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Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

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Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#61

Post by Mindwipe »

deno wrote: post #24
yMMe2WYE_D wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only real thing they could try to do is to try enforcing video/IP speed cap. They probably don't due to false positives - for example people jumping around a long video also make may "range" requests. And the other approach is currently in progress - soon logged users won't be able to view videos without watching(or at least displaying/downloading) adds, so the logical next step is to nerf anonymous(as is without…

There’s plenty they could do. They could flip a switch tomorrow and limit access to only signed-in users, and they could further enable DRM, as pretty much by now the majority of users are already on DRM-handicapped platforms. Any will-be-called "legacy" users would just get limited to 480p.

YT-DLP can import cookies to bypass the signed-in user issue. It has to as many videos in the EU require credit card age verification to access.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#62

Post by Mindwipe »

js8 wrote: post #27
mynameisvlad wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube Premium doesn’t let you download the video file. Even if you do it from a browser, it is only accessible from the YouTube website run offline as a SPA. Even then, downloaded videos can only be played for 29 days before having to reconnect most of the time, with some regions restricting it to 48 hours.

I would totally buy Premium subscription if they let me download the videos, and I told Google that. The way it is now - no deal.

Meh, Google know that nobody would pay for that as a selling point when it only applied to a third of videos, and they will never get copyright clearance from third parties for more than that.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#63

Post by tamimio »

wodenokoto wrote: post #57
hk__2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which websites?

No, the broader concept of how to dissect the behaviour to figure out the api endpoints called, what was sent to them, what was returned, etc.

MITM proxy, ZAP, fiddler, and Burp suite are some tools to start with, and wireshark/postman just in case you needed it. Rest is just your knowledge in JavaScript mostly.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#64

Post by Klaus23 »

no_time wrote: post #19

I'm constantly suprised when YT deploys another half measure against downloaders when GOOG also owns widevine. I wonder what is their reasons for not using it.

The software version of widevine would be so thoroughly broken in a very short time that it would be bypassed by any one-click downloader addon. Nothing would change for users and YouTube would have the overhead for widevine.

Using the hardware based version could cause a lot of problems with unsupported devices.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#65

Post by planede »

AltruisticGapHN wrote: post #48

On a sidenote am I imagining things or do videos actually look a tiny bit better in YouTube? This really has puzzled me. I downloaded a few favourites and watch them on VLC or Infuse on my AppleTV. In the YouTube app I can use the "nerd stats" to confirm I am viewing the exact same video/audio streams... ... it could be my imagination but it seems like YouTube does a really subtle kind of filter that makes the "block…

A single youtube video has a couple of available video, audio and combined streams. It might be your browser picks a different stream to what youtube-dl (or its fork) takes by default.

I'm not sure what the defaults currently are for youtube-dl and its forks, but for a long time it defaulted to the best combined stream. However the best distinct audio and video streams are higher quality.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#66

Post by chii »

londons_explore wrote: post #42
no_time wrote: post #19

I'm constantly suprised when YT deploys another half measure against downloaders when GOOG also owns widevine. I wonder what is their reasons for not using it.

I don't think youtube really cares if you pirate their content or use a 3rd party client. What they care about is you wasting their bandwidth. For an ad-supported video streaming site, bandwidth is normally more expensive than revenue - Google only manages to make it just about work because they have probably the worlds cheapest bandwidth due to being able to bully ISP's into peering with them for free. (they don't l…

Sooner or later, youtube will do the same thing as twitch, which is to dynamically splice ads into the video stream - making it impossible to block with current mechanisms.

They don't do it yet, probably because they don't see the need quite yet. But i have no doubts that it will happen sooner or later.

Adblocking will have to evolve to a new level to block such things.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#67

Post by planede »

Applejinx wrote: post #35
planede wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how abusive this is though. In the end you are downloading the same amount of data, but in a shorter time. You are utilizing more bandwidth but you go away earlier. I think the original browser use case is tuned for the common occurrence of not watching the whole video. But if you intend to watch (and archive) the whole video to begin with then I don't think this eats away Google's bandwidth more. OTOH it pr…

Well, you go away unless you're another organization that proposes to mirror all of YouTube and eat its lunch. Google can't only think about humans, it's got to also think about competing organizations. That complicates things.

That organization would probably parallelize the download on multiple video level, not necessarily on subrange level on a single video.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#68

Post by deno »

Mindwipe wrote: post #61
deno wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s plenty they could do. They could flip a switch tomorrow and limit access to only signed-in users, and they could further enable DRM, as pretty much by now the majority of users are already on DRM-handicapped platforms. Any will-be-called "legacy" users would just get limited to 480p.

YT-DLP can import cookies to bypass the signed-in user issue. It has to as many videos in the EU require credit card age verification to access.

And YT-DLP could run the extracted Widevine plugin just as Kodi can today but ultimately it can’t spoof attestation and that’s already in the works as well.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#69

Post by js8 »

sph wrote: post #32
benterix wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies do not have ethics, only interests. While that's certainly true (although an simplification - they are just managed by people with low ethics), we can do better. If I behaved like managers of Google, Meta or Microsoft, I'd be ashamed of myself.

I despise this philosophy. Megacorps are shit, so we should be better than them? It's a popular theme because it makes one feel like they have control over the world around them: they just have to be better than it. No. I shouldn't have to work harder myself to somehow cancel out the evil in the world. Because if we were less cowards and calling them for what they are - evil - they wouldn't hold so much power over us…

> No. I shouldn't have to work harder myself to somehow cancel out the evil in the world.

Not only you should, but you should also support countermeasures that make it harder for evil, so you eventually wouldn't have to work harder.

If there is one reason, do it for your kids, to show them that a better world is possible.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#70

Post by noisem4ker »

adhvaryu wrote: post #54
deno wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s plenty they could do. They could flip a switch tomorrow and limit access to only signed-in users, and they could further enable DRM, as pretty much by now the majority of users are already on DRM-handicapped platforms. Any will-be-called "legacy" users would just get limited to 480p.

They already lowered bitrates for non premium members.

Proof? The news I recently saw, if you're referring to that, actually said they'd offer a higher-bitrate 1080p option for YouTube Premium, not that they'd lock the (then) current bitrate behind YouTube Premium and downgrade everyone else.

Edit: I did some searching. In addition to that, the only relevant news I could find were about Google testing locking the 4K (2160p) resolution behind the Premium doors, which they ceased doing.

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