metaTED 1.0.9

Creates metalink files of TED talks for easier downloading

metaTED is a tool that makes it easy to download all of the TED talks. It does so by creating over 8 metalinks of TED talks varying in both the quality levels and possible talk groupings by directory. Features include:

• Creates talks with informative file names - i.e. Unconventional Explanations/Hans Rosling on HIV - New facts and stunning data visuals.mp4 instead of original HansRosling_2009_480.mp4.

• Tries hard to get all of the talks, or at least most of them - with a good reason if some have failed.

• More choice - creates one metalink per available quality level (currently low, standard and high).

• More choice - creates one metalink per available talk grouping, with all talks belonging to the same group placed inside a common directory. The possible talk groupings are extracted from talks metadata (currently filming/publishing year, talk theme and author).

• Aggressive caching throughout the project, to avoid expensive network/CPU operations as much as possible. Proper cache invalidation included.

• High levels of fault tolerance.

• Simple, yet powerful homegrown web crawler.

• Flexible and extensible software design with changes in mind.

• Provides both the console script and a public API.

Downloading TED talks

If you just want to download TED talks, you don’t need to install this package, or even Python. All you need to do is get a download client that supports the Metalink standard and choose one of the daily updated metalinks.

Installing and running metaTED

metaTED is available as an easy-install-able package, you can install it with easy_install -U metaTED, or pip install metaTED if you have pip. You can run it with metaTED, or metaTED -h to get help and the list of all available options.

The project itself is hosted on bitbucket, from where you can get the code and report bugs.

New in metaTED 1.0.9

• Simplified code for finding talk URLs.