim





Bringing this sharply back on topic...

IIRC, DTT, DSAT and iPlayer are basically fed with the same quality source. 
iPlayer caps live from the full fat source signal, with automation to tell 
it when to start and stop, except where something has been preloaded for 
immediate availability. Not intimately familiar with the latest incarnation 
setup but I'll read some docs and confirm with people who do, I'm also 
curious now.


IMO any significant difference in sound is going to be down to relative 
codec efficiency, not due to huge differences in the TX chain. iPlayer 
desktop uses AAC-LC, DSAT is MP2 and AAC for HD, DTT the same albeit at 
lower bit rates.




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Re: Does anyone know what a 'reversion' is?

[Christopher Woods]

Likewise, the abbreviated 10/15 minute Click episodes which air through the 
week as handy filler.


Some repeated eps of cop shows need to have faces blurred for legal reasons 
since first airing etc.


The term's misleading - it means the act of reverting to a prior state, but 
nuw-meedyah luvvies got their talons into it and repurposed it as is their 
wont.


(between that, and advertising agencies describing all their work as pieces 
of 'creative'...!)


Also IIRC, sign zone versions are 'reversions' and have their own PIDs hung 
off the episode's family tree.


Chris


On 27 October 2014 20:51:23 Alex Brooks askoorb+ipla...@gmail.com wrote:


Hi,

On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 4:44 PM, Jeremy Nicoll - ml get_iplayer
jn.ml.gti...@wingsandbeaks.org.uk wrote:
 I've noticed that a few BBC programmes are described as 'reversions'.  For
 example there's a repeat (or maybe it's more than that?) of Series 5 of Rip
 Off Britain on at the moment.  In the tv.cache file ( on the BBC website)
 the episodes are titled:

   Rip Off Britain: Series 5 (Daytime Reversions)

 The tv.cache file currently lists some other 'reversions':

   Coast: Series 5 Reversions

   Flog It!: Series 7 Reversions

SNIP

A really good, simple example of a basic 'reversion' would be these
programmes with values in, like Flog It and house buying programmes.
The reversions have messages pop up saying as valued in May 2013 or
similar all over them.  Likewise you get dub changes on reversions if
the first broadcast refers to something coming up in the future, the
reversion will state the date plainly, not without reference to
whether it is in the near future or past.

Alex

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Re: AOD availability time frame

[Christopher Woods]

AOD availability has for the moment been rolled back to 7 days (except for 
Proms programmes) whilst they work on the issues. I can understand why, I 
agree that it's a bit frustrating :)


I think the perfect storm of problems made everyone extra cautious as they 
continue to work on the systems. Can't really blame them, it makes sense to 
revert to a previous good configuration, resolve problems then reintroduce...


Chris


On 6 August 2014 17:58:37 Vangelis forthnet northmed...@the.forthnet.gr 
wrote:



Greetings all :-) !

As Chris has mentioned in a July thread
(http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/get_iplayer/2014-July/005952.html) :

 I notice that the time for listening on iPlayer has now been extended to 4
 weeks.

When I first read this, I thought it was a universal rule,
applying to all radio content from the beeb...
 I am mainly interested in Radio1  Radio 2 music shows, so
forgive me if the situation is different for speech oriented content
(e.g. Radio 4  4Xtra), but has this decision been REVOKED
or REVISED in any way?
 Take for instance the following radio shows:

1) The Official Chart (Radio 1):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wkgn/episodes/player

2) The Official Chart Update (Radio 1):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rl3xp/episodes/player

3) Pick of the Pops (Radio 2):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wqx7/episodes/player

 As you are able to see, shows from the previous week and from
over a forthnight ago have been made available for the stated 4 weeks,
however the recent shows have fallen back to the previous state of
being available for only 7 days after initial broadcast (???) ( :-{ )
 I am about to leave come next week for 10 days to a place without
internet access, so at first I thought I could catch up on my missed
radio content when back thanks to this extended availability period;
however the issue I bring up ruins it for me...
 Does any of you have more info on this?

Many thanks,
Vangelis.


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Re: Major Close Down

[Christopher Woods]

Come to Libertaria and visit the money tree gardens! Green all year round...

The sentiment of your email stuck in my craw. There has been no loss of 
freedoms. You may now be less able to infringe copyright law; you have 
never been free to do it.



The undeniable fact: for the overwhelming majority of content available 
from users on those sites, they were not legally permitted to distribute it 
to others.


For example, by making British-broadcast programmes available to people in 
other territories outside of an official syndication agreement, these 
people lose out:


- Original and syndicating broadcasters
- Cast, crew and production staff
- Fans, who can see their show cancelled from low official viewing figures 
or lack of advertising  syndication revenue


What's lost?
- Syndication royalties and trickle-down advertising revenue
- Employment for talented voice actors who dub into other languages, and 
skilled foreign language subtitle writers

- ...future work for everyone involved

It reduces opportunities for reinvestment by broadcasters because they 
might not perceive a profitable return on their investment or commission. 
Why would people watch if they've already downloaded it, circumventing the 
system -- so why bother risking capital to fund production, or pay $$$ to 
syndicate a widely pirated show? Let them go run an indiegogo and 
self-fund their own series if their fans are so keen to watch it.


As so many of the programmes we enjoy are actually made by independent 
production houses, this has another tangible impact as they lay off 
employees or merge with other companies to avoid shutting down.


I've worked in the independent sector of the music biz and witnessed the 
crippling loss of revenue, jobs and inability to reinvest in new talent 
across the industry over the past decade. It's much the same across the 
other creative industries.


---

Don't conflate unlicensed distribution of copyrighted material with useful 
tools like get_iplayer, which is simply another method of accessing 
something all British citizens are already entitled to - per the terms of 
the licence the BBC grants to us.


Implying our countrymen fought and died for our rights to wilfully break 
copyright law is facile and tasteless.


Regards
Chris

(I'm not against P2P file-sharing as a mechanism, it's very efficient. 
Sadly it's short term gain for long term pain when it comes to quick-grab 
consumption of our favourite mass media.)



On 5 August 2014 18:40:05 Chris Marriott ch...@chrism.demon.co.uk wrote:




-Original Message-
From: Chris J Brady
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2014 3:25 PM
To: get_iplayer
Subject: Major Close Down

Earlier this year it was TheBox.bz. A few months ago Radio Archive closed
down. Now ZXCV.com (TB repacement) has gone for good.

Our forbears fought in WW1 and WW2 for our freedoms to be who we want to
be, to form sharing communities, and to live how we want to live.

I don't know what your forbears did, but mine certainly didn't do any
fighting for the right to steal other peoples' copyrighted material. These
are pirate sites, pure and simple. Good riddance to the lot of them.

Chris


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Re: 317 kbps radio files - really?

[Christopher Woods]

But -- aren't the R4X programmes AAC 128kbps, which is subjectively higher 
quality than a 128kbps MP3 to begin with? Transcoding would just lose 
audible quality for no filesize advantage...




On 12 June 2014 09:02:43 Chris Marriott ch...@chrism.demon.co.uk wrote:


-Original Message- From: Owen Smith
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 1:30 AM
To: get_iplayer
Subject: Re: 317 kbps radio files - really?

Note the metadata still says 128kbps for Radio 3 like all the other 
channels, but the stream is actually 320kbps. This causes confusion at 
times. I imagine Radio 2 would behave the same if it went 320kbps.


If it's a voice programme, rather than music, a useful option is the 
aactomp3 flag, which will transcode at 128kbps, no matter what the 
original is. I use this very successfully for all the drama programmes I 
record from Radio 4 Extra. Of course, for music, you may wish to retain the 
320kbps for the higher quality.


Chris


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Re: windows version of iplayer - output format

[Christopher Woods]

For what it's worth, the iPlayer uses AAC audio for all radio (in an M4A 
wrapper) - if your media player can handle M4A, and if it's vaguely modern 
it should, then I urge you to keep the original quality AAC downloads.


If you ask get_iplayer to convert them to MP3, it will download the 
compressed AAC then *recompress* to MP3 yielding inferior quality audio.


Regards
Chris


On 6 May 2014 09:44:37 Chris Marriott ch...@chrism.demon.co.uk wrote:




-Original Message- From: Rod Crittenden
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 9:31 AM
To: get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org
Subject: windows version of iplayer - output format

Hi:

I have the windows installer version of get-iplayer.

downloading from radio broadcasts...  the resulting file is of the format
m4a.

Can anyone advise me how to set up the iplayer so that the output format is
mp3 ?

Simply add the aactomp3 flag to the command line (ie add --aactomp3). You 
can apply this automatically by editing the options file in the folder 
C:\Users\All Users\get_iplayer and adding the line:


aactomp3 1

to the file.

