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Mar 17 2009
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It would appear that the BBC have started to serve the new High(er) Definition iPlayer streams with the following stream quality:
- Resolution: 720 x 404 pixels
- Video Codec: H.264
- Audio Codec: AAC
- Bitrate: 1500 kbps
I’ve managed to watch some of the content and the quality looks excellent and a marked improvement over the existing 640 x 360 / 800kbps content.
So, to stop all the speculation, yes, it does seem that this new BBC iPlayer HD (well not quite 720p) will be served via the web based flash player.
Also, please update to the newest get_iplayer because flashhigh support has now been fixed after the BBC changed it today.
Update: For BBC HD content please use get_iplayer –vmode=flashvhigh … with get_iplayer v1.47 and rtmpdump v1.4. The fedora, ubuntu, MacOSX and Windows binaries on this site are already at v1.4.
For the programmes that have this new mode available this seems to work mostly reliably now.
Another Update (16/04/2009): You probably already noticed my newer post and that the BBC have released 1280×720 3.2Mbps HD streams now – and that the SD stream is now 832×468 (no longer 720×404) but still 1.5Mbps
Nice. You can see the difference most if you watch the HD one first, and then switch to the lowest quality.
This would be better if my internet connection could take it. I’ll try it tommorow morning when I’m not being throttled.
See my update to this post. May also be the the beeb are tweaking.
The new higher-quality streams do indeed look great, but they are not actually HD quality. HD is defined as 720p or higher, and these are 404p (although that’s not actually a standard). I remember reading somewhere that the BBC is planning to launch HD-quality iPlayer content with a bitrate of 4 Mbps, although as not many Internet connections can support streaming at that rate, I am assuming that it will be for downloads only (in the iPlayer Desktop, currently in beta).
Yes, well pointed out. This is probably just an incremental High(er) Definition Flash BBC iPlayer. I gues we’re still going to have to wait for the proper HD iPlayer….
Well, sites like Youtube and Vimeo offer 720p streaming video now and it just about works on my 6/8mbps connection – so I daresay it will be download-only for now. I don’t know what bitrate the Youtube videos are but they seem very high quality! In contrast, the iPlayer flash videos often end up buffering in my browser and don’t look as high quality.
Also remember that YouTube and Vimeo use progressive download rather than RTMP streaming, so even if you have a slow connection, if you’re patient you can pause the video and wait for it to download. So you can still watch HD videos on those sites even on a slow-ish connection (although you would have to be quite patient 😉 ), whereas you can’t watch higher-quality video on iPlayer unless you have a fast enough connection (and even if you have a fast enough connection, at peak usage periods you might not be able to watch).
(posting this again because it didn’t seem to get through the first time, apologies if there are duplicate comments)
When I’m downloading a programme using flashvhigh (and sometimes when using flashhigh), I find that I never can download it completely without getting “disconnected” and rtmpdump being unable to resume. Using the trick that you mentioned in another comment, of adding the .partial and trying again, often does it, but it’s a bit of a pain to have to rename the file several times.
So could you consider adding a switch in a future version (maybe –keeppartial) that when used, would not rename the file? This would be a great help. Thanks for this fantastic programme and for being so helpful in answering comments and questions 🙂
1) make sure you use get_iplayer v1.47+ – it has some fixes for retrying failed rtmpdump downloads.
2) Try the –raw option to skip the ffmpeg conversion.
3) v1.48 has a fix for the Win32 version which stops deleting the file when ffmpeg fails. (works around a perl bug)
Thanks for those tips; I’ve upgraded to 1.49 and I am using –raw, but I still get loads of “disconnections”, especially when trying to download a programme using flashvhigh but sometimes when using flashhigh as well. In fact I have only been able to download one programme so far using flashvhigh (flashhigh seems to work a lot better).
Looking through all the output, I noticed that it always seems to be this error that occurs:
ERROR: ReadN, RTMP recv error 10060
ERROR: ReadPacket, failed to read RTMP packet body. len: 36709
DEBUG: zero read!
WARNING: Download may be incomplete, try –resume!
Closing connection… done!
