BBC iplayer video capture

[the_doc735]

OK - I know about fairuse and downloading with BBC iPlayer download manager etc. But I want to capture an iplayer documentary that is only available to WATCH as the 7 day download period has now elapsed. I believe the iplayer is a flash device? streaming WMV with DRM.

Is there any software apps or utils to capture or download in this situation please?

I tried WMCAPTURE but the A/V sync is 'shot to hell' when authoring and haven't managed to find a way to re-sync-it yet?

thanx in advance!

[poisondeathray]

You could use a screen capture utility to record WMV/DRM . I've done this before in WMP11 with similar material (obviously not BBC as I'm in Canada) using camtasia, recording to a lossless format (e.g. huffyuv , lagarith), then re-enocding to a final format. Don't record while streaming, because you are subject to internet bandwidth/dropouts, instead use the 7 day period while the file is still "active" on the pc to record it offline.

Depending on your resolution/bitrate/setup, you might need a "beefier" cpu and/or hard drive to prevent frame drops (this is the most common cause of A/V sync issues, and might be what you are experiencing) , or you could reduce the resolution, or capture using a less cpu intensive codec.

If you have framedrops, either due to bandwidth, or slow PC, there is no easy way to re-sync it.

[the_doc735]

cpu is 3 ghz 2 core. 1 gig ram and a parallel IDE (not sata) HDD (320GB). Dont think its bandwidth or slow PC, so that leaves 'framedrops' which I don't know enough about to comment on, please explain - thanx!

[poisondeathray]

The basic explanation is that if your cpu is >100% stressed and can't keep up, it will start to drop frames (either audio or video or both). It has to playback the original file, while simultaneously recording the output. If there are not enough resources, it will drop frames in the output file (priority is given to the original playback so it looks smooth and in sync, but the recorded file might be choppy and out of sync - essentially "something has to give" and that's the output file) Certain processes require more CPU resources, e.g playing a bigger frame sized video will take more than a smaller one etc... Hence the recommendation to capture a smaller framesize if the CPU usage was indeed the culprit for frame drops.

Depending on how you are recording, the software often tells you the # of frame drops. If you open taskmanager and look at cpu usage while you are doing this, you can see how stressed out your cpu cores are, this might give you a clue if you are dropping frames

If you are doing this online, each drop or desync will cause usually a approx -200ms delay, so it gets progressively worse at each drop point. You would have to identify the segements, add the appropriate +/- delay to each segment. I've done this before , it take hours/days to process even a tiny 1/2 hour video (very tedious!)

To rule out 100% the possiblilty of bandwith bottleneck being the culprit, the recommendation is to do it offline (i.e. from the file saved on the PC)

I should also warn you that doing this probably violates the BBC Terms of Usage ....do so at your own risk

[mL999]

I have tried Camtasia. It worked fine (video and audio but practise first and check the settings then try it to make sure). Because it captures what is being shown on the screen it works in real time . This can be inconvenient. After capturing use the command buttons to save in AVI file not in the less useful camtasia file type. I have also used it to capture and then rip out the audio.
P.S. I don't remember what resolution I used. It was certainly watchable on the monitor.

cheers . mL999

[themaster1]

to remove drm use Wm fairuse it worked for me

[the_doc735]

...in the end I used tmpgenc express 4 'with error correction' to re-sync the output file. On high motion scenes it is a little jerky but still watchable with good lip-sync. WM capture was used to screen capture the programme initially.

[fatbloke88]

I've successfully used Tunebite to record bbc Iplayer programs on my laptop with no problem so with your spec it shouldn't have any problems

[El Duderino]

OK. I've figured out how to grab video off of iPlayer.

Download a program called NetTransport (http://www.xi-soft.com/default.htm). It's shareware and fully functional. I recommend that you try it out, and then donate some $$ as it works a treat.

Open up your browser and navigate to the page of the show you wish to capture.

Run NetTransport and go to the Sniffer tab. Click Start.

Go back to your browser and click Play on the streaming video. Once your video begins playing (after the BBC ident), you can stop it and close your browser.

If you look in the Sniffer window on NetTransport, you should see some URLs. There should be two rtmp:// addresses. The first address is the BBC ident that played, it usually has a port of 1935 or something similar. The second has a port of 80 and is the program you want to capture. Click on that address and then click the Download button.

A properties page should pop up. Don't bother too much with this. If you want you can schedule a download time and/or change download directory, you can. I just click OK.

Now if you go to the Download tab, you should see your program downloading. Just check that the file size is in the right ball-park so you know you're downloading what you should be. At the end of the download, there should be a DRM free FLV in the output directory (My Documents/NetXfer as default). You can then convert this to whatever file type you want. I use FLV converter to dump mine to Xvid so I can watch on my PS3).

The brilliant thing with this method is that it even works on the HD 720p streams.

[jimdagys]

I know the BBC only has download links for 7 days. All the BBC Proms links are gone. I want to test this NetTransport software. Do you have any BBC links for iPlayer video and iPlayer audio that I can try and capture?

[jman98]

I know the BBC only has download links for 7 days. All the BBC Proms links are gone. I want to test this NetTransport software. Do you have any BBC links for iPlayer video and iPlayer audio that I can try and capture?

It's my understanding that the BBC only allows UK IP addresses to stream video because of the mandatory license fee that UK citizens are charged.

[El Duderino]

I know the BBC only has download links for 7 days. All the BBC Proms links are gone. I want to test this NetTransport software. Do you have any BBC links for iPlayer video and iPlayer audio that I can try and capture?

It's my understanding that the BBC only allows UK IP addresses to stream video because of the mandatory license fee that UK citizens are charged.

If you're in the UK, you can use Net Transport to sniff the links out for yourself (see my post above)
If you're not in the UK, you won't be able to play anything in order to sniff out the links (as jman98 said).
If you're able to get a third party in the UK to give you the stream links of the programs you want to watch, Net Transport might still work (if it by-passed that IP address filter). You'd have to try it out.

[samthjj67]

Try the freeware StreamTransport