Hope this helps,

Chris


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Re: BBC SD-HD changes

[Christopher Woods]

Ultimately, depends on whether the programme was supplied as HD to the 
Beeb. Other stuff will be upconverted, but the hardware upconverters used 
on TX will still yield a better, higher quality result (albeit larger 
filesize) than SD equivalent.


A quick check of /programmes shows an HD indicator next to BBC Three stuff 
originated in high def (e.g. 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/programmes/schedules/2013/12/25), is that of 
any use?


Merry Christmas :)
Chris


On 24 December 2013 20:23:28 Peter S Kirk peter.k...@isauk.biz wrote:

Alex,

BBC introduced BBC3 and BBC4 HD channels a couple of weeks ago, hence the 
appearance of more HD content on iplayer. I can't comment on quality of new 
or old shows. However, you could try comparing:


Byzantium.A.Tale.Of.Three.Cities.S01E01.PDTV.x264-BARGE
with
Byzantium.A.Tale.Of.Three.Cities.S01E02.HDTV.x264-BARGE
Byzantium.A.Tale.Of.Three.Cities.S01E02.720p.HDTV.x264-BARGE
and
Byzantium.A.Tale.Of.Three.Cities.S01E03.HDTV.x264-BARGE
Byzantium.A.Tale.Of.Three.Cities.S01E03.720p.HDTV.x264-BARGE

As the addition of HD ocurred after E01 was broadcast

Merry Christmas,

Peter

On 24 Dec 2013 at 19:50, Alexis Fotiadis Alexis Fotiadis 
alexisfotia...@hotmail.com wrote:


 Hello
 A few weeks ago I noticed that many BBC progs were suddenly available in 
HD; even repeats of older progs which were previously available in 
flashvhigh eg:

 The A to Z of TV Cooking, The Life of Birds
 Can anybody give a clearer picture of the change - is the actual quality 
of repeats that are now aired in HD any better than their original 
lower-res versions, or has the Beeb fudged the resolution in some way, like 
a digital rather than optical camera zoom? I had downloaded double copies 
of a few progs in varying resolutions, but didn't have time to check the 
picture quality difference before I went abroad.
 I would try checking from here if I knew anything about proxy servers, 
but I don't, and seem to remember ppl are careful about discussing that on 
the message-board since it's breaking the BBC rules,  may cause legal 
problems.

 Cheers
 Alex


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Re: Reducing volume

[Christopher Woods]

There's some audio processing on encodes which does make them louder for 
the first couple of seconds before they drop back to reasonable levels. As 
I understand it this is due to the encoding profile at Maidstone maintained 
by the technical partner and is the subject of much wailing and gnashing of 
teeth.


Though not relevant to iPlayer files, If you're decoding multichannel via 
LAV and letting Windows downmix then it will come out quieter than if you 
do the downmix with the filter.


You don't perhaps have ffdshow installed too and that is actually what's 
decoding (and normalising) in mediaportal? Check filter priorities.




On 16 August 2013 13:56:28 Derek Moss d...@stoptheviolence.co.uk wrote:

Is there any way to automatically reduce the volume of iPlayer
downloads as part of the download process, or will I just have to run
them through some program once they've finished? If the latter, is
there a quick, lossless way to do this without re-encoding the files?

The reason I need to do this is that iPlayer is much louder than
LiveTV, for me at least. When I'm playing iPlayer streams on my PC
with Mediaportal, the difference isn't too bad, so perhaps my codec
(LAV) is limiting the volume but when using XBMC on my RPi, the
difference is quite striking and I have to reduce the volume
considerably for iPlayer streams (which is more of a pain as
autorepeat doesn't work on the remote volume keys due to some OS bug,
so I have to press them 15-20 times). I haven't actually tested
playing downloads instead of streaming but I can't imagine the volume
will be any different.

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Re: Re: New Website

[Christopher Woods]

One hundred mil is only a billion in the States ;) in civilised society, 
it's one thousand million.


Apologies for earlier confusion on my part re Radio Downloader allowing 
people to circumvent geo restrictions, I was thinking of Beebify... Amusing 
when you consider what likely popped into your inbox from them today!


Chris



On 17 July 2013 09:04:03 Jonathan H lardconce...@gmail.com wrote:

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 1:20 AM, Square Penguin
he...@squarepenguin.co.uk wrote:

 Use of Logo: That is get_iplayer's logo and always has been as far as I am
 aware. It is on the front page of this mailing list. If someone would like
 to do another one I'd be more than happy to use it, but if the BBC decides
 to go after get_iplayer, it won't be over the logo.

That IS true that it's always been the logo, perhaps it's time for a change?

Look at the two side by side:

BBC Iplayer logo http://hotline.ccsinsight.com/_images-article/iPlayer.png
Get_iplayer logo
http://getiplayer.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/get_iPlayer-Forums.jpg

I'm not a legal expert but I am in business and I'd be fairly sure
they could come after you. TC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/business.shtml
2.1.3   the names, images and logos identifying the BBC, its licensors
or third parties and their products and services in BBC Online
Services and/or BBC Content are subject to copyright, design rights
and trade marks (registered and unregistered) of the BBC or any other
relevant third party or licensor.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/additional_iplayer.shtml
2.9 You do not have the right to use any BBC Content or BBC mark/logo
on your device or elsewhere except as provided on BBC iPlayer or
through the BBC iPlayer Download Application.

But also, the Beeb have massively deep, almost bottomless pockets.
They pissed away £1bn (that's £100,000,000) on a totally failed IT
project, paid directors £tens of millions more than their contracts
required, and have already spend £2m just on Newsnight:

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/bbc-reveal-full-cost-dropping-savile-story-annual-accounts-are-published
The newsnight investigation cost £2.4 million which included £101,000
to cover the legal and related costs of Helen Boaden who was heavily
criticised in the report.

To come after GIP would be a tiny drop in the ocean for BBC lawyers
who will be on close to £5,000 *PER HOUR*. Can you afford that?

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Re: New Website

[Christopher Woods]

 I have already said I am prepared to use another logo and use another
 URL if the community truly believes that will make a difference.
 I repeat what I said before, that the community should have been asked
 before the event, and I have no evidence that you did so.

The logo is, as the Yanks say, confusingly similar -- it incorporates
the stylised i play icon device and uses an identical shade of pink
plus echoes the instantly recognisable BBC blocks, right down to spacing.
It's dangerously close to attracting the wrong kind of attention.


 The project is not at risk through any action of mine, it is at risk
 through its very nature. I am simply mirroring content that is widely
 available. Even the logo.
 I for one think that there is enough evidence from posts to this list
 that a number of people think that the project may be at risk through
 actions of yours.

I believe a few people have tried that defence when being sued for sharing
MP3s which were already widely available elsewhere, it didn't go down so
well in court. Even if you didn't originate the logo, it's still arguably
infringing and worthy of a CD -- and with a .co.uk domain, you are an
easy target.


 Jonathan H. wrote:
 Well, was it spam? I've not heard of Beebify before; when I clicked
 the link I saw a very easy one-click method of downloading a working
 wmv copy of a BBC programme.

 Spam is disruptive unsolicited commercial electronic mail messages
 simultaneously to a number of e-mail addresses.

 For me, this was a useful message posted to an appropriate list in
 which there had been recent discussions about difficulties downloading
 certain programmes.

 AFAIAC, any extra method that works is welcome.

 I think we may have different definitions of spam :)

Sent from a no-reply address: spam
Sent without opt in (at least for me): spam
Commercial advertising on a private mailing list, hijacking its subscriber
list: spam

It's unwelcome and unwanted. The important distinction here also is that
Beebify is willingly and intentionally providing a method for accessing
georestricted, DRMed content to those who do not have rights to do so.

I've use GIP for many years and love it. It continues to exist in part
because of the community support and the BBC's tacit acknowledgment that
it is for the licence payer community.


Beebify is a different kind of beast and it is prudent for the GIP guides
and the GIP project to continue to distance themselves from it. Critically
Beebify actively seeks to profit from other people's IP (massive no-no)
through its own subscription model:

 As a kindness to infrequent BBC-TV viewers, acquiring one PlayRights
per day is free.  Or subscribe for unlimited use.

Oh, and this:

 Watching TV used to be a shared social experience, and our hope is
 that Beebify with its simple downloading will encourage viewers to
 form groups where files downloaded by one person are then shared
 locally - thus considerably reducing bandwidth for the BBC servers and
 for viewers' own Internet pathway.

Where to start, really... Perhaps he's already invited the crack team of
IP lawyers round for preemptive tea, biscuits and a group viewing of the
White Queen to appease them prior to lawsuits?


