[ALUG] bbc 'play it again'

[(Ted Harding)]

On 29-May-07 22:24:52, Jenny Hopkins wrote:
> Hullo there,
> 
> Has anyone on list had any luck with getting the bbc website
> 'play it again' working?
> 
> Thanks,
> Jenny

Not sure what you mean by "get it working", Jen. What were
you trying to do that didn;t work?

I've tracked down the "Play It Again" website to

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/playitagain

which, so far, is just a website and, as such, works fine
for me. I can't see anything problematic on this home-page.

However, the bits I can see that might not work for everyone
are the various "clips". E.g. if you click on the handsome
phiz of Robert Winsten, you get a column of "Watch video clips".
The first one is "Watch a sax tutorial", which is not specific
to Robert W. Then there's a list

  Watch highlights from Robert's lessons
    * Robert makes a noise!               [00 min 31 sec]
    * Robert practices his scales         [00 min 21 sec]
    * Robert meets John Dankworth         [02 min 00 sec
    * Robert meets Courtney Pine          [02 min 27 sec]

so you don't get much of the programme!

I tried the "sax tutorial" and the first Winsten clip, and
both worked. Then I started composing this reply, and went
back to it after entering the above list, only to get the
"BBC Media Player" hanging, "waiting for bbc.co.uk...".
The same with Jo Brand's clips.

Why this happened I have no idea. I've tried closing my
Firefox browser and re-starting, to no effect. It may sinply
be that the Beeb has gone into a sulk (it's getting late,
after all). [But see below]

Anyway, be that as it may, one can have problems with the
BBC Media Player which pops up for such things. You'll need
to have RealPlayer installed at least as a plugin for your
browser (since the alternative is Windows Media Player).
This then runs encapsulated in the BBC Media Player (following
an initial check of your cnnection speed and which choice
of player you want). It's a good idea (see below) to have
RealPlayer installed for standalone use.

In some cases when you're intending to use the encapsulated
RealPlayer, it does nothing after intitally connecting.
But then, you can usually locate an option in the window
to "Listen to this in standalone player".

In that case, what I do is

a) right-click on the "Listen to this using standalone player"
link, accept the option to "Copy Link Location", then

b) go to another Xterm window, type in

  realplay 

(followed by a space) and then

c) middle-click with the mouse to complete the command with
the URL for RealPlayer to go to. Then

d) Press Return, and RealPlayer whould start up in its own
window and play the clip.


[Stop Press in passing -- the BBC Player is now responding
normally again. So she was just sulking.]

Anyway, for the first Winsten clip, doing the above gets
you, at stage (c), the command

realplay http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/playitagain/video/bb/
pia_robertwinston1_16x9_bb.ram

[all one line but my mailer breaks it], and then (d) starts
it running.

Sometimes, when you do the above, you may get a hang apparently
due to conflict between the two instances of RealPlayer (the
standalone one, and the one encapsulated in BBC Media Player).

In that case, close the latter. Or close both, and repeat the
command line by scrolling back in the history.

That's the extent of my "getting the 'play it again' working".
Was there anything else I should try, that didn't work for you,
which I don't seem to have found?

I should add that the above rigmarole is typical of my variegated
success with playing BBC stuff. Sometimes it works seamlessly
in the BBC Media Player, sometimes, I have to go through the
(a)-(d) stuff, occasionally I have to do the conflict resolution.

Finally, I got all the Winsten clips working fine in the BBC
Media Player (which is where I got the above durations from).

Hoping this helps,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 30-May-07                                       Time: 00:28:45
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