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Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

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Re: Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

#131

Post by omarroth »

rasz wrote: post #126

I was very confused at first. I didnt log into anything, yet https://invidio.us/ has plenty of creators from my YT subscriptions :o How the heck? Do the owner curate whats on the front page? I can only counts a couple video channels I have no interest in whatsoever (pie, h3, vox), or did Google finally started curating? No low value garbage on first page, something YT is usually struggling with. Still Peterson in rel…

The main algorithm is described here[0]. It's the most recent videos from the 40 most subscribed channels on the instance.

YouTube's recommendations are still used. They'll appear the same as if you viewed YouTube with a clean browser session, although you can disable them in your preferences if you'd like (under "Show related videos").

0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/217#issuecommen...

Re: Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

#132

Post by omarroth »

rasz wrote: post #125
omarroth wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can watch 1080p if you set "dash" as your default quality in preferences, or by adding `&quality=dash` to the end of a video URL. The reason it isn't enabled by default is that it requires proxying streams, which is more bandwidth intensive[0]. 0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/34

You shouldnt need to proxy anything, there are in browser js muxers that can splice separate video/audio streams into one, or find jsvideo player capable of playing it directly.

I would recommend reading the issue I linked for why it's necessary. JS needs special access to resources that can't be provided without proxying.

You can see this yourself in a DASH player[0] and testing with e.g. https://invidio.us/api/manifest/dash/id/CvFH_6DNRCY. It will fail with

> Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://r5---sn-ab5l6nzy.googlevideo.com/videoplayback' from origin 'http://reference.dashif.org' has been blocked by CORS policy: Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource.

0. http://reference.dashif.org/dash.js/nightly/samples/dash-if-...

Re: Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

#133

Post by rasz »

omarroth wrote: post #132
rasz wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldnt need to proxy anything, there are in browser js muxers that can splice separate video/audio streams into one, or find jsvideo player capable of playing it directly.

I would recommend reading the issue I linked for why it's necessary. JS needs special access to resources that can't be provided without proxying. You can see this yourself in a DASH player[0] and testing with e.g. https://invidio.us/api/manifest/dash/id/CvFH_6DNRCY . It will fail with > Access to XMLHttpRequest at ' https://r5---sn-ab5l6nzy.googlevideo.com/videoplayback' from origin ' http://reference.dashif.org' ha…

The most likely reason for the error is badly decoded signature. YT uses &sig as a "crypto" access token (lasting couple of hours last time I checked). I have zero trouble playing dash videos in standalone mplayer (after manually extracting two video audio sources and decoding proper signatures).

Re: Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

#134

Post by jobigoud »

thedaemon wrote: post #67
desdiv wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When regular users visit youtube.com, they get a page with some videos on it. Regardless of whether they're logged in or not, there are videos there. Banned users visiting youtube.com will just get a text page[0] with zero video content. Google will use all the dirty tracking tricks to make sure that banned users remain banned even when their IP or device changes. [0] https://i.imgur.com/qTTGhhG.png

Please, do you know how to get banned from Google? I'd love to not be tracked by them anymore.

Didn't he just described that they were in fact heavily tracking you in order to make sure you didn't see the content?

Re: Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

#135

Post by jobigoud »

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #105
thinkingemote wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have clarified that this means they can terminate their services, not your accounts. However with recent balls ups it was easy to read it differently

This is not true. They can and will suspend your accounts for blocking ads or not being "Economically viable". One reason I removed youtube vanced and reinstalled official youtube app.

I'm fairly sure this applies to content creators, not consumers. To avoid storage and bandwidth for content that doesn't show ads but has a high maintenance cost.

If they really intended to remove the bandwidth cost from people watching youtube without ads they would start by implementing ad blocker detection.

Re: Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

#136

Post by jszymborski »

notpiika wrote: post #120
jszymborski wrote: post #59

I've been consuming my YouTube videos via RSS and youtube-dl these days. I have a little python script that collects the video urls from the feed, downloads them, and then NewsBlur notifies me of the new videos. NewsBlur has become the way I find new academic papers (arXiv/journal RSS feeds), consume the news, webcomics, and YouTube videos.

Care to share the script?

Sure :) Although it's not much more use than my description if I don't clean it up and write docs, so will have to do that first. Will let you know when/if I do :)

Re: Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

#137

Post by omarroth »

rasz wrote: post #133
omarroth wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would recommend reading the issue I linked for why it's necessary. JS needs special access to resources that can't be provided without proxying. You can see this yourself in a DASH player[0] and testing with e.g. https://invidio.us/api/manifest/dash/id/CvFH_6DNRCY . It will fail with > Access to XMLHttpRequest at ' https://r5---sn-ab5l6nzy.googlevideo.com/videoplayback' from origin ' http://reference.dashif.org' ha…

The most likely reason for the error is badly decoded signature. YT uses &sig as a "crypto" access token (lasting couple of hours last time I checked). I have zero trouble playing dash videos in standalone mplayer (after manually extracting two video audio sources and decoding proper signatures).

Only browsers have this restriction.

The issue I linked above doesn't appear to explain this. I would instead recommend reading this[0] comment.

0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/177#issuecommen...

Re: Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

#138

Post by rasz »

omarroth wrote: post #137
rasz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most likely reason for the error is badly decoded signature. YT uses &sig as a "crypto" access token (lasting couple of hours last time I checked). I have zero trouble playing dash videos in standalone mplayer (after manually extracting two video audio sources and decoding proper signatures).

Only browsers have this restriction. The issue I linked above doesn't appear to explain this. I would instead recommend reading this[0] comment. 0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/177#issuecommen...

Ok, so CORS prevents from manual muxing/proper DASH player playback. How about two separate video audio tags with javascript synchronized playback/seeking?

Re: Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

#139

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

ekianjo wrote: post #121
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your accounts? As if they don't know who you are when you're not signed in.

Well, if you can imagine that there is a world where people can use the same device in the same home to access videos (ever heard of families?), surely you can imagine that Google would not terminate all accounts used on that device because they have no clue who is watching what when they are not logged in.

I can imagine it would. My experience tells me it's not out of the question. With Google it's improbable at the moment, but it happened to me (someone got nasty under my ISP's CGNAT) with the other service which will remain unnamed.

Re: Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

#140

Post by beagle3 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #97
ekianjo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is there to terminate if you browse Youtube without signing in?

I block doubleclick and randomly get a degraded YouTube page with no content outside the video box rendered. It also goobers up the browser history so you can't go to previous videos.

That's because you are randomizing your user agent, not because of the doubleclick ban. (source: had some problem, solved it by emitting a consistent but fake user agent to youtube. It sniffs UA, against all recommendations and common sense)
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