From an earlier message to this list in March:
 Pair Beebify with Hola.org's (still in beta) free unBlocker for
 Windows, the promising new peer2peer network facilitating BBC access,
 and this is a very simple solution to downloading and watching BBC
 shows from anywhere in the world.

P2P proxy mechanism for circumventing georestrictions on accessing and
searching available content: check

 The server side of Beebify's architecture was designed on the pemise
 that it must access the BBC servers in the same manner as any other
 user, giving the BBC the option of blocking every one of its users
 including Beebify - or blocking no one.

Infringing the GPL: check
(https://github.com/dinkypumpkin/get_iplayer/blob/master/LICENSE.txt)

 The website (client) side of Beebify respects the shortcomings of
 BBC's DRM system by allowing the easily downloaded files to be played
 in Windows Media Player from anywhere in the world - by utilising
 Hola.org's unBlocker, another proxy or a VPN solution.  Important in
 the design was making Beebify simple enough for a computer novice to
 use.

Further circumvention of DRM, contravening iPlayer terms of service: check


Beebify's developer might as well stand outside NBH with a massive I
allow the world to infringe the BBC's intellectual property rights,
WHATCHAGONNADOABOUTIT? poster.


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Re: New Website

[Christopher Woods]

If the licence terms permit it, yes.



On 17 July 2013 11:58:58 michael norman michaeltnor...@gmail.com wrote:

On 17/07/13 11:43, Jeremy Nicoll - ml get_iplayer wrote:
 michael norman michaeltnor...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 17/07/13 11:06, Square Penguin wrote:
 TBH I had reservations about the logo before launching the site and I
 hear the concerns raised here.
 And your reservations were shared where exactly.
 There's no reason why SP's reservations should have been shared anywhere.
 And, with free, open-source software, any of us - or anyone else - is free
 to do anything we like with it.  Nobody has to ask anyone's permission
 first.

Lets be clear here you are saying that anyone, anywhere has the right to do 
exactly what they like with free or opensource software without reference 
to any other individual anywhere ?


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Re: Radio Downloader Archives

[Christopher Woods]

Believe me, the archives are there, at least for the last decade (for the 
most part). Ultimately the people want to, at least informally, preserve 
output.


There hasn't, yet, that I'm aware of, been One Plan to Store Them All (And 
In the Darkness Find Them, a few years later) for legal, technological, 
cost and political reasons. In the 60s and 70s there were also some Very 
Poor Decisions (but then hindsight is always 20:20)


Undoubtedly the corp and Worldwide are well aware of the beauty of depth of 
content, given a shifting global marketplace and demand for old and new 
programming in overseas markets. Archive is gold.



Over the coming few years, the ability for the corp to quickly access 
archive recordings will become MUCH simpler as workflows are improved and 
the rest of the organisation goes fully tapeless -- but rights issues 
remain at the forefront of most conversations, tieing the hands of many 
stations who would enjoy being able to rebroadcast archive material 
(including some of Mike Harding's old shows, no doubt).


Bear in mind almost all of the specialist shows have, for some time, been 
produced by external organisations using a combination of BBC studios and 
private studios. Just because things make it to air doesn't necessarily 
guarantee subsequent broadcast rights. (ah, copyright...)



The capital costs of archiving the sheer amount of finished programmes the 
Beeb produces / broadcasts has always been a chore; the space required just 
to house tape in archival conditions is ridiculous. Bits and bytes are 
procedurally simpler but by no means necessarily cheaper because you have 
to substantially harden your infrastructure.


Nerd essay over...



On 17 July 2013 20:32:21 Chris J Brady chrisjbr...@yahoo.com wrote:

Try yet again - again - 
 
 One of the reasons I am keen to 'listen again' to audio broadcasts from 
the Beeb and elsewhere is that programmes are rarely repeated, especially 
folk programmes. Take the Mike Harding Folk Music  Song series. Once he 
got the push he was never heard from again. His slot was taken by one Mike 
Radcliffe (like 'who?'). Harding's previous programmes will never he heard 
- ever again. [He now privately podcasts new ones.]


 The Beeb's total lack of interest in archiving its own recordings is 
legion. Not only did it wipe out thousands of comedy progs, and folk progs, 
etc., in the 1960s-90s, it had to rely on home-tapers to retrieve many of 
its 'lost' programmes. Hence the infamous Treasure Hunt. [BTW the 9th ep. 
of the TV Lark is STILL missing.]


 The role of get_iplayer and Radio Downloader etc. is simply that of a 
tool for a home-taper who in previous years might have recorded off-air 
using reel-reel tapes or cassette tapes. The Beeb's complaint about RD 
breaking DRM etc. is pure nonsense. 


 I personally have many 'lost' folk and comedy programmes. We know the 
former were junked by the Beeb because the reel-reel masters were found in 
a skip behind Radio Manchester Studios. They were 'rescued' but then 
disappeared into a private collection. I have cassette versions from 
off-air recordings - the only extant copies. Other programmes have been 
recovered from home-tapers in New Zealand. When approached to donate copies 
the Beeb scathingly replied not interested.


 So as far as I am concerned the Beeb is only reaping what it has sown. 
Many in the OTR fraternity have large archival collections of long 'lost' 
radio programmes. One main reason for this - apart from the production 
qualities being far superior to modern ones - is that the radio stations 
including the Beeb are simply not interested in archiving minority genres, 
e.g. folk, and are certainly not interested in keeping programmes of such 
in the public domain where they belong. 


 CJB.

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Re: New Website

[Christopher Woods]

But with respect, GIP is not for the purposes of circumventing 
international copyright law, however dismal your country's television. I 
have the same complaints about a lot of UK telly!


If we explicitly or implicitly encourage the use of GIP to operate outside 
of copyright law, the whole thing will be taken away from us permanently.




On 17 July 2013 00:37:54 Xtra terryandshe...@xtra.co.nz wrote:

Please can I join in those GIP users urgently requesting that the new GIP
website change its provocative use of both the name and logo of the BBC?

The desire to help newbies with GIP is admirable and the website is
brilliant, but putting the entire project at risk of legal intervention is 
a potential disaster.

Have you all forgotten about Radiodownloader so soon?

As an expat, availability to the BBC is the only thing that saves my
sanity from the truly appalling lightweight crap that is free-to-air TV
here.  Even pay TV here is now going down the same gurgler..

Perhaps those actually in the UK don't realise the truly unique value of
advert free, quality programmes in todays world.

Please, please, take down the red flags before the Bull notices


OldTimer43







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Re: HD 1080 or 720

[Christopher Woods (CM)]

On 01/03/2013 19:02, Shevek wrote:

On 1 March 2013 16:36, Rog zulu.romeotangoho...@ntlworld.com wrote:

I'm pretty sure I get 1080 from iPlayeer...
Ripper Street for example.

File sizes are about 1.15 GB per hour.


All Ripper Street have been 1280x720 from iPlayer

File size is not an indication of pixel dimensions, it is the bit-rate
which determines file size

Agreed. All HD content available on the main iPlayer service is 1280x720p25.

HOWEVER, the HD programme material available if you have a Sky+HD box 
... is 1920x1080i25 (I think, you get combing artifacts when you hit 
pause but this might also be because the Sky+HD boxes max out at 1080i 
on HDMI).


So, either BBC provides a feed exclusively to Sky's on-demand platform 
just for us lucky Sky customers, or there is another unadvertised 
version feed only available for specific devices or proxied through 
specific gateways. When I realised I Wiresharked some traffic as I 
downloaded a file, it was coming from a CDN. More investigation required.


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Re: Thank you

[Christopher Woods (CM)]

On 18/02/2013 09:25, Colin Law wrote:

On 18 February 2013 00:23, Peter S Kirk peter.k...@isauk.biz wrote:

Dinkypumpinkin and the rest of the crew who work or have worked on updating
and improving get_iplayer and it's plugins (rtmp dump etc)

A big thank you for all your hard work, it is much appreciated by me and
I'm sure by countless others too.

+1

Colin

+9000! GiP's one of my must-have apps on any machine I get to use.

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Re: infradead is down

[Christopher Woods (CM)]

On 11/02/2013 15:22, Kapitano wrote:

On 2/11/2013 14:30 PM, Colin Law wrote:
Possibly a solution would be to provide a command line parameter to 
get-iplayer which would specify where to store the cache and settings,


That would be a very good feature, which I suppose I'm hereby 
requesting. We've already got one for the default download folder.


The rights and wrongs of which folders should have what access 
privileges...is a good nerdy subject on which we won't be able to agree.


Shevek wrote:
 Anything that has a portable install, I put it in C:\Applications

I've got over 200 programs on my laptop, and they're *all* portable 
and outside Program Files. Erm, except for Get_iPlayer. :-).

