BBC Iplayer Downloader Plugin - Beta + Support

[smiler]

Ok the long awaited release of Version 3 of the plugin is available.

This is a beta release and as such i am still debugging it to a certain extent, therfore i need you guys to tell me of any issues that you find.

The installation is more complicated than before due to the new client server architecture and you also need to install a few third party applications.

It is described in detail on the wiki http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Plugin/BBCIPlayer where all the new features are detailed.

If i have missed something in the install instructions just let me know.

Ok, good luck and makesure you make a backup of your gbpvr installation before you have a go.

[martint123]

Well I've just given it a quick try and failed dismally. Although I haven't been able to put much time into finding why it won't run.

Logs attached. Cleared logs, start up and hit the getiplayer+ key around 3 minutes past the hour. The gbpve screen goes to just the background image for a few seconds, followed by a quick flash of something that could have been similar to the old screen but it extremely short so can't be definite - Then back to the main gbpvr menu - but no keys or mouse buttons work, although clicking on the "X" close windows on the top right seems to make a tidy close down.

I ran get_iplayer from the installed directory and it worked as I seen when playing with it in the past on another machine, so perl and get_iplayer seems to have installed ok.
Only oddity here is I have gbpvr and program files on my E drive.

cheers,
Martin

[smiler]

The issue seems to be that the connection to the service is not being made, I suspect that the service is either not installed or not running.

If you try start->run->services.exe enter and look for the GetIplayer+ Service in the control panel, it should show it running.

I suspect that the service is not running because you have not got any new log files in the log directory for the service. Also you may need to open up the service on port 9878 if you have a firewall.

Tell me how you get on.

[mvallevand]

smiler, I can't use this from Canada but if possible a nice option for NMT users would be to not transcode video and still transcode RA files to mp3.

Martin

[smiler]

smiler, I can't use this from Canada but if possible a nice option for NMT users would be to not transcode video and still transcode RA files to mp3.

I'll add it to the wish list, should be a straightforward change

[imilne]

I gave the new version a go last night and got it to work without too much bother. Well done on producing such a great plug-in.

I think the instructions could be a little clearer, but here's a quick rundown of the steps I went through. Please note that I have currently no interest in radio downloads or in transcoding the files as I've found in the past that they've always played fine as is. (That's not to say I don't think these features should be included - of course they should - but if you're in the same boat as me then the steps you need to go through are a little simpler as there's less to download/configure/go wrong).

- I started by grabbing Strawberry Perl, taking just the zip version and extracting it to the hard drive and then changing my environment variables so that %PATH% would point to its /perl/bin directory.

- Wiztools and CommonGBPVRUtillities I already had from running the previous iPlayer plug-in.

- For get_iplayer itself I took just the raw perl script (http://linuxcentre.net/get_iplayer/get_iplayer.pl) and flvstreamer (http://download.savannah.gnu.org/release...latest.exe). Both of these I saved to the gbpvr root directory.

- I then extracted the plug-in zip file, ran its install script (which all worked fine), and checked that the background service was running. Next was to run gbpvr config and configure the plug-in's settings, to enable HQ downloads, state no transcoding, and point it at the perl script and flvstreamer locations.

After that it all seemed to work fine, bar a couple of hiccups.

Firstly, it didn't show download percentages as it ran. I wasn't sure if it was meant to or not as the text seemed quite stretched on screen as if it wasn't fitting anyway. Not a big deal.

Secondly, although I'm not (yet) interested in transcoding, I did have one download that wouldn't play (which I *think* was an HD one, it's hard to be sure). It did play in mpc outside of gbpvr though, so I doubt the problem is anything to do with the iPlayer plug-in.

Finally, and most pedantically :-), there were quite a few typos and spelling mistakes in the interface, such as calling it "_An_ BBC iPlayer Downloader..." and referring to favorites rather than favourites.

On the whole though, a great piece of work, beta or otherwise!

[martint123]

My service wasn't running so I fired it up but I'll have to shift over to the test machine to play further as I get shouted at too much when messing with the real server. :mad:

[smiler]

I gave the new version a go last night and got it to work without too much bother. Well done on producing such a great plug-in.

Thanks, it took a while but got there in the end

I think the instructions could be a little clearer,

Finally, and most pedantically :-), there were quite a few typos and spelling mistakes in the interface, such as calling it "_An_ BBC iPlayer Downloader..." and referring to favorites rather than favourites.

I'll probably try to fix these this weekend, It was pretty rushed to get it out in time due to the issues with the old plugin. It is good to get beta testers though

Firstly, it didn't show download percentages as it ran. I wasn't sure if it was meant to or not as the text seemed quite stretched on screen as if it wasn't fitting anyway. Not a big deal.

Unfortunatly due to the way that the console redirection works in getiplayer I cannot update percentages anymore.

Secondly, although I'm not (yet) interested in transcoding, I did have one download that wouldn't play (which I *think* was an HD one, it's hard to be sure). It did play in mpc outside of gbpvr though, so I doubt the problem is anything to do with the iPlayer plug-in.

This is almost certainly a codec issue in GBPVR, the file is an h264 file if it was an HD download so you should be able to play it with the x264 codec shipped with FFDShow for example.

[smiler]

My service wasn't running so I fired it up but I'll have to shift over to the test machine to play further as I get shouted at too much when messing with the real server. :mad:

Hopefully that should work a bit better!

[martint123]

Hopefully that should work a bit better!

I still haven't had a chance to progress further, but I note that in your wiki install description where you suggest either the getiplayer install package or the individual applications - I picked the former as it should only be one step but have just found that it doesn't include flvsteamer - so that is the first step for me in the morning.