Googling “rtmp 10060” gave me an error code for an Adobe product, but it didn’t seem anything to do with video streaming. Any ideas?
Does things work for you when using the flash player? flashvhigh/Flash high seems very reliable for me. How much download speed can yuo get with your bradband connection?
Just a thought.. Are you using rtmpdump v1.4 (see the download page) ? That works better than earlier versions.
Yes, things do generally seem to work for me when using the Flash player, except sometimes at peak times, although I’m not sure whether that’s my Internet connection (which generally tops out at 1.7/1.8 Mbps) or just that the BBC’s servers are very busy. And I am using rtmpdump v1.4.
Also, I’ve noticed a small glitch in the filenames that are given automatically (I’m not using any extra parameters to change them from the default). For example, for b0089hhd it gives:
Live_at_the_Apollo_Series_3_-_Series_3_Episode_1_b0089hhd_default
and for b00jj523 I get:
Timewatch_2008_-_2009_-_2008_-_2009_WWI_Aces_Falling_b00jj523_default
so it looks like the series field is being duplicated somehow.
The duplicate episode name is because of the dumb way the metadata is presented in the feed. It’s colon separated – the colon is also present in the name of the series and this confuses the parser. I doubt it’s the BBC servers that are busy – they use a rather well connected CDN with many tens of Gbps of aggregate bandwidth. Maybe your connections are being aggressively throttled by your ISP? BT do use DPI.
Also, I found an article on the availability of HD programmes on iPlayer, apparently it’s supposed to happen this month:
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,39029471,49301433,00.htm
That’s the same article the BBC put out a few weeks ago. Nothing new as far as I can see.
The ‘nearly’ HD stuff is very nice 😉 Thank you! In addition to the normal streams I noticed some other streams:
flashvhigh1
type: Flash RTMP H.264 HD quality stream (akamai)
and
stream: flashvhigh2
type: Flash RTMP H.264 HD quality stream (limelight)
Could anyone tell me what these are?
They are just the same nearly-HD streams but served from different CDNs (content delivery networks). The akamai one works but not as reliably as the default one, the limelight one is just not working properly yet. All progs seem to use the default one so you shouldn’t really ever need to use the others.
Just tried some nearly-HD streams (Doctor Who) which look better than the old streams. As they were better I think I will delete the old copies of Doctor Who. When I played them in VLC I noticed that it had subtitles available. This may have been because I had the .srt file in the same directory. Or do these new files have subtitles embedded in them?
vlc will automatically display the srt file with the same prefix as the video file.
flashhigh mode doesn’t seem to work anymore. you can only download flashnormal for most of the content. is anybody else experiencing the same problem?
WOrks for me – downloading Coast Shorts now.
Danielle Nagler, head of BBC HD, has posted to the BBC Internet blog that iPlayer HD will be launching “very soon” and in the comments, Andy Quested confirmed that HD will only be available by downloading to iPlayer Desktop:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/03/bbc_hd_all_new_website_and_ide.html
I just tried downloading something but it was reporting ‘no flashvhigh versions available’ when I knew there was a version available, so I looked at the mediaselector file and it looks like the BBC have increased the resolution to 832 x 468 (for some programmes at least):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/4/mtis/stream/b00jf3dc
I changed all the references to the resolution I could find in get_iplayer.pl to the new resolution and it seems to work.
Forget what I said before, it now seems to have switched back to 720 x 404. They must have just been testing it briefly.
(Also I noticed that the times on posts seem to still be on GMT, and one other thing I’ve been meaning to mention is that in Firefox 3.0.7 on Vista, the comment box disappears off to the right so you can’t see everything that you typed.)
The server is supposed to be in UTC – it’s not a UK based service.
I’ll try to fix the comment box – Irritating isn’t it!
Comment box fixed now 🙂
Thanks for fixing the comment box, that’s much better 🙂
Also, I was looking into the higher resolution thing, and it looks like they’ve been testing the higher resolution video occasionally for a couple of weeks at least, as this Boxee user found out:
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?p=41560#post41560
I hope they do move to the higher resolution, in fact they could even go the whole hog and up the resolution of the highest-quality non-HD stream to 480p (854×480), like Hulu uses (although they use 1Mbps according to a post on a blog I came across).