+1 (+1 bonus) for portable option. I'd *love* me some portable GiP.

Just this weekend, on an old installation I fell afoul of 2.79's 
inability to write to the default download location problem. And woe 
betide me, infradead was down to boot!


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Re: Why M4a and not mp4?

[Christopher Woods (CM)]

Google would be your friend here. M4A and MP4 have the same container 
format.  The M4A extension is just a naming convention for audio-only 
files, a convention to which get_iplayer adheres.  For whatever 
reasons, some players won't recognise the M4A extension, so rename.


Personally I always use the aactomp3 flag in get_iplayer to 
transcode the AAC file as MP3 for a radio programme. No problem 
playing in anything that way.


Chris


Yikes, enjoy that double-compressed sound? ;-) It's so ... squishy.

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Re: I haven't been able to download using PID for ages....

[Christopher Woods (CM)]

Some interesting comments all, thanks.

The reason I put --pid at the end of my string is partially to stop me 
from forgetting to change it ;-) And I only ever use get_iplayer to grab 
stuff for which I've already found the PID for, I always found its PVR 
features a little cumbersome for what I wanted.


My explicit SWFVfy declaration was after the default player URL was 
removed by the BBC so rtmpdump was having problems with dropped frames 
and corrupt downloads, particularly on the HD content.


I was under the impression get_iplayer still transcoded to MP3? I'm 
using 2.79 on Windows; I remember a lot of discussion a while back about 
the quality of the downloads and people asking how to stop it from 
transcoding. I left it as-is because I remember a few things being 
broken in updates pushed out - but if newer versions have those bugs 
squished and have a newer build of ffmpeg rolled in, I'll certainly give 
that a try. I'm a sucker for metadata. Undoubtedly YAMB is a bit long in 
the tooth now, I've only just got used to some of its UI quirks ;-)


On 26/09/2012 19:26, dinkypumpkin wrote:

On 26/09/2012 18:19, Christopher Woods (CM) wrote:

Some clarification for new users -


get_iplayer --raw --output G:\iplayer\raw\ --modes
flashaachigh,flashaac,flashaacstd,flashaudio,flashaaclow --rtmptvopts
--swfVfy http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/revisions/18269_21576_10player.swf;
--rtmpradioopts --swfVfy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/revisions/18269_21576_10player.swf; --force
--get --type=liveradio --pid=pidhere


The --swfvfy value is built into get_iplayer.  There is no need to use 
it on a command line unless you know of a case where the built-in 
value no longer works.  Also, you don't need --get if you specify 
--pid. Think of --pid as shortcut to download a specific programme 
when you already know its unique identifier.



a liveradio category result for the pid you enter. My golden rule is to
always have --pid or --url at the very end of the string. Specifying the
10player URL stopped frame drops in videos when rtmpdump couldn't swfvfy
properly.


There is no need to put --url or --pid at the end of your command 
line.  get_iplayer's argument parsing is not sensitive to entry order.



Using --raw obviates the transcoding (yeurgh). use FLVExtract to rip out
AAC from the FLVs and then use YAMB (or MP4Box if you're not lazy like
me) to remux as an M4A and get it seekable. For videos, I just leave as
FLV as MPC can parse and decode them fine natively; when I remuxed as
MP4 I had frame drift for whatever reason... and at that point I was
happy enough anyway with the H.264 FLVs. :-)


To echo Señor Guano: get_iplayer does not transcode.  You only need to 
re-mux files yourself if you wish to use a different tool or different 
parameters.  If you prefer to use --raw and stick with FLV files, 
that's fine.  But if you prefer to re-mux files to MP4 format and get 
metadata tags, etc., the combination of get_iplayer and ffmpeg works 
pretty well.


If you're using YAMB and consistently seeing drift in re-muxed video, 
get an up-to-date version of ffmpeg and let get_iplayer re-mux a few 
programmes and then compare the results.  No guarantee it will be 
better, but ffmpeg (as well as MP4Box) has come along a bit since YAMB 
was released a few years ago.



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Re: Yahoo! Groups: Welcome to WebSurfing. Visit today!

[Christopher Woods (CM)]

This keeps on bloody happening. If it's not PayPal spam it's the whole 
list being signed up to Yahoogroups, what's going on?! List admin, 
what's the craic? ;-)


Chris

On 21/07/2012 21:06, Derek J. Balling wrote:

This seems to me like a big mistake, no?  Like we've just signed up the mailing 
list to be a member of some spamming list?

D


On Jul 21, 2012, at 10:48 PM, WebSurfing Moderator wrote:


Hello,

Welcome to the WebSurfing group at Yahoo! Groups.

Please place the name of your group in the subject line.
Include the mainpage URL of your group in the body of the
e-mail, so that others may easily click on it to get there. (Including the 
'subscribe by e-mail info. is also fine, but
it is optional.)

To learn more about the WebSurfing group, and for the complete explanation of 
how we do things, please see our mainpage list description:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WebSurfing

To start sending messages:
websurf...@yahoogroups.com

To see and modify all of your groups, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/mygroups

My college degrees and employment background are in broadcasting and 
advertising. I love working in this area, so if you need any help with your 
ads, please let me know. Good luck with your advertising!

Cami
WebSurfing listowner

Complete your Yahoo! Groups account:
--
Your email address has been added to the email list of a Yahoo! Group.
To gain access to all of your group's web features (previous messages,
photos, files, calendar, etc.) and easier control of your message
delivery options, we highly recommend that you complete your account
by connecting your email address to Yahoo account. It is easy and free.
Please visit:
http://groups.yahoo.com/convacct?email=get_iplayer%40lists.infradead.orglist=WebSurfing

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/






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Re: BBC iPlayer introduces Live Restart capability

[Christopher Woods (CM)]

This is a very interesting topic, particularly as I've noted that the 
Beeb's been running a (non-advertised) 720p BBC HD stream using chunked 
H.264 for a while. Quality's pretty darned decent, I'd watch it if I 
didn't have a Sky+HD box.


I can't imagine they'd rip and replace their entire infrastructure for 
on-demand, particularly with all the embedded devices they support... If 
anything this means more complexity - chunked HTTP for PC and Mac with 
the latest versions of Flash, progressive streaming for everything else.


On 20/06/2012 13:51, Shevek wrote:

Is this going to kill of get_iplayer?

http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2012/06/19/bbc-iplayer-introduces-live-restart-capability/

Or is it only for live TV?

Will they switch from RTMP to chunked streaming for non live?

As we can keep all the video chunks as we distribute them, we can
offer them to be viewed again later, or even store them more
permanently.

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Re: iPad3

[Christopher Woods (CM)]

I imagine there isn't and won't be for a while. Apple's policies on what 
apps can do and what they can access is remarkably restrictive. AIUI 
they only permit Objective-C - no scripting in languages Perl - and not 
only that, to easily achieve what get_iplayer does would require 
additional installation of static dependencies which Apple is always 
against. (Never mind the device probably needing to also be rooted!)


On 05/06/2012 19:52, Rog wrote:

Is there an app for the ipad3?

Rog

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Re: Editing those m4a files.

[Christopher Woods (CM)]

Awesome news! About to download it, here's hoping I can edit 
losslessly... I've been so fed up booting into OSX at work just to use 
Fission.


On 03/06/2012 20:45, bat guano wrote:

mp3DirectCut-v2.16 now has aac support. :-)
Works with Windows or Linux with WINE.

First need to extract the aac.
Then edit and save with mp3DirectCut.
And mux the aac back into m4a.

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RE: problem getting this TV program

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 

 -Original Message-
 From: get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org 
 [mailto:get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org] On Behalf Of 
 Carl Fletcher
 Sent: 01 September 2011 05:47
 To: get_iplayer
 Subject: problem getting this TV program
 
 This is the URL
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xwnj2/sign/Antiques_Ro
 ad_Trip_Series_2_Episode_14/
 
 It turns up in the results from get_iplayer, along with 2 
 other episodes 12,13.
 None of them will fetch with
 get_iplayer --get ###
 or with --pid=
 
 Running the latest get_iplayer in openSUSE 11.4, (from a 
 terminal, not the PVR)
 
 Everything else fetches just fine.

With verbose mode turned on, what's the error?


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RE: PVR curiosity (under Windows)

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 I almost always use the command line but occasionally look at 
 the browser based pvr. I ticked the button which said Search 
 Future Schedule and entered the search term journey - 
 intending Journey Into Space, which I knew is starting a 
 re-run and should be on all next week, and beyond. The search 
 revealed five items: the last three episodes of Operation 
 Luna and the first two of Red Planet - all broadcast this 
 last week. Have I misunderstood this function? I thought it 
 would list also those due next week and allow me to add them 
 to a download queue.


