Get iPlayer automator

[davidoloan]

Does Get iPlayer automator work for anybody?

I used to use it but I don't think I've got it to work in six months?

Reinstalled it etc multiple times. Wish I could use terminal for it like I used to on Linux which nearly always worked. Is it possible?

 

[dZp]

Works fine for me.
What issue are you having exactly?

 

[Dave Braine]

Working for me as we speak.

 

[griffrawk]

youtube-dl (via Macports or Brew) works fine for me on the cmd line with iPlayer URLs. Get iPlayer Automator started getting too flaky for me. That said I never used the Series Link or PVR functionality or the ITV feeds, just BBC.

 

[davidoloan]

View attachment 613613
This is one of the failures I get repeatedly. There is another one.

The app has worked for me from time to time, but like the last poster says, its flaky.

I've never put much effort into finding out what the problem is because I only want to save a programme occasionally, and after the opportunity is missed, I forget about it until I want it again. I used it on Linux for several years with very few probs. Of course it might be that i'm doing something wrong but i suspect its just flaky. Even when it was working for the BBC I've never managed to make it work for C4. I did for ITV - once. I notice 4OD is now greyed out in preferences, maybe C4 is not available anymore anyway.
[doublepost=1454273044][/doublepost]View attachment 613615

Latest version too, on a 1-2 year old imac running latest os with no other problems with other apps.

 

[davidoloan]

If anyone else has this problem I got the app to work again by disabling "Text Proxy Before Download"
View attachment 620218

 

[dinkypumpkin]

If you are in the UK, your issue is covered in documentation:

https://github.com/GetiPlayerAutomator/get-iplayer-automator/wiki/Using-GiA-in-the-UK

If you are not in the UK, a proxy is likely to be useless to you anyway, so should be disabled in favour of a VPN (though that isn't guaranteed to work, either). Besides, the proxy addresses provided by GiA's developer are inherently unreliable, as you have seen.

If you really want to return to using get_iplayer from the command line, nothing prevents you from doing so. It works as well in OSX as it does in Linux. Instructions are in the get_iplayer documentation:

https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/wiki/installation

 

[davidoloan]

Thank You. I wish I'd been able to find that earlier, but I did figure it out in the end.

I do like the app interface better than the command line, and hopefully know I now about the proxy issue there will be no problems.

In the UK using the computer version of iPlayer you can stream a programme in HD (after live broadcast) and that quality seems to much better than the quality you get when you download a programme using Get-Iplayer-Automator.

View attachment 621706

I checked my Get Iplayer downloads and all programmes I have are "flashvhigh" so I have swapped the names around in preferences to see if it will download Flash HD in preference.

View attachment 621707
[doublepost=1458253904][/doublepost]That works. Re-download of a programme I already have in 'flashvhigh", re-downloaded as "flashhd"

A helpful hint you have probably worked out already. The default is wrong. Put Flash HD at the top of the list in preferences.
[doublepost=1458254590][/doublepost]Here is the difference in quality

BBC Flash Very High (programme : The Return of the Flying Scotsman)View attachment 621716


BBC FlashHD (programme : The Return of the Flying Scotsman)
View attachment 621718
[doublepost=1458255364][/doublepost]BBC Flash Very High
View attachment 621720

BBC Flash HD
View attachment 621721

BBC Flash Very High
View attachment 621722

BBC Flash HD
View attachment 621723
[doublepost=1458255432][/doublepost]These pictures are a bit smaller by the forum software, but you can still see the difference

 

[dinkypumpkin]

"Very High" has a significantly lower resolution than HD, so no surprise there. I think the fact that your format preferences were in the wrong order is a by-product of having picked up defaults from an ancient version of GiA and never changing them. Later versions provide more sensible settings by default.

The iPlayer streams you get in your browser are not the same as those accessed by GiA, so you still can't quite compare like-for-like. What you get as "HD" in the browser is often 960x540@50fps, whereas the Flash - HD stream used by GiA is 1280x720@25fps, so there is a trade-off between resolution and frame rate.

 

[davidoloan]

"Very High" has a significantly lower resolution than HD, so no surprise there. I think the fact that your format preferences were in the wrong order is a by-product of having picked up defaults from an ancient version of GiA and never changing them. Later versions provide more sensible settings by default.

The iPlayer streams you get in your browser are not the same as those accessed by GiA, so you still can't quite compare like-for-like. What you get as "HD" in the browser is often 960x540@50fps, whereas the Flash - HD stream used by GiA is 1280x720@25fps, so there is a trade-off between resolution and frame rate.

Maybe, but I completely uninstalled it and reinstalled it a few times, and I reset the defaults in the latest version so I doubt it.

Thanks for the info on the resolutions and frame rates. Do you know what the IOS high quality download is in terms of resolution and frame rates, and do you know what the Apple TV4 plays?

 

[dinkypumpkin]

Maybe, but I completely uninstalled it and reinstalled it a few times, and I reset the defaults in the latest version so I doubt it.

Re-installing and restoring defaults wouldn't help where the format preferences are concerned. They are handled differently. FWIW, you're not the only one who has been bitten by the unfortunate choice of default formats in an old version.