Thanks Andrew. I’ve released get_iplayer v1.51 to get these if they exist as flashvhigh vmode.
What resolutions do the flashvhigh1-5 vmodes correspond to?
Or what I’m really after is, is it possible to ask for an explicit resolution? I’m finding 832×468 a little TOO big for comfort – at least resolutions that large aren’t not supported on standalone DVD players when converted to xvid. And I’d rather not do a resize during the conversion unless I have to.
What’s the mode for 720×404 at the moment (and is it likely to change in the future?)
Cheers, Robin
@Robin / colonel32,
flashvhigh modes are all pointing to the same data just on different content delivery networks. Same goes for flashhigh, flashnormal and so on. If you want to find a resolution try using –streaminfo for a particular programme.
ah, makes sense now. Thanks for the –streaminfo tip, very useful.
Thanks for writing this fantastic program.
The only problem I have encountered is downloading Dr Who episodes in flashvhigh mode. They crash after a few seconds when you play them (or the sound cuts out).
They are find in flashhigh, and shorter programmes (eg: kids shows I record for my daughters) are fine in flashvhigh.
Any ideas?
Maybe it is a CDN problem in level3. If you do a –info on the programme index number you will see a list of modes. If you see ‘flashvhigh1’ and ‘flashvhigh2’ etc then you can specify these modes directly. e.g. get_iplayer [index no] –vmode=flashvhigh2 –get
This will force get_iplayer into using a different CDN and it may work better. If you specify just ‘flashvhigh’ then get_iplayer will try the modes in numerical order.
Sorry – posted my reply in the wrong box!
See below:
Info listed multiple versions, including falshvhigh1 and 2. Tried it on flashvhigh1 with the same result, but flashvhigh2 worked fine.
I’m going to use flashvhigh2, flashvhigh1 now as my default for PVR downloads instead of just flashvhigh – is this a wise move?
That did the trick!
Info listed multiple versions, including falshvhigh1 and 2. Tried it on flashvhigh1 with the same result, but flashvhigh2 worked fine.
I’m going to use flashvhigh2, flashvhigh1 now as my default for PVR downloads instead of just flashvhigh – is this a wise move?
Well if it works…! They are the same actual streams just served up by different providers. The only problem being that some progs might not have flashvhigh2. I suggest you use flashvhigh2,flashvhigh3,flashvhigh4 so that at least you try the other ones all in order should they exist instead.
(Oh, good grief! When I get the security code on this site wrong the next post ends up as a new thread – and my eyesight is not what it was!)
That worked great! Thanks.
Thanks, that seems to work great!
iPlayer HD has supposedly launched, according to this BBC News article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8000556.stm
And from that article it seems that I was wrong, you will indeed be able to stream as well as download in HD. For the moment, however, the iPlayer website still looks the same to me and I can’t see any option to stream or download the Doctor Who special in HD, for instance:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jz2t4/Doctor_Who_Planet_of_the_Dead/
However, looking at the mediaselector file, I can see a 3200 kbps file, which I presume is the HD version:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/4/mtis/stream/b00jz2mx
Thanks Andrew!, v1.61 with initial download support will be released in a few minutes!!
Hello. First time poster here.
I’ve been using get_iplayer for a few weeks now. I recently upgraded to 1.59 and started noticing many downloads were skipping because a flashvhigh version wasn’t found.
I upgraded to 1.65 this evening and everything I try to download now gets cut off. The download does restart, but they all eventually fail. I’ve tried using the new flashhd mode, but that fails point blank. Same deal with flashvhigh2,flashvhigh3 and flashvhigh4. It’s giving me exactly the same error messages as AndrewM above. Namely:
ERROR: ReadN, RTMP recv error 10060
ERROR: ReadPacket, failed to read RTMP packet body. len: 36709
DEBUG: zero read!
WARNING: Download may be incomplete, try –resume!
Closing connection… done!
Has anyone any idea what’s going on? This has been working wonderfully up until my first upgrade. Is it on the BBC server?