I believe the free text search also looks in item descriptions on a fuzzy
basis - if you're after a specific item, try enclosing the search term in
inverted commas. (Journey Into Space)


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RE: Inexpert user question

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

Afraid I can't help with every question you've asked, but I'll address these
two:


 I'm using the latest version (v2.79 for Windows with a patch 
 from somewhere which was recommended on this forum). I can 
 find the programme that I want OK, then I run:
  get_iplayer --get [programme number]
 It finds the programme I want and downloads it but then 
 continues to download a number of other programmes as well 
 seemingly at random. I can crash get_iplayer to stop this but 
 what is going wrong?

I tend not to use get_iplayer in this manner, preferring to use

get_iplayer --pid=xyxyxyxy

along with other flags (like --raw and --force) in order to give me the raw
file without any transcoding. I can then do with those as I wish.

 The other problem is that the radio programme download is as 
 a .m4a file rather than .mp3. I have a program to convert 
 these files but how can I set it to download as .mp3.

iPlayer material is natively AAC; they also used to - VERY POORLY -
transcode to MP3 for some devices but they now only serve AACs. This I am
happy with, because their own MP3 encodes really were dire. Your raw
download will be an AAC file, possibly wrapped as an .FLV file if you
specify the --raw flag. I use FLVExtract to read out the raw AAC files and
then if I wish to rewrap as an .M4A file to make it seekable on my iRiver
H340 or in foobar2000 I use YAMB (Yet Another MP4Box GUI).

If I wanted to transcode to MP3, I'd use Frontah (with LAME in its working
directory and a VBR preset chosen in the Frontah GUI); easy way to batch
automate multiple transcodes and have a very granular control of the quality
level. Shevek (from this list) has also done work on a forked version of
get_iplayer which downloads AACs, converts to M4A files and tags with
AtomicParsley -
http://www.mail-archive.com/get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org/msg01074.html
for the last message of that thread (read back for installation
instructions). 

if you load tagged M4A files into Frontah (my personal choice only) it will
respect those tags and retag accordingly when you transcode. Just another
(albeit more longwinded way) to achieve your goal.

You *can* automate this transcoding (and retagging should you wish) with a
combination of MP4Box, ffmpeg and AtomicParsley specified on the command
line when you invoke get_iplayer; some far cleverer people than I have
already done all the legwork, just search this mailing list's archives for
the answers. Funnily enough, when I searched get_iplayer infradead
transcode MP3 ... One of my posts came up on the first page. 8)

There has been work on custom compiles of get_iplayer which can
automatically transcode to MP3 on a per-download basis;
http://www.mail-archive.com/get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org/msg00904.html
for that thread (March this year). 


Here's another good start point for your searches:
http://www.mail-archive.com/search?a=1l=get_iplayer%40lists.infradead.orgh
aswords=transcode+mp3from=notwords=subject=datewithin=6mdate=august+01+
2011order=relevancesearch=Search



Anyone who can directly address the AAC-to-MP3 transcoding with a better
answer -- please do!


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RE: Get Iplayer for Windows

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 -Original Message-
 From: get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org 
 [mailto:get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org] On Behalf Of 
 David Woodhouse
 Sent: 04 August 2011 20:22
 To: power...@aol.com
 Cc: get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org
 Subject: Re: Get Iplayer for Windows
 
 On Thu, 2011-08-04 at 13:29 -0400, power...@aol.com wrote:
Is there any news on the Windows installer version of the Get I 
  Player program being updated?
  
   Get  I Player Version 2.79 doesnt seem to work any more.
  
Will the rtmpdump file be upgraded from 2.2d to version 
 2.4? Or is 
  there any other way of upgrading this file on a Window's 
 based system?
  
There is lots of info out there on the board for Linux  
 Ubuntu but 
  none for us Windows users.
  
   Thanks in advance for any help
 
 I would love for someone to step forward and maintain the 
 Windows stuff.
 Life is *so* much harder on Windows where we have to do so 
 much for ourselves, as opposed to the Linux packages where we 
 just mark it as depending on perl, ffmpeg, rtmpdump etc., and 
 everything Just Works.
 And updates for packages like rtmpdump *also* happen 
 properly, because there's a system-wide update mechanism that works.
 
 I've occasionally tried to keep it up to date, but 
 fundamentally I just don't care about Windows. I'm never 
 going to do a good job of it, and I only even *boot* Windows 
 to test the installation, so I'm not a good person to do it.
 
 I'd be more than happy to 'hand over', and show someone how I 
 got it working, and give them access to the FTP site so that 
 they can keep things up to date (for example by testing newer 
 versions of the various dependencies and adjusting the links 
 to them, etc.)

Your work to date has been most appreciated by what I think's probably a
largely quiet Windows user community. Thanks on behalf of all of us for
keeping the win32 fork maintained after everyone thought it was going to
curl up in a corner and die of unnatural causes...!

Would a 'differential' installer be a kludge fix? Any simpler for you to
implement? Everyone would to install a snapshotted base version, then after
that install the latest update to obtain latest stable builds and update
references etc. I've not updated get_iplayer since the last major win32
release - it works, I read about problems with the latest 'current' linux
builds (which are subsequently patched very quickly by guys on here... but
I'm in the Works? DON'T TOUCH IT camp ;-)

Would it be less work to just write a quick script-based installer which
relied upon a preexisting get_iplayer install for updates? (this of course
doesn't count all of the required work to compile functional win32 builds of
course!) Unfortunately I have close to nil experience with compiling
components for win32, frustrating because in this kind of situation I really
wish I could helpfully contribute.


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RE: Errors downloading this evening

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

  Radio downloads were completely broken for me for a number of days, 
  and last night. It looks to be working fine today though. I don't 
  download TV so I don't know how it compared.
 
 I had problems yesterday simply listening to radio programmes 
 via the BBC web site, but it seemed OK this afternoon.

What ISPs are all of you customers of? (applies to all people suffering
problems, are you all VM?) It's sounding like a congestion or
routing/peering problem, wondering if it's in ISPland or the BBC side.


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RE: Errors downloading this evening

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

  What ISPs are all of you customers of?
 [various replies]

Hmm, so quite a disparity.

What might be useful, if someone encounters a problematic download, would be
to fire up a command prompt and manually attempt to download the file - that
way the download server chosen can be identified and a traceroute and pings
can be run against it to determine whether there's a particular CDN at fault
(IIRC the BBC use three; Akamai, LimeLight and Level3) or whether there's
some intermittent routing problems at LINX.


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RE: Errors downloading this evening

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 
 I always use the Windows command prompt to do my d/l. If you 
 give me the command to check out the server I'll give it a go 
 (though this evening, things are much back to normal with the 
 occasional slooowww d/l which times out).

Good man yourself! Big boys use the command prompt ;-)

I usually specify --verbose to get all the grimy details. The server
connected to is listed amongst the various connect info. --streaminfo will
show the media stream URLs. --debug will show everything including the
kitchen sink.


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RE: Is anyone else's running slooowwwwlllyyy?

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

Are you starting from the correct directory? You can't invoke get_iplayer
unless you're already in its working directly, this is because get_iplayer's
folder is not included in Windows' PATH variable. (you can manually
specify it - a quick Google will show you how - then invoke get_iplayer from
any command prompt starting in any directory).

Alternatively you can create a string which will automatically set the
working directory to C:\program files\get_iplayer\ like so (copy and paste
the following):

C:  cd program files\get_iplayer  get_iplayer --options-here...

Obviously substituting --options-here... with ... all of your options.

I only use the command prompt to invoke get_iplayer and download stuff, it's
faster and I can be more specific as to exactly what I want to download
(plus you get handy realtime feedback and you can crank up the error logging
to see if you have any problems during the download). The Web UI feels slow
and clunky in comparison; I have a few pre-defined strings which include all
of the environmental variables for quality, download location etc - all
saved in a text file on my desktop next to a DOS prompt which is set to open
in the get_iplayer directory. All I have to do is add the PID to the end of
the string and hit enter... Not quite one click, but pretty good.


 Sorry guys, but i really _cannot_ see to use that deleted 
 CMD interface.
 When I (painfully and slowly) typed *get_iplayer the horizon 
 guide --get --force* I got something like *command not 
 reckognised either internally or externally etc.* I'll accept 
 that I did something wrong, but I really HATE trying tu use CMD. 
 :-(((
 I can't even copy from or paste to it.

You can, you just have to enabled it: click once on the top-left icon, go to
Options, then enable Quick-Edit Mode. You can right-click to paste in
clipboard text; click  drag then left-click on the selection in an MS-DOS
window to copy text to the clipboard.

