Recently [the last 2-3 weeks] I've been getting frequent problems with .flv file downloads failing part-way through. I'm running the 2.9.4 software and the latest version of rtmpdump.

The problem is that even though the downloads don't complete properly, they do get entered into the history file, so are not attempted again unless I notice and manually edit the history file.

Do you have some examples of pids

b060fsdc is a recent example.

Quite often this seems to happen when [judging by the filesize] the download is ~99% complete, but I have seen others truncated much shorter than this.

This is a long-standing issue. If connectivity is poor or bandwidth insufficient, the server may drop the connection such that rtmpdump can't tell that an error occurred, so get_iplayer carries on thinking the download completed OK. Given that you appear to be a long way from the UK, you can't be too surprised to encounter connectivity problems from time to time, particularly if you are using an overloaded or throttled VPN. Then again, UK users can encounter the same issue. It's possible you're just always hitting overloaded servers or misconfigured media streams, but that seems unlikely and is impossible to diagnose anyway. Bottom line: There is nothing get_iplayer can do about it, and the only thing you can do about it is try to find a better network.

And FWIW, the rtmpdump download progress counter always stops at 99%.

And you can also try the HLS modes.

That worked. I hadn't been able to access HLS modes, but updating to the latest version of avconv fixed that.