Oh, by the way, I’m using the Windows version (sorry)
Ensure you are using the Windows latest rtmpdump (v1.4) that I have linked on my download page. It hasn’t changes for 2-3 weeks though.
It *could* be taht too many are using HD mode – but I doubt it. Could also be a problem with your broadband connection.
I just downloaded Top_Gear_Series_12_-_Episode_6 with vmode-flashvhigh and it worked no probs. Could eb connection dependant.
I haven’t changed the code that calls rtmpdump at all since 1.59 either ….
oops sory. should have replied like this sorry… response below.
I guess IO will wait until tomorrow night to see if anything changes with my connection.
That was quick!
Yes I’m using rtmpdump v1.4.
I just tried to download the same file. It went through all the usual motions but ended with this:
ERROR: ReadN, RTMP recv error 10060
ERROR: ReadPacket, failed to read RTMP packet header
Closing connection… done!
WARNING: Failed to download file f:\tv/Top_Gear_Series_12_-_Episode_6_b00g2gml_d
efault.partial.flv via RTMP
INFO: skipping flashvhigh2 mode
INFO: Trying flashvhigh3 mode to download tv: Top Gear: Series 12 – Episode 6
INFO: Checking existence of default version
Getting iplayer download URL
WARNING: No flashvhigh3 versions available
INFO: skipping flashvhigh3 mode
INFO: Trying flashvhigh4 mode to download tv: Top Gear: Series 12 – Episode 6
INFO: Checking existence of default version
Getting iplayer download URL
WARNING: No flashvhigh4 versions available
INFO: skipping flashvhigh4 mode
ERROR: Failed to download ‘Top Gear: Series 12 – Episode 6 (b00g2gml)’
Hi David, I can only speak from personal experience as I have no idea what’s actually causing the error 10060 (which according to the author of rtmpdump is a ‘socket timeout error’: http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=3161605&forum_id=900998 ) but the only thing that I’ve found that works is to set get_iplayer to download overnight.
It doesn’t always work perfectly and sometimes I have to rename the file to .partial and try again (hence I always use –raw when downloading over RTMP) but generally it works OK. Downloading in the evening (like trying to watch a flashvhigh programme on the iPlayer website in the evening) just doesn’t work over my connection.
Hi Andrew,
It’s just weird. I only discovered get_iplayer a couple of weeks ago and I love it (mainly because I’m a command line / batch file geek!) and it’s been working wonderfully up until this week.
I’ve been writing the programme listing to file through STDOUT which used to only take a few seconds and now takes several minutes and actually sometimes never finishes. I find it really weird because my 8Mbit broadband connection is not limited in any way, nothing has changed on my PC. I don’t even use the conversion apps as I’m quite happy to view in the raw FLV (I use –raw).
Is there any way I can hold of a version previous to 1.59 so I can test? I tried uninstalling, but the windows installer i originally installed from always seems to get the latest version.
You can get all versions at https://linuxcentre.net/get_iplayer/archive/ (older) or https://linuxcentre.net/get_iplayer/
Have you tried without redirecting STDOUT so that you can see exactly what is so slow? Maybe try with the –verbose option. I’m curious what it might be – nothing much in the feed parsing code has changed for a while.
Actually I did a plain “get_plyaer” earlier this afternoon and then got called away. 5 hours later it’s STILL getting the TV index.
I restarted in a new window with the –verbose option. The first time was very slow, but subsequent tries have been faster. But each time I get the following line:
WARNING: Cannot read C:\Documents and Settings\Dave/.get_iplayer/download_history
Never seen that one before. I can’t see where the file might be created.
WARNING: Cannot read C:\Documents and Settings\Dave/.get_iplayer/download_histor
y
And suddenly it’s working again!
Just downloaded nigella in flashvhigh. Very curious.
Okay, this program is totally awesome. I’ve had a few problems with the 10060 error, and rerunning the script continually until it works seems to do the trick. I get hundreds of lines of no-name with a random number when trying to get the thing to run mind.
Anyways, keep up the wonderful work 🙂