Brucie Bonus: if you're in a DOS prompt and want to change drive letter AND
go to a specific folder in one go, type

cd /d x: y\z

(where x: is your drive letter and y\z is the subfolder within the root).
The /d slash denotes you want to change both drive and directory. The joys
of virtualised MS-DOS with Command Extensions. ;-)


(Real men use Real Mode - think I might get that on a t-shirt)


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RE: get_iplayer suddenly relatively slow

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 [snip]
 
  Same experiences here and I'm on Virgin Media 20MB out of 
 Coventry, and Windows Vista, though 32 bit. Some nights, when 
 I have d/l nothing, speed is sooo slwww that I often give 
 up and try the following night - and then it runs like a 
 train. For me, late afternoon is slow (kids home from 
 school?) and early evening. Mid-evening and well into the 
 night is generally OK.
  
  So, no help from me, but just recognition that I think the 
 logjam is elsewhere. Now, where, is almost impossible to find 
 out, though I think there are tracer applications which can 
 time each leg of the route so that might give you a hint of 
 where the problem is.
 
 I'm happily retrieving Top Gear at ~2.2MB/sec so it's 
 definitely not something involving the BBC (which is only 
 used to discover the stream URLs) or CDN networks (who are 
 paid mega$ to ensure their end is hugely available and rarely 
 congested). That reduces the likely scope to congestion or 
 active traffic management in a network that your traffic is 
 routing through. Most ISPs, especially large ones, will have 
 direct peering and interconnect arrangements with the CDN 
 providers so unless your ISP has a persistent network issue 
 that causes traffic to route the-long-way it's most likely to 
 be traffic shaping. Of course, there's always the possibility 
 that Vista has decided to fubar (it's not unheard of) and 
 since its popular (in the multiple people using it sense, 
 most people seem to hate it) it's not impossible that more 
 than one person is having a software quality issue at the 
 same time, and not network issues. I'd put my money on the 
 ISP though..


If all the suffering customers are on VM connections, it could be one of
three things:

1) peak time oversubscription to local UBRs manifesting as slow downstream
(very likely)
2) customers are downloading over the thresholds for STM triggering during
peak time (quite likely)
3) VM are experiencing routing problems, or forcing iPlayer traffic over
less preferential routes to alternative CDNs down narrower pipes (Akamai,
Limelight, Level3 are all available) (less likely)

When iPlayer downloads are slow, go to
http://openoffice.virginmedia.com/stable/3.3.0/ and pick a large file
(hundreds of megabytes). Monitor your peak download test. Then go to
http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/speedtesters/ , pick a speed tester of
your choice and give it a whirl. If your speeds are noticeably slower,
sounds like you're being STMed (read: throttled).

VM's STM policy: http://bit.ly/l3SjmF (obscenely long system-generated
helpcentre URL). Also note the check status buttons at the top, you may
have known issues in your area affecting absolute throughput. Long and short
of it though is explained in this graph:
http://www.virginmedia.com/images/tm-table-su-large.jpg

Even though the page says you can continue to use services like the iPlayer
unaffected, an outside possibility is that they've defined their QoS
policies strictly as only applying to web-based requests for iPlayer content
- or rtmpdump presents itsself in such a way that's identifiable as a
regular streamripper app to VM so they class it in their bulk traffic
category.

Perhaps this is just excessive paranoia on my part... However having been a
VM customer during the year they first implemented STM (Double the headline
speed sir? And how about half the available throughput?) we suffered all
three of those problems in the order I listed. If you continue to notice
degraded peaktime speeds, hassle customer services to be moved to a new UBR.
This may or may not resolve the problem though, get them to confirm there's
a congestion / contention issue on the UBR before getting moved.
Oversubscription tends to affect all traffic uniformly on a 'time of day'
basis though.


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RE: playing mp4 files on philips bdp2500

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

  hi
  it is a philips BDP2500 blu ray player if i change the file to .mov 
  then i get a 'unsupported video format'
  message
  sine it plays mp4 videos how can i just change the sound 
 track to ac3 
  or
  mp3 or anything it supports?
  thank you

Chris, no need to re-send messages you've already sent to the mailing list.
We all received the previous email (and it's bad netiquette.)

I don't honestly know the answer without doing some research, however the
BDP2500 appears to be a fairly popular Blu-ray player so I would suggest you
search for a Philips user forum or look on videohelp.com,
forums.afterdawn.com or digitalspy.co.uk (for example - there are many other
good multimedia user forums!) where someone probably has more experience
with the formats the Philips player supports.

I do know that the Philips machines support a strange combination of
formats, and do not always support all the formats you would expect. If you
wish to transcode AAC to AC3, you will have to possibly use BeSweet, first
use MP4Box (or the GUI, YAMB) to demux the video and audio streams then
remux again when you are finished.

More detailed advice is beyond the scope of my knowledge, I do not own a
Philips blu-ray player and I do not know exactly what works and what does
not on your device, I'm sorry. Does the Philips support uPnP network
streaming?


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RE: playing mp4 files downloaded with getiplayer on blu ray player

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 

 -Original Message-
 From: get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org 
 [mailto:get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org] On Behalf Of 
 Christopher Woods (CustomMade)
 Sent: 24 May 2011 10:50
 To: 'chris chery'; get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org
 Subject: RE: playing mp4 files downloaded with getiplayer on 
 blu ray player
 
 
   hi
   I changed the file extension from mp4 to avi .  After 
 burning to dvd 
  when playing on philipps blu ray player video is ok but i get no 
  sound( unsupported  audio format) I get the same  if I 
 leave the mp4 
  extension untouched  any solutions for the audio?
   thank you
  cc
 
 Which model number of player do you have? Have you tried 
 renaming to .mov?

Incidentally, if it's a 5590 or one based on the same chipset chances are it
doesn't support MP4 or AAC except presented in BD format.

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/308189-philips-dvp5590-cannot-play-mp4-mo
vie


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RE: M4A files (from YAMB) = slightly smaller filesize than originalAACs?

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 I've noticed this with MP4Box as well.  I think it filters 
 out ADTS frame headers when adding the AAC audio as a track 
 to the MP4 file, which would account for most of the 
 difference.  I would guess YAMB does likewise.

It seems to be non-destructive though; when re-exporting the raw streams out
of the MP4 file the resulting filesize is identical to the original file. I
*haven't* checksummed them though (just thought about doing it) - will run
QuickSFV when I get home and report the results, I'm about to leave the
office.


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RE: M4A files (from YAMB) = slightly smaller filesize than originalAACs?

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 I'm not going to swear to it, but as long as the conversion 
 is only taking a few seconds, then there's probably nothing 
 to worry about. Hopefully some others will chime in, but 
 conversion to MP3 would take a lot longer (probably several 
 minutes on a current PC? Try it to find out). If you're not 
 transcoding, then you're (hopefully!) not performing a lossy 
 operation on the audio stream.

Indeed. Preaching to the choir there, I work with audio on a daily basis
juggling probably half a dozen formats, lossy and lossless. I spend
seemingly half of my waking hours explaining to people why transcoding their
iTunes to MP3 is not a good idea.


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RE: Fw: What modes should I use to get the highest quality recordingon radio

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 On Mon, 16 May 2011 00:38:30 +0200, you wrote:
 
 In the UK highest quality is/was flashaudio which is mp3 - 
 this used to be available for all programmes, but now only a 
 few radio programmes come as flashaudio ...
 Now flashaac will give the best quality mp4 files - thanks to 
 shevek  co's code.
 I use flashaacstd,flashacclow - there is probably 
 flashacchigh - someone can confirm this


I disagree. Flashaudio IIRC is just MP3, which is transcoded from the MP3
original audio by the sounds of it, even though I've been told that both
were encoded direct from the master source. The Beeb must've used an awfully
inefficient codec to get such poor results at 128kbps.

I did a comparative audio test with speech a while back (which I posted to
the list) - the MP3s sound noticeably worse than the AAC versions. I've not
intentionally downloaded MP3 versions of any shows since I first heard the
problems (manifested as low-end problems and 'warbling' in speech and music
in the MP3 versions).

Here's what I posted (on the 23rd of Feb, 2011). Listening to the audio
back-to-back will show just how inferior the MP3 versions are to the AACs...

 To show you what I mean about the MP3 vs AAC quality 
 difference, here's a quick quality comparison (randomly chose 
 an episode of The Archers, from Radio 4 the other day). The 
 first time is the MP3 encode, the second is the AAC encode 
 (served by default through the Flash player):
 
 http://bit.ly/bbciprtest1al (~3.8MB)
 
 Even on average speakers you should be able to hear a 
 difference - the MP3 is rumblier, warbly and speech is 
 distinctly less clear with noticeable distortion under the 
 main frequency of the speaker's voice. If you use headphones 
 or good monitors you should be able to clearly hear the 
 inferior quality of the MP3 version.
 
