TG's morning after!

How about FileFront? Static IPs are no problem there...I really want to see it...
 
Question for Peter of the Cosmos:

How did you do make the .mov rips in that torrent?

Seeing that the four videos were streaming-only on the TG website, I figured I could use the same trick I would usually go for: open the videos in Opera, look in the cache (which unlike Firefox actually stores the individual files), find opr01FGD.asx, rename it opr01FGD.asx.txt, open it up... and find the URL. Sure enough:

Code:
<asx version="3.0">
    <entry>
        <ref href="http://212.58.234.121/nfs01/BBC_Radio_Times/encodedfiles/s10e01_newsweb4_16x9_bb.wmv?digest=01470fe2a2cinfncKMR/k7+O0SVmbA8BaV3dA=&provider=BBC_Radio_Times"/>
    </entry>
</asx>

My program of choice here would be CoCSoft StreamDown, which automatically finds the URL and downloads the WMV file that would otherwise be delivered only as a stream. I have used this technique with Ben Dirs & Tom Fordyce's videos about the Rugby World Cup on the BBC website. Those had an RTSP link, this was HTTP, but as the CoCSoft website says it'll stream HTTP, I figured it'd work just as well here. And so, something jumped up on my screen:

"You have been already download for this file?"

CoCSoft, is, I think, a solitary Russian who writes programs in his spare time, and his grip of English is... let us say... tenuous at best. The help file is as useful as Clarkson's Maserati Merak. What the program is outputting into my downloads directory is:

s10e01_newsweb4_16x9_bb.wvx (1 kB)

...when what I was expecting was...

s10e01_newsweb4_16x9_bb.wmv (some MB)

This is, as you'd imagine, is immensely irritating, and as before the .wvx was a disguised text file. Inside it was the following:

Code:
[Reference]
Ref1=http://212.58.234.121/nfs01/BBC_Radio_Times/encodedfiles/s10e01_newsweb4_16x9_bb.wmv?MSWMExt=.asf
Ref2=http://212.58.234.102:80/nfs01/BBC_Radio_Times/encodedfiles/s10e01_newsweb4_16x9_bb.wmv?MSWMExt=.asf

In other words, the same URL only in different code.

So, Peter, how did you do it? Seeing as you've kept the file titles intact, it must be some kind of stream recorder - but obviously not StreamDown or I'd have had it cracked by now. Also, given that the files stored on the TG Server are WMV, why convert it to MOV?

And in the time it's taken me to write this post, the MOV torrent has completely downloaded. 60-odd kB/sec. However, I'm still determined to find a way to download the streamed WMVs, and I'll (probably) post it here if I find something that works, so if you or nobody else ever makes the News Uncut into a torrent ever again, at least I might have a way of making the offline files myself.
 
Good news, guys. Since many people were experience trouble opening yesterday's torrent that had the four MOVs, I've created a new torrent with the streams ripped to their native format: WMV. I've actually tested these on Macs and PCs using VLC, Windows Media Player, and Quicktime w/ the Flip4Mac WMV plugin (the free one).

Bottom line: this one works! http://www.mininova.org/tor/936910

Sorry for all the trouble the first time around.

Ironlord, I used Flip4Mac WMV which is essentially a plugin that allows Mac users to view WMVs with Quicktime. So when I watched the videos on topgear.com, they played in an embedded QT window instead of WMP. I had the option to save the source as Quicktime MOV - which I did. So the videos work fine for me but I didn't realize others would have difficulty. Apparently they're saved as .mov but encoded using the WMV3 codec (Windows Media Player 9) - VLC doesn't really get along with WMV3 for some reason so many people couldn't watch them. I'm not a video expert by any means, I just wanted to try to help the community. Apparently I was rubbish at that! ;)

All is well with the new torrent, however!

Cheers!
-Peter
 
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Ironlord, I used Flip4Mac WMV which is essentially a plugin that allows Mac users to view WMVs with Quicktime.

Arrrg... so it's restricted to Mac users. Someone on the first page suggested Orbit Downloader, so I'll give that a go. However, its use will be limited as once I get off my arse and build my new computer I'll be shifting to Linux so that could make downloading streams a lot more problematic... and I'm no programmer so the chances of writing one myself are zero.
 
Wow damn the video is badly compressed into 4:3...
 
That was freaking brilliant. "How about we invite people to our track, they can smoke while driving, or put on your makeup, or eat a pie. While speeding. And have a wank" HAHAHA :lol:
 
Thank you Peter of the Cosmos :D

Erm will you be doing that for all of the news uncut for the next 9 weeks?
 
Thank you Peter of the Cosmos :D

Erm will you be doing that for all of the news uncut for the next 9 weeks?

I guess so, yeah! I'll be ripping them at the very least for my own Top Gear collection (I'm a hopeless addict), so it doesn't really cost me to create and seed these pretty small torrents - especially if you guys seed too! ;)
 
I guess so, yeah! I'll be ripping them at the very least for my own Top Gear collection (I'm a hopeless addict), so it doesn't really cost me to create and seed these pretty small torrents - especially if you guys seed too! ;)

Thank you :D I to am a Top Gear addict, a big Top Gear addict.
 
the edited version of the weeks news was imho one the the best ever...can't wait for the full one
 
Was there supposed to be a morning after today or was it that much of a pain in the ass that they can't be bothered anymore?
 
It was supposed to be Monday, but as usual... :(
 
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