Saturday 26 May 2012

Raspberry Pi - get_iplayer install, download from BBC iPlayer

Anyway, my Raspberry Pi has turned up!  I haven't been this excited since I went to get my Amiga.



I've got a plan to use the Pi as a low power, always on device, which will download the latest tv & radio shows from BBC iPlayer so I can watch / listen later.

There is a great open source project called get_iplayer for downloading feeds from BBC iPlayer, so when I first unwrapped it, getting this installed was my first challenge.

I am using the Debian Squeeze distro (19-04-2012), so this info is only appropriate to that OS, if your running something different, your on your own!

Download & extract get_iplayer

First I headed over to ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/get_iplayer/ to the latest version of the get_iplayer application, downloading it onto my Pi using:

sudo wget ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/get_iplayer/get_iplayer-2.94.tar.gz

Once I had got get_iplayer-2.94.tar.gz into a directory I needed to decompress it using gzip.

sudo gzip -d get_iplayer-2.94.tar.gz

This left me with get_iplayer-2.82.tar, which I then needed to extract using tar.

sudo tar -xf get_iplayer-2.94.tar

This created a directory called get_iplayer-2.94, which contained the get_iplayer application.

cd get_iplayer-2.94

I then made get_iplayer executable and writeable.

sudo chmod 755 get_iplayer

sudo chmod 777 get_iplayer

get_iplayer is a perl application and as well as extracting the application I also needed to install an additional perl module and some other tools, all of which are available using apt-get.

Install perl module libwww-perl

sudo apt-get install libwww-perl

Install perl module XML::Simple

wget ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/G/GR/GRANTM/XML-Simple-2.20.tar.gz
tar -zxvf XML-Simple-2.20.tar.gz
cd XML-Simple-2.20
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
sudo make install

Install rtmpdump

sudo apt-get install rtmpdump

Install flvstreamer

sudo apt-get install flvstreamer

Install ffmpeg

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

Run get_iplayer

And that was it, I was now able to run get_iplayer; make sure your in the get_iplayer directory and run:

sudo ./get_iplayer

The first 2 times you run get_iplayer it might download plug-ins and the latest lists from BBC iPlayer.

SWF Verification
In June 2013, BBC iPlayer changed to use SWF Verification (see this post for more information),  If you haven't already you need to setup the certificate by running.

sudo ./get_iplayer --prefs-add --rtmp-tv-opts="--swfVfy http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/releases/iplayer/revisions/617463_618125_4/617463_618125_4_emp.swf"

Search for a program

Run get_iplayer passing a search parameter (e.g. News).

sudo ./get_iplayer News

Download a program

Note the programme Id returned in the search and pass this to get_iplayer using the --get command.

sudo ./get_iplayer --get 123

get_iplayer has lots of other functions, such as basic PVR capabilities, check out the documentation on the get_iplayer site for more info.  There is also a readme file in the get_iplayer directory which includes some instructions on its use.

Update - for more information about setting up get_iplayer and running it, see post http://stuffaboutcode.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/raspberry-pi-getiplayer-setup-and.html

Update - my iPlayer project is now finished; it downloads from BBC iPlayer before creating a Podcast which is distributed over the internet so I can pick up the latest programmes from my phone, see post http://stuffaboutcode.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/raspberry-pi-bbc-iplayer-personal.html

14 comments:

  1. get_iplayer 2.82 is now released
    ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/get_iplayer/

    list of updates
    http://git.infradead.org/get_iplayer.git

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheers Mapperz, Ive update the blog to reflect the latest version

      Delete
  2. you've got a few spelling mistakes

    you've put "I am using the Debian Squeeze distro (19-04-2012), so this info is only appropriate to that OS, if your running something different, your on your own!"

    where you meant "I am using the Debian Squeeze distro (19-04-2012), so this info is only appropriate to that OS, if you're running something different, you're on your own!"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. O dear, wat sloppines, I reely must sak my editer

      Delete
  3. I tried to follow this how to, it went swimmingly until the last install stage: "sudo apt-get install ffmpeg" where I got loads of '404' & 'failed to fetch' errors and ends with 'Aborting install'.

    As a newbie to Linux I'm now totally stuck! Any help that can be offered would be great.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wierd, 404 errors sound like apt-get cant retreive the installation. It might just be a down server, if so, give it a little while and try again.

      Delete
    2. Ah... that was me - missed the sudo before an earlier attemp at "apt-get update". Having done that the last command ran to the end without errors - great. But I can't run the prog, it returns "sudo: get_iplayer: command not found.

      In the dir 'get_iplayer-2.82' I have:

      Changelog-get_iplayer.cgi.txt
      get_iplayer
      html
      make-nsis
      README.txt
      Changelog.txt
      get_iplayer1
      LICENSE.txt
      plugins
      web.sh
      CONTRIBUTORS
      get_iplayer.cgi
      makefile
      READ-get_iplayer.cgi.txt
      windows

      Some are plaing directories, others files. What have I done wrong?

      Delete
    3. Have you specified the full path of the get_iplayer program, (if your in the directory you can use ./get_iplayer). Full paths are a pre-requisite in linux, unless the path exists in the PATH variable, unlike dos/windows where your current path is considered part of the PATH.

      Delete
  4. Hi there,
    Can anyone report whether this is still working even though there has been a few flash updates since these posts? Thinking about buying a Pi for this purpose only..
    Thanks,
    Neill

    ReplyDelete
  5. This works exactly the same in Rasbian Wheezy 2013-09-25 and after downloading the Iplayer FLV file it runs fine in omxplayer , which is installed as part of the NOOBS zip file . Omxplayer is a bit difficult to control , as it tends to keep running once started , but hopefully I ought to be able to come up with a way around that . For some reason get-iplayer seems to run reliably unlike the various versions of XBMC I've tried , so I'd recommend it in preference .

    ReplyDelete
  6. so the source codes and plans for projects are freely available to download

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you mean is the get_iplayer project available for download then yes, you can find the source here https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer

      If you mean my projects then yes, the majority of my content is online and shared under a creative commons license http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/p/about.html

      Delete

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