Has iPlayer changed since 10th Feb

[tonyvant]

Have been using RMC for a while and no problems.

Have tried to use it to get a program from BBC 7 from wednesday and it fails with the following message.

'Unable to save RTMP stream in proper format!
Does the file already exist in storage directory?'

It worked on files from Tuesday.

Have the beeb changed iPlayer this week?

My system has been stable for over a month.

any ideas?

[sp318]

Hi,

I've been having similar problems lately.

Even streams that would record before this date are refusing to now. One or two have succeeded, but they're very much in the minority. Replay music is still capturing but that software is not as convenient as RMC.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled, but had no luck. Maybe someone at applian can help?

Sarah

[Tasha Heinlein]

Hi All,

There has been a change made to the BBC Radio streams, as a result Media Catcher is not working. The developer is aware and hopes to have a fix in place very soon! Thank you for your patience.

Best Regards,

Tasha Heinlein
Applian Technologies, Inc.

[Aqua2]

I read somewhere about a few week ago that the sound file inside the iplayer radio .flv container was going to change from mp3 to aac. This is what has happened. Today (Saturday 14th) I tried to save the stream of a Radio 3 lunchtime concert from last week and once downloading was complete the raw RTMP file was deleted and RMP reported

'Unable to save RTMP stream in proper format!
Does the file already exist in storage directory?'


I have found a solution of sorts, which is described in the following extract from a message I have just sent to RMP support.

=================================

The streaming container seems to be flv format and until a few days ago the actual sound files inside were in mp3 format. I had read that a change to aac was imminent and today when I tried to use RCAT to save a stream, it downloaded the entire flash file but then said that it could not save it, and promptly deleted the downloaded raw flv file. I repeated the process into a new directory ('replay') on my G drive and when the same process had completed, used an undelete utility to get back the downloaded file. After adding an flv extension, I then used the flv extract utility to extract the contained sound file, which turned out, sure enough, to be in aac format.

Although I was able to end up with a satisfactory sound file after some effort, my method of getting it was very inelegant and points to a serious and unnecessary limitation in the present version of RCAT (I upgraded to version 3.01 today, but the results were exactly the same). It seems that RCAT saves the whole flash stream, and if it is sound only, tries to extract the sound file. This works if the sound file is mp3, but not aac. If the extraction fails, it just deletes the raw flv file anyway.

Do you plan to rectify this situation by either (a) letting RCAT extract aac streams from downloaded flash files or (b) including an option to save the flash files without automatically deleting them if RCAT cannot demux them?

============================

One hopes a suitable upgrade will be forthcoming quickly.

Simon

[cookiebob]

This has been bugging me for days.

At least it isn't my PC or something I have done.

I only purchased RMC so I could capture Iplayer radio recordings so please issue an update soon.

Well done Aqua2 on a solution, but it seems very time consuming and beyond my skill set.

[jonnyewing]

...you can use Replay Music to record in real time while iPlayer plays. It's not a perfect solution, but better than nothing.

[gowen]

An alternative for now is to use the pop-out player with dial-up mode turned on. This will create a .ra stream which Media Catcher will capture. It will also download it quickly as it is not delivered in real time. Again, not a perfect solution, but better than missing the recording once it's 7-day window is up.

[jonnyewing]

An alternative for now is to use the pop-out player with dial-up mode turned on.

Nice idea, but perhaps this option varies depending on the programme. I tried it and there was nothing to play back in dial-up mode.

However, I switched from IE8 to Firefox and found that iPlayer was using the embedded Real Player rather than Flash player, for instance:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...tel_Episode_4/

and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...Economy_Drive/

and

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...ur_15_02_2009/

This of course means there's no problem with recording.

****NB. ***** I just realised a couple of hours subsequent to posting this message that it's not quite as simple as switching browsers. What I hadn't noticed is that for some reason Firefox has uninstalled the Flash plug-in on my PC. I have no idea when or why that happened, but it has come at a very useful moment. Clearly the BBC site is showing the Real Player plug-in version because it has detected that my broswer doesn't have Flash. So if you have at least one browser without a Flash plug-in installed, you can use that to trigger your RMC downloads/recordings.

[chetcope]

Just in case this helps

Another fast solution is to use Beebotron (layrun--not BBC) to find the Realstream archive URL
http://beebotron.org/
& record with ReplayAV (I tend to record the stream--not download. I know it's not RMC but...) making sure you know your options

I originally found the site via a post on this forum. Beebotron was originally developed for mobile access to BBC


Chaz

[Tasha Heinlein]

The latest version of Replay Media Catcher will work with BBC again. Remember to uninstall the version you are currently using, reboot then install the latest version. Thanks!

Best Regards,

Tasha Heinlein
Applian Technologies, Inc.