Greasy Fork

A glitch with " kind ==='trailer' "

Hi Lazza

Just contacting you to let you know that I've discovered a glitch (and my own temporary work-around) in v4.0.5 of BBC iPlayer video download.

When I went to this page - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b094n8nf/the-andrew-marr-show-03092017 - your script inserted a black box, with the text "To download this video, press Play and skip the trailer." and then nothing more, even after starting to play the video.

I had a look at your script and found at line 241 - "if (kind === 'trailer' || kind === 'ident')". I changed this to "if (kind === 'petetrailer' ..." (something it will never find) and reloaded the page. This time it went straight on to give the youtube-dl string in the normal way and I was able to download the video.

Another general issue is that on some pages (this one for example - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41148027) the black box containing the youtube-dl text obscures the first few lines of text after the video. I get around this by temporarily disabling the script and refreshing the page.

Cheers

Peter

Update - This page worked correctly - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0596hyk/quacks-series-1-1-the-dukes-tracheotomy.
It showed your "press Play and skip the trailer." message, and pressing play caused a "Skip trailer" box to be displayed. Clicking this then showed the youtube-dl string.
However, this page - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0596k27/quacks-series-1-2-the-ladys-abscess - (the 2nd episode of the same series) initially dislayed the behaviour I mentioned in my original message (no "skip trailer" box). On this occasion it was an 'ident' rather than a 'trailer', and my previous trick didn't work. Some time later however, another reload of the page went straight on to the download string, without the "press play" message.
Subsequent to that, I've had another look at the 1st episode and discovered that the trailer had been replaced by a channel ident and the 'no skip trailer' problem has moved there.

It seems that Auntie Beeb has done something to upset your script, which, until now, has been working fine since you released 4.0.5.

Cheers

Peter

Please can you try with version 4.1? Videos with a trailer should be working after logging in. Those without a trailer should be working even without login.

Note: I am now providing a plain youtube-dl command line for iPlayer episodes. Nowadays the support for BBC iPlayer by said tool is pretty good, rendering my script a bit less useful and maybe obsolete.

The script continues to work as a neat subtitle converter and it should work on some pages where youtube-dl can't really provide a solution. However, nowadays the needs of most people should be covered by youtube-dl directly.

Hi Lazza

Well, I guess time will tell whether or not your BBC dowloader has reached end-of-life. Whatever happens, I want to thank you for your efforts and responses so far. They are much appreciated.

As a way of keeping my old brain active, I've taught myself a little JavaScript, and your scripts, along with your help pages on the topic, are helping me understand a little more.

I'll try both 4.1 and the bare youtube-dl options and see how they go. (I'd never thought about a login being a relevant factor if I'd encountered problems after they introduced it.)

Thanks again for everything.