bbsub (or 'node-bbsub' on npm) is a Node.js wrapper library to the get_iplayer command-line tool, mainly aimed at downloading the programmes' subtitles and playing with corpus linguistics.
The library comes with a command line tool of the same name and few examples for immediate use.
get_iplayer is an open source BBC iPlayer client. Among its many features - some of which are controversial, such as the capability to download to keep the programmes - get_iplayer can download the programmes' subtitles when available, in srt format.
bbsub wraps get_iplayer's subtitle download functionality and adds some of its own, as described below.
npm install node-bbsub
node-bbsub requires the availability of get_iplayer.
First search what programmes you are interested in by using get_iplayer, e.g.
$ get_iplayer "have i got news for you"
get_iplayer 2.85.0.0, Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Phil Lewis
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
conditions; use --conditions for details.
Matches:
373: Have I Got News for You: Series 46 - Episode 6, BBC One, Comedy,Guidance,Satire,TV, default
INFO: 1 Matching Programmes
$
... then get the programme's words and word frequency:
$ node bbsub.js 373
{"programme":2,"contains":2,"strong":3,"language":2,"good":9,"evening":1,"welcome":3,"news":8,"alexander":2,"armstrong":1, ... }
Alternatively, you could directly do:
$ node bbsub.js "have i got news for you"
{"programme":2,"contains":2,"strong":3,"language":2,"good":9,"evening":1,"welcome":3,"news":8,"alexander":2,"armstrong":1, ... }
If the result of the search is more than one programme, the returned corpus will be merged across all programmes, e.g.:
$ node bbsub.js "Inspector Montalbano"
will give you the corpus of all the episodes listed below:
$ get_iplayer "Inspector Montalbano"
get_iplayer 2.85.0.0, Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Phil Lewis
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use --warranty.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
conditions; use --conditions for details.
Matches:
446: Inspector Montalbano: Series 3 - 1. Angelica's Smile, BBC Four, Crime,Drama,Guidance,TV, default
447: Inspector Montalbano: Series 3 - 2. Hall of Mirrors, BBC Four, Crime,Drama,Guidance,TV, default
448: Inspector Montalbano: Series 3 - 3. A Voice in the Night, BBC Four, Crime,Drama,Guidance,TV, default
449: Inspector Montalbano: Series 3 - 4. A Ray of Light, BBC Four, Crime,Drama,Guidance,TV, default
Run bbsub.js or any of the examples without parameters to see which search options of the original get_iplayer are supported.
Making something interesting with bbsub is just up to you. For example, you can easily produce word clouds out of the programmes' subtitles, there is an R example script in bbsub's distribution package for doing just that!
$ cd examples
$ node ../bbsub.js "have i got news for you" > hignfy.json
$ rscript wordcloud.R --json hignfy.json --png hignfy.png
The library offers also additional functionality, such as the extraction of the time code for each occurrence of the words. See the code for more detail. An example is provided with the source:
$ node topten.js "have i got news for you"
Analysing 'Have I Got News for You: Series 46: Episode 6'
The top ten words are:
1: said (32 occurrences at 00:01:52,000, 00:02:56,000, 00:05:20,000, ...)
2: right (21 occurrences at 00:02:38,000, 00:02:46,000, 00:03:03,000, ...)
3: just (20 occurrences at 00:03:53,000, 00:04:30,000, 00:04:37,000, ...)
4: know (18 occurrences at 00:02:14,000, 00:02:27,000, 00:02:46,000, ...)
5: going (17 occurrences at 00:07:11,000, 00:11:24,000, 00:13:05,000, ...)
6: people (15 occurrences at 00:02:14,000, 00:02:38,000, 00:02:56,000, ...)
7: think (14 occurrences at 00:02:33,000, 00:04:41,000, 00:06:06,000, ...)
8: fire (13 occurrences at 00:23:58,000, 00:24:02,000, 00:24:41,000, ...)
9: godfrey (13 occurrences at 00:01:41,000, 00:01:57,000, 00:02:09,000, ...)
10: week (13 occurrences at 00:00:45,000, 00:02:09,000, 00:03:08,000, ...)
Words shorter than three characters and included in a pre-defined set of "stop words" are ignored. The list of English stop words is sourced from package 'tm' in R.
Combinations of words that make sense as a whole, e.g. "big data", are unfortunately not recognised. There will be one entry for 'data' and none for 'big', as it is shorter than 4 characters.
Copyright (c) 2013 Gianfranco Cecconi
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Please take into account that bbsub is a wrapper to get_iplayer, and when using bbsub you should consider the implications of using get_iplayer in the first place and respect the content providers’ wishes and fair-use legislation in your jurisdiction.
The picture is courtesy of Charlie Swinbourne.com's blog.