171–180 of 242 posts
I've never tried YouTube, but I have downloaded videos from sketchier streaming websites using the web developer tools. Almost all of them have the same protection: some code that triggers only when you open the tools and stops the video by creating a debugger statement you cannot skip and triggering some cpu-heavy code (probably an infinite loop, although I wouldn't discard cryptominers). More importantly this code…
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…
So make a nice, good documented blog post for google engineers to understand and fix this issue?? Whyy
I've never tried YouTube, but I have downloaded videos from sketchier streaming websites using the web developer tools. Almost all of them have the same protection: some code that triggers only when you open the tools and stops the video by creating a debugger statement you cannot skip and triggering some cpu-heavy code (probably an infinite loop, although I wouldn't discard cryptominers). More importantly this code…
I've seen this technique too, but I feel that this is a major flaw on the browser's side. It should be impossible to tell if the dev tools is open or not. Surely this can be done right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - Forces software video decoding, which is slow No it doesn't. Heck, forcing software decoding is actually one of the ways to force Widevine down to lower protection levels on general purpose hardware. > - Web browsers only support the weakest form of Widevine which is ineffective It's not fullproof but it would certainly make tools to bypass it clearly illegal in most of the world. There are efficacy reasons for n…
> No it doesn't. If you're using a PC with a Nvidia GPU, run `nvidia-smi dmon -s u` and start playing a random Youtube video in Chrome. You'll notice how dec% moves from 0% to at least 2%. Pause, and start playing Widevine protected video and notice how dec% stays at 0% because decoding is happening on the CPU. > It's not fullproof but it would certainly make tools to bypass it clearly illegal in most of the world. G…
It's because Widevine have embedded decoder into its lib and its using CPU instructions but from user perspective it's not a huge change on modern CPUs as most have specialized instructions to handle decoding of H264 etc.
> Widevine L1* is ineffective in practice. Techniques to bypass it aren't available to the average Joe, but of course there are groups that will download, decrypt, and re-upload the newest 4K streaming releases to torrent trackers within an hour of them appearing on streaming services.
There are no "Techniques to bypass it", the only way currently to get L1 streams is to use legit hardware keys from some devices, on which you can exploit secure enclave/extract HW keys.
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.
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…
I can answer about the audio. YouTube (and most other streaming sites like Spotify etc) use something called ReplayGain. It's essentially a tag that specifies the calculated average loudness of the video/song/whatever (this number is calculated at upload time). Upon playback, the official YT client knows to use that tag and adjust its volume level accordingly, but I'd imagine either the tag isn't getting downloaded,…
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 wonder what is their reasons for not using it - Introduces a decryption step, which is slow - Forces software video decoding, which is slow - Web browsers only support the weakest form of Widevine which is ineffective It would effectively push a significant portion of their user base off the platform while not being very effective in its goals.
It's not slow, after you decrypt the AES key, then you are using hardware AES instruction set supported by most CPUs currently.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you used `mediainfo` to check the codecs, bitrate and encoding settings? Curious what you'd find there...
Hey thanks I didn't know about this tool. Interestingly since I have the older download from ~3 weeks ago I just ran mediainfo on it, and the new download from today. Then I just switch tabs in terminal so I can easily see what changes. Old / New vp09 / vp09 filesize 488 mb / 391 mb OVerall bitrate 3274 kb/s / 2620 kb/s Bits/(Pixel\*Frame) 0.036 / 0.028 I don't see anything else significant. It seems to me in recent…
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…
macOS has an AI video upscaling algorithm that was introduced in version 12