How to use iView (ABC Australia) downloaders

[GBDesk]

A new release of MacYTDL is available. It's version 1.7 - a bug fix release with no new functions. MacYTDL is a GUI front end for youtube-dl. Requires an Apple Mac with macOS 10.10 or newer.

Available here:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...for-Apple-Macs

Please post any feedback here or on the Video Help forum.

Cheers.

[GBDesk]

A new release of MacYTDL is available. It's version 1.14.1 - which has many new features and bug fixes since my last post.

MacYTDL is a GUI front end for youtube-dl. Requires an Apple Mac with macOS 10.10 or newer.

Available here:

https://github.com/section83/MacYTDL

Please post any feedback here or on GitHub.

Cheers.

[BNW]

Since this forum is back up again and seems fairly stable, I suppose it's time to post an update on how to use downloaders with iview.

First a legal disclaimer - using downloaders on streaming sites is a legal grey area, so this primer should not be taken as a licence. However in some jurisdictions it is deemed the equivalent of using a VCR/DVR, so not prosecuted. Also, some businesses have licences which legally allow employees to record or download broadcast media for, ahem, work or research purposes. Hence downloaders themselves are not illegal. End disclaimer.

Apart from some commercial downloaders, today pretty much all downloaders are based on youtube-dl. If you are happy using the command prompt, go to "https://youtube-dl.org/", d/l the version for your os and off you go.

For those who prefer a GUI, see the previous post for a GUI for apple computers. For windows there were several GUIs, but they have now been abandoned and for the most part removed from the web. A series of scripts is still available for SBS from mega.nz, here's a tiny url: "https://tinyurl.com/y8h582e2". The download script works for many streaming sites including iview. You will however need to update youtube-dl. Once you've uncompressed the zip file, go to the created folder and in the sub-folder "bin" run the script "youtube-dl_update" - the copy of youtube-dl packaged with the script is out of date. Whilst these scripts operate in a dos/command shell, you run them from the windows folder, so they are easier to use.

Whether you use native youtube-dl or a front end, you need one additional item and that's the url of the video itself (not the url of the iview webpage describing the show, the two are different). Go to the iview website, then to the page of the show you would like and click on the "share" button and then "copy link". Paste this in when prompted with the frontend or use it as the command line argument with youtube-dl, then sit back and wait. Downloaded files will need to be renamed since they will not include the name of the show, just the series & episode numbers.

The above means of getting a url will work for series, but does not work for one-off programs. There is a workaround, but it is a bit more complicated. Go to the iview web page for the show, right click on the screenshot and select "save image as" and you'll get something like "ZW1435A001S00_598aa96ecff76_1280.jpg" in the "save as" popup. The part before the "_" is the program id code. Paste this into: "<iview web page url>/series/0/video/<id code>". The "web page url" here is the url for the iview page describing the show (not the video link url). Use notepad to assemble the video link and copy & paste that into the frontend or youtube-dl, as above. You should get something like: "https://iview.abc.net.au/show/royal-edinburgh-military-tattoo-2017/series/0/video/ZW1435A001S00".

[yagasill]

I use the SBS downloader V9 for all my ABC Iview downloads works well no problems I make a new folder copy the txt description for the programs and the downloaded files usually a video and srt to the folders to keep it all tidy

[BNW]

And pcspeak's latest SBS script is here:
https://mega.nz/file/Z3og0QKB#dlzvIe...-5zOLxnSfsDve8

[yagasill]

Has any body worked out how to copy the text on the new abc redesigned iplayer site I worked out how to download a file start the video then copy the link from the address bar but the txt appears to be a pdf ? I want to keep the doctor who series 5

[BNW]

Originally Posted by yagasill

Has any body worked out how to copy the text on the new abc redesigned iplayer site I worked out how to download a file start the video then copy the link from the address bar but the txt appears to be a pdf ? I want to keep the doctor who series 5

Just go to the page of the show you want, select the desired series and you will get a row of the available episodes with a screenshot and a brief description below. < & > just above the right-most episode on the screen navigates to other episodes.

Right click on the screenshot for the ep you want & copy the link. For Dr Who 5.1, that's:
https://iview.abc.net.au/video/ZX0929A001S00

Then toss that at pcspeak's downloader script, youtube-dl or whatever other method you prefer. I just tried the above url and it worked.

One-off specials & movies are more difficult. The instructions I gave in this forum back in December still mostly work apart from the first step in getting the program ID. Now you need to right click on the background and select "view page source", "view page info" (for firefox) or whatever options your browser gives. Hunt through the resulting tab and look for the url of the background image, snip out the ID which is part of the background image filename and follow the rest of the instructions I posted back in Dec last year a few posts above.

[BNW]

Not an iview question, but since this forum is not moderated & I have nowhere else to ask, here will have to do.

Has anyone else noticed that 10Play has broken youtube-dl again in the past week or so? Not just newly posted eps are failing but even older ones that previously worked are now failing to download. If you can get anything, it's a blank 3s video file. Videodownload helper also falls over.

I've tried with the latest yt-dl and on both win7 & win10 machines have the same result.

[BNW]

A bug has been filed on github.