BBC Thumbnails

A python program for downloading thumbnails for BBC television series. It uses the episode or series PID to download matching thumbnails.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• BeautifulSoup (pip install beautifulsoup4) - Crummy BeautifulSoup
• lxml (pip install lxml) - Crummy Info

First run

The first run of the program will start the configuration dialogue:

python bbcthumb.py
Input the wanted default resolution: 1920x1080
Input the wanted default destination: C:/Users/User/Desktop
Do you want to skip episode name fetching (1 for yes, 0 for no): 0
Saved config! Closing.

Config can also be done using --config.

Using the program

One episode thumbnail

To download the thumbnail of one episode of a series (in other words one pid of an episode), do the following:

python bbcthumb.py [pid]

where [pid] is replaced with the pid of the wanted episode. The program will find the thumbnail link, adjust the resolution and download it to the default download directory.

Multiple episode thumbnails

Downloading thumbnails for multiple episodes is the same as it is for one, just add more pids. For instance:

python bbcthumb.py [pid] [pid] [pid] 

The program will seek links for all of them and download them one after the other. The same error might be seen as in the first example.

Downloading series thumbnails

When downloading thumbnails for an entire series of a programme use the series pid rather than a single episode pid and use the argument --series, like this:

python bbcthumb.py --series [pid]

The program creates an additional folder in the download directory that has the series name so that all thumbnails of a single series are in one place.

Help page

usage: bbcthumb.py [-h] [--res resolution] [--dest destination] [--series] [--nonames] [--config] [-v] [pid [pid ...]]

Download BBC programme thumbnails.

positional arguments:
  pid                 programme pid

optional arguments:
  -h, --help          show this help message and exit
  --res resolution    define the thumbnail resolution (Default: 1920x1080)
  --dest destination  define the destination folder (Default: C:/BBC)
  --series            whole series thumbnail download (currently limited to one series)
  --nonames           skip fetching episode names (Default: False)
  --config            run configuration of default values
  -v, --verbose       run program with debug verbosity

This is it for now, more info and perhaps a wiki page with upcoming updates.