 Comparing the two clips spectrally also shows a visible 
 difference, there's less 'cohesion' in the MP3 clip, what 
 appears to be double-encoded noise and the frequency ranges 
 containing the speech energy are less distinct.
 
 Neither speech nor musical content comes off well in the MP3 
 versions - either the iPlayer's using an *AWFUL* MP3 codec 
 (because both the AAC and MP3 files are 128kbps) or the MP3 
 version is being transcoded from the original AAC source, 
 which would explain a lot.


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RE: HD streams convert automatically after download...

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 

 -Original Message-
 From: get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org 
 [mailto:get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org] On Behalf Of 
 Lee Grant
 Sent: 16 May 2011 12:30
 To: she...@o2.co.uk
 Cc: get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org
 Subject: RE: HD streams convert automatically after download...
 
 
 Thanks for the quick response,
 
 Cleaned out the folder and started the to download.  It gets 
 to about 7%, drops the feed.  I then get lines and lines of:
 
 WARNING: Stream does not start with requested frame, ignoring data...
 WARNING: Stream does not start with requested FLV frame, 
 ignoring data...
 
 and then:
 
 87131.703 kB / 53.96 sec (2.0%)
 Couldn't resume FLV file, try --skip 1
 
 INFO: Command exit code 1 (raw code = 256)
 
 and the whole thing circles.
 
 Interestingly, if I go to the download folder whilst all this 
 is going on and delete the partially downloaded file, 
 get_iplayer will start to download again.

Looks like classic missing-rtmpdump-or-wrong-swfvfy-url problem. I had it on
an older version of get_iplayer, the resulting videos had missing frames.
Have you updated to latest rtmpdump? Also I wonder if perhaps you're using
the old swfvfy URL, or not specifying one (which will make it default to
the now-obsolete flash player .swf URL)...

FWIW, the old string was:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/10player.swf?revision=18269_21576
the new one is:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/revisions/18269_21576_10player.swf?revision=18269_2
1576

For radio and telly in highest quality, these are my commandline strings
(sorry, you'll have to de-munge the linebreaks):

TV
get_iplayer --raw --output J:\iplayer\get_iplayer\raw\ --modes
flashhd,flashvhigh,flashhigh --rtmptvopts --swfVfy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/revisions/18269_21576_10player.swf; --rtmpradioopts
--force --pid 01234567

RADIO
get_iplayer --raw --output J:\iplayer\get_iplayer\raw\ --modes
flashaachigh,flashaac,flashaacstd,flashaudio,flashaaclow --rtmptvopts
--swfVfy http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/revisions/18269_21576_10player.swf;
--rtmpradioopts --force --pid 01234567

Of course you'll need to add the appropriate live radio switches if
recording the Radio 3 320kbps stream.


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RE: Fw: What modes should I use to get the highest quality recordingon radio

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

If you 

 -Original Message-
 From: James Cook [mailto:james.c...@bluewin.ch] 
 Sent: 16 May 2011 22:48
 To: Christopher Woods (CustomMade)
 So use:
  modes flashaacstd,flashaaclow,flashaudio,realaudio,wma
 in an options file
 or
  perl --type=radio Classic Serial --get 
  
 --modes=flashacchigh,flashaacstd,flashacclow,flashaudio,realaudio,wma
 on the command line.
 
  perl --type=radio Classic Serial --get 
  --modes=flashacc,flashaudio,realaudio,wma
 probably does the same thing - highest quality first.
 
 For most shows I use flashacclow - for music flashaccstd.

I feel I must point this out - if you're specifying flashacc,
flashacclow or flashaccstd in your commandline you'll be actually
receiving flashaudio... There's no acc modes! (your modes should have
*aac*, not *acc*)


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RE: Fw: What modes should I use to get the highest quality recordingon radio

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 hi what would a windows command line be?
  thanks
 cc


Commandline = DOS prompt = C:\

:-)


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RE: Help, I can't get HD programmes any more

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

For some reason the Flashhd mode programmes no longer seem to 
 work. I’ve tried two or three programmes and none seem to 
 work entirely. Get_iplayer starts ok and gets to about 8% 
 then it has a problem with not getting the expected frame.
 I’ve used the latest versions of everything and I am running 
 Windows 7, and I’ve deleted  .SWFINFO just in case.
 By the way, flashvhigh works fine it’s only the flashhd that 
 doesn’t work.
 
 All was fine until recently any ideas? Has anyone else had 
 the same problem or is it just me?

This is a known issue; see this list archives for much discussion and a
patch which has already been submitted to svn.

As I understand it, the Beeb have moved the URL of the flash player, you can
manually force this with a commandline string or you can use the updated
patched version.


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RE: legality

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 

 -Original Message-
 From: get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org 
 [mailto:get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org] On Behalf Of 
 Ian Stirling
 Sent: 05 April 2011 11:11
 To: get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org
 Subject: Re: legality
 
 On 04/05/2011 10:00 AM, Jon Davies wrote:
 
  Apart from just one condition (personal use terms, 3.2.2) which 
  restates some of the requirements for having a TV licence, there's 
  nothing I can see in the terms which draws a distinction 
 between 'on 
  air' and 'on demand' access.  So, I conclude, that no, the BBC does 
  not make any significant distinction of that sort.
 
 It's not in the BBCs terms, it's in the law around TV licensing.
 Specifically (if it's not changed in the last 4 or so years), 
 you need a TV license _only_ to watch the broadcast output of 
 television broadcaster licenced under the television 
 broadcasters regulation rules.
 
 You _do_not_ need a license to watch any other content. 
 Foreign TV you can pick up with a really big antenna, or 
 content a licenced broadcaster provides in non-realtime ways.


The Beeb and TVL (read: Capita) tend to interpret the Licensing law as
requiring a person to hold a licence if they own or operate equipment
capable of receiving a broadcast signal 'as it's being broadcast', this
includes timeshifted as-live programmes via media such as Internet
streaming, Freeview, Freesat etc (to accommodate various platforms' time
lags).

Therefore if TVL came round and you stupidly invited them into your home, if
you had an operable TV, VHS, DVR etc with a tuner block in it, you would
have to prove that it was physically incapable of receiving any BBC
television channel. Otherwise, they would require you to licence for the
appropriate period or face prosecution - and you would have to be VERY sharp
to beat them in County court, I imagine they've honed their court patter and
paperwork to a near artform these days. As the JPs will weigh up a case on
balance of probabilities (instead of outright 'beyond a shadow of a doubt')
your case has to be VERY convincing (and/or you require two sympathetic JPs)
in order to come out victorious.

Of course, you just don't let them into your house in the first place, they
have no purview or legally established precedent to allow entry to premises
uninvited. They can look through windows to see if a telly's showing BBC One
though! Curtains are a useful investment.


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RE: Still using BBC 7 channel name

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 I did a search for a BBC Radio 4 Extra program - We can 
 Remember it for you wholesale, and it didnt work until I 
 changed the channel to BBC Radio 7!
 I wonder how long theyre going to leave the old channel data 
 on for BBC 7?

AFAIK the channel names are hardcoded into get_iplayer so require the
appropriate patch applied to rectify. I believe this may have already been
talked about at more length on the list in the past 7 days (search the
online archives for more, I've been mostly afk for the past week so have
only skimread incoming email, sorry)


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RE: Windows Installer?

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 On 17 March 2011 07:10, Ranec get_ipla...@cemery.org.uk wrote:
  Does *anyone* on the list have experience in making the 
 Windows installer?
 
 *cough* *cough* (taps microphone) is this thing on?
 ..
 
 silence
 
 I guess that means no then :(

Argh, don't tap the mic! It ruins diaphragms, scrape your fingernail across
the top of the capsule instead. :

Aside from that, sorry - just adding to the noise, I've never compiled (just
consumed). Isn't David Woodhouse on this list? As a Windows user I've been
using his installers after all...


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RE: Failed to get version pid metadata

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 

 -Original Message-
 From: get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org 
 [mailto:get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org] On Behalf Of 
 Magic Cheezer
 Sent: 06 March 2011 01:57
 To: get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org
 Subject: RE: Failed to get version pid metadata
 
 
 sure sure
 and I will be first in line to buy  use their paid iPad 
 service when it comes to North America :-) (and hopefully 
 Canada won't be left out!!!)
  
