How to use iView (ABC Australia) downloaders

[BNW]

There seem to be two issues at the moment .. getting a usable url or program ID that yt-dl could work with and then the DRM encryption on everything.

[BNW]

The github link given by GBDesk says they are aware of the problem and working on it. But the fix has not yet reached the current release.

That still leaves the workable url/program ID issue.

[yagasill]

On the right hand side of the program picture there is a share arrow click and then copy link this will give the usable url links with the id number and episode name copy to clipboard

[pcspeak]

Try this. Released 4 hours ago.
https://yt-dl.org/downloads/2018.06.14/youtube-dl.exe


Cheers

[GBDesk]

Originally Posted by dman

Any suggestions please or are we in waiting mode for ytdl to release a new build? Thanks in advance.

Version 2018.06.14 has been released. I've just DL'd last night's 4Corners with no problems. Ditto Episode 4 of City&TheCity.

The trick for getting URLs of individual videos is to click on the down arrow beside an episode then click on "Share". That will copy the link which can then be pasted into youtube-dl.

But, the new site makes a mess of apps which try to pull the URL from the page address. That no longer works as each page is just a holder for all the episodes.

You can track what youtube-dl fixes will be in the next release here: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/releases. A link to future commits becomes visible when the first commit is finished for the next release.

Be kind to the YTDL people – they have responded very quickly and precisely to the iView change [maybe they saw how many Oz users love their ABC iView !].

Cheers.

[GBDesk]

Originally Posted by BNW

That still leaves the workable url/program ID issue.

To programmatically get the URL might mean parsing the html for the links. With some work (or a lot) that would result in a list of episodes and URLs from each show page. For example, this web page: "https://iview.abc.net.au/show/city-and-the-city" has six "shareUrl" references: one for the page, one for latest episode and one for each of the four available episodes.

[dman]

Originally Posted by GBDesk

Version 2018.06.14 has been released. I've just DL'd last night's 4Corners with no problems. Ditto Episode 4 of City&TheCity.

Woo Hoo - the latest release works a treat for me - I just grabbed a few different things - all worked, no encryption. Hats off to the ytdl guys!

Originally Posted by GBDesk

The trick for getting URLs of individual videos is to click on the down arrow beside an episode then click on "Share". That will copy the link which can then be pasted into youtube-dl.

But, the new site makes a mess of apps which try to pull the URL from the page address. That no longer works as each page is just a holder for all the episodes.

Yes, discovered this from playing around with the new page - but thanks for the heads up - if you are grabbing a weekly program, I grab the first url, and you'll notice that only two numbers of the url change to identify the episode number from week to week - I wont mention too much since big brother is watching, but anyone with 5 minutes and half a brain can grab a few links from the same show and they will quickly see what I'm talking about.

Originally Posted by GBDesk

Be kind to the YTDL people – they have responded very quickly and precisely to the iView change [maybe they saw how many Oz users love their ABC iView !].

Of course, these guys are my heroes - since they have given me a way of grabbing iView stuff to keep - and even though 1024x576 is still not the best possible resolution, it's a lot better than what we had previously which was around 360p.

Using a rather long command string I found on another site, I am able to get the show's metadata, a thumbnail and the .vtt subtitles (which alas don't convert into proper .srt using the "--convert-subs srt" but its relatively easy to find a converter which will number each line to make it .srt compliant. I also convert the .mp4 into a .mkv for ease of use in the future. Though it definitely needs a remux to make into a proper .mkv because the source video is downloaded in individual chunks - but that's another issue entirely, one that I already understand, and not specifically relevant to this current discussion.

I get that driving ytdl from a command prompt might be a little complicated for some people, but until someone creates a Windows front end with the ability to turn on/off each option, enabling the various options on the command line is a reliable way to get consistent results week to week - of course, if you don't want subtitles, metadata, thumbnails and conversion to mkv, the command line gets much simplier ;-P

Thanks to GBDesk, pcspeak and yagasill for responding so quickly - and for all the others contributing to this thread.

Cheers, dman

[yagasill]

may be I am dumb about this I got the url ok copy and pasted them into URLDown Dropper v4.1 updated utube-dl to the latest version but still can not get any downloads is this a cmd line operation if not where am I going wrong does the program need recording ?

[GBDesk]

Originally Posted by yagasill

... I got the url ok copy and pasted them into URLDown Dropper v4.1 updated utube-dl to the latest version but still can not get any downloads is this a cmd line operation if not where am I going wrong does the program need recording ?

If the URL is correct, it works in MacYTDL (which uses fairly vanilla youtube-dl calls). The URLs look like this:

iview.abc.net.au/show/mystery-road/series/1/video/DR1631W001S00

But, note that this formulation also works with youtube-dl: https://iview.abc.net.au/video/ZW1506A001S00 ... but, neither work in a web browser.

Perhaps there is an issue with URLDown Dropper – but, development has ceased. There are many alternative Windows apps which use youtube-dl. There are also some cross-platform efforts which are functional and free (eg. youtube-dl-gui).

Cheers.

[pcspeak]

Originally Posted by GBDesk

But, note that this formulation also works with youtube-dl: https://iview.abc.net.au/video/ZW1506A001S00 ... but, neither work in a web browser.
Cheers.

In your browser perhaps change to:
https://iview.abc.net.au/programs/ZW1506A001S00


Does that work for you?