 I was actually just wondering if anybody knew the URL of a 
 similar Glype proxy i.e. for which we would have used the 
 following command line:- get_iplayer --type=tv seven ages of 
 britain --info 
 --proxy=prepend:http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/browse.php?u=; 
 --streaminfo
  
 but it seems we don't need this Glype/prepend business, we 
 can just use a plain-jane http proxy such as you would type 
 into your Internet Explorer LAN Settings/Proxy server 
 resulting instead in this type of command line:- get_iplayer 
 --type=tv seven ages of britain --info 
 --proxy=http://ipaddr:port --partial-proxy --streaminfo


A cursory Google reveals a handful of potential results, including

http://docoja.com/blue/

Which is running Glype and is hosted on a UK IP. Sites like xroxy will have
standard HTTP / SOCKS proxy details if you scour them hard enough. :-)


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RE: Radio now aac rather than mp3

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

  Please do bear in mind though that (from my own empirical 
 comparisons) 
  it seems the iPlayer just TRANScodes the original AAC audio to MP3, 
  it's not encoded fresh from the original source audio.
 
 Hi
 
 Could you expand on the difference between the original 
 source  the original AAC.
 
 I thought they were the same thing.


When I say original source, I mean the original sound from source that the
BBC are using to do the main encodes. As far as I'm aware, they use the same
raw source feed as they send on to Sky Digital, Freeview, Freesat etc (there
was some discussion of this on the BBC Radio 3 HD Sound thread a while
back). From this, they also encode the iPlayer AAC streams for Listen Again.

The MP3 sounds like it's a second generation encode - i.e., it's being
TRANScoded from the main AAC file - and not being freshly encoded from the
raw source audio. If it is actually being encoded from the same uncompressed
feed that's being used for everything else, something is very, VERY wrong
with the codec configuration.

Martin Deutsch who used to frequent the BBC Backstage mailing list worked
for Siemens IIRC, he had access to some of the backend stuff and video/audio
archives, he may know if someone involved with the iPlayer team isn't
already lurking on this list :-) I've also discussed this on the BBC
Backstage list recently and provided samples, but that conversation thread's
dead for the moment (it really needs some input from people working on the
iPlayer team).


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RE: BBC Radio music sessions/interview dowload?

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

  BBC Radio is occasionally posting bits within shows as separate 
  broadcast on their website (not sure if they're in 
 iPlayer); such as 
  music sessions, interviews etc. They have their own PID 
 number but I 
  can't get them to download or find any --info about them. (The 
  complete show downloads OK). I've tried a few --modes but 
 with no luck.
 
  The only example I can find at the moment is:
 
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/sessions/2011-02-22_magneticman
 
  If you start playing the Listen player then right click 
 you'll see the 
  PID number.
 
  Can anyone get this to download?
 
 
 get_iplayer --type radio --pid p00f7czq
 
 This works for me - OpenBSD 4.9 current amd64, get_iplayer 
 v2.79, rtmpdump v2.3.


These are EMP downloads (embedded media player); you can use the --url
switch instead of --pid and get_iplayer will scrape the PID and
automagically do the rest for you. Aside from swapping --pid for --url you
can use all your other favourite brews of switches. :-)


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post discussing quality comparison of AAC vs. MP3 iPlayer radio streams (was: RE: BBC Radio music sessions/interview dowload?)

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

This is a crosspost of mine from the BBC Backstage list, felt it was
relevant to the earlier discussion about AAC/AAC+ and World Service material
so posting for people to see what I was on about.



 Chris,
 Can't speak for my colleagues elsewhere in radio, but WS doesn't 
 transcode between codecs anywhere in our longform workflow and never 
 has done.

I did a quick bit of testing and it appears that WS Listen Again material is
only available through /iplayer as 64kbps AAC+, so it all sounds a bit
sub-par compared with domestic channels' 128kbps AAC. Perhaps it's ingested
in a different way or do you encode internally then deliver to the iPlayer
team? I have noticed the PIDs for WS material have a different range (p***
as opposed to b***)...

To show you what I mean about the MP3 vs AAC quality difference, here's a
quick quality comparison (randomly chose an episode of The Archers, from
Radio 4 the other day). The first time is the MP3 encode, the second is the
AAC encode (served by default through the Flash player):

http://bit.ly/bbciprtest1al (~3.8MB)

Even on average speakers you should be able to hear a difference - the MP3
is rumblier, warbly and speech is distinctly less clear with noticeable
distortion under the main frequency of the speaker's voice. If you use
headphones or good monitors you should be able to clearly hear the inferior
quality of the MP3 version.

Comparing the two clips spectrally also shows a visible difference, there's
less 'cohesion' in the MP3 clip, what appears to be double-encoded noise and
the frequency ranges containing the speech energy are less distinct.

Neither speech nor musical content comes off well in the MP3 versions -
either the iPlayer's using an *AWFUL* MP3 codec (because both the AAC and
MP3 files are 128kbps) or the MP3 version is being transcoded from the
original AAC source, which would explain a lot.


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RE: Programme info from PID

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 -Original Message-
 From: get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org 
 [mailto:get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org] On Behalf Of 
 Bill Lancaster
 Sent: 14 February 2011 10:43
 To: get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org
 Subject: Programme info from PID
 
 Nearly there!
 
 get_iplayer --type=radio --pid=b00yhv30 --test
 
 produces:-
 
 INFO Trying to stream pid using type radio
 INFO: pid found in cache
 Matches:
 10745:Desert Island Discs - Celia Imrie, BBC Radio 4,
 Factual,Highlights,Life Stories,Music,Popular,Radio
 
 INFO: 1 Matching Programmes
 ERROR: Failed to get iphone URL from iplayer site
 
 INFO: Checking existence of default version
 INFO: flashaacstd1,flashaudio1,rtspaudio1,flashaaclow1,wma1 
 modes will be tried for version default
 INFO: Trying flashaacstd1 mode to record radio: Desert Island 
 Discs - Celia Imrie
 INFO: File name prefix =
 Desert_Island_Discs_-_Celia_Imrie_b00yhv30_default 
 INFO: skipping this programme
 
 No mention of date  time of broadcast though.


There is a way to retrieve full programme information, you're going about it
the wrong way though. The --info switch is what you need.

http://www.smallsoftware.co.uk/bbc-iplayer/using-get_iplayer/

So for example, using

get_iplayer --fields=name,episode zingzillas --info

Will show *all* metadata (lots of it!) for all available programmes matching
zingzillas in either the programme name or episode. What you're after are
the two metadata fields:

expiry: 2011-02-21T08:59:00Z
expiryrel:  in 6 days 21 hours

(Zulu time, cool)

So you could output the results using something like

get_iplayer --info --fields=name,episode,pid b00rzt4f  getip-metadata.txt

To output to the thusly-named text file in the get_iplayer working
directory. (NB I've just swapped out the zingzillas for a specific
ZingZilla episode's PID, and rearranged the order in the commandline. You
can just remove the  getip-metadata.txt and then copy/paste the script
changing the PID if you want to do quick searches for full metadata by pid
OR programme name OR episode name :-)

You could write a quick script that would parse the output and just show the
specific metadata fields but that's beyond the scope of this reply. Sorry if
any of this came over as condescending or stuff you already knew, hard to
gauge your level of experience with command prompt (or even which OS you're
using, I'm assuming XP or Vista as you seemed to disregard John Dargie's
Linux-centric reply)

HTH
Chris

PS - the trick with this list is to use reply-all, otherwise you respond to
just the original sender. Just the way the headers are set up on this
Mailman.


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RE: Live radio streams - maintenance request - please.

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 This stream is still operational, has been since the before 
 last years proms.

I never said it wasn't, merely that it's not included in the standard list
of iPlayer-available channels because it's broadcast as a special 24/7 'live
event' stream. They've deliberately not integrated it with the iPlayer
infrastructure, so you'll have to manually save the stream using the bodge
method you originally described.


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RE: what modes work/downloading problems and vpn????

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

 
  Subject: what modes work

Forwarding your own message to the list is bad netiquette. We all got the
first copy.

Have oyu tried using --raw to download the .flv file, then separately remux
to MP4?


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RE: downloading hd files stalls before complete files are downloaded

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

  most hd files are converted from flv to mp4 before the 
 downloading is finished and all i get is part of 
 programmesother definitions are ok OS= windows xp  help  thanks

We need more info Chris. What version of get_iplayer are you using? Have you
updated it recently? Did you download the infradead version or are you still
using the old version from linuxcentre?

The stalling download problem sounds like an flvstreamer problem, and latest
versions of get_iplayer use rtmpdump with the swfVfy parameter to persuade
the BBC streaming servers to properly supply the stream.

Fwiw, the latest version of get_iplayer available via get_iplayer --update
is Version 2.79 -- Sun, 9 Jan 2011.


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