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Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

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Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#181

Post by rolph »

benterix wrote: post #23
no_time wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ethically, if you don't only think “fuck Google" Companies do not have ethics, only interests. It's only natural I behave similarly.

> 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.

If I behaved like managers of Google, Meta or Microsoft, not only would i be ashamed of myself; I would not leave my lunch or coffee out of my sight.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#182

Post by CydeWeys »

planede wrote: post #166
CydeWeys wrote: post #136

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. In the end you're downloading a lot more data in total, as what ends up happening is you're downloading all sorts of stuff that you never end up getting around to actually watching (data hoarder syndrome). Whereas if you could only watch that stuff during life playback, you'd be downloading much less…

> In the end you're downloading a lot more data in total, as what ends up happening is you're downloading all sorts of stuff that you never end up getting around to actually watching (data hoarder syndrome). Well that's an assumption on the intent of downloading. I don't download videos that I don't eventually watch. But typically it's for archival, I just hate my favorite videos going away.

> I don't download videos that I don't eventually watch.

I doubt it.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#183

Post by bityard »

Klaus23 wrote: post #64
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.

As another commentor pointed out, Widevine is already in use on many streaming sites. Where are the one-click downloader addons for those? If they exist, I have not been able to find them.

(My use case is not so much in downloading a video, I just want to be able to my Amazon Prime videos on my Linux computer at a better resolution than 720p.)

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#184

Post by chfalck »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #85
no_time wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 If you missed it, not so long ago there was a submission that evaded exactly this. Their solution is so simple yet effective: Recompiling the browser with the debugger keyword renamed. Made me smile. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36961445

Honestly recompilation shouldn't even be necessary, browsers should just let us disable the debugger statement when "clever" sites start taking advantage of it. This usage of debuggers to circumvent our tools is abuse and should be literally impossible unless we consent to it. Our computers are our realms. God giveth and god taketh away.

If I recall, you can work around this by putting a conditional breakpoint on the debugger statement and then setting its return value to just `false`.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#185

Post by thrashh »

jgtrosh wrote: post #10

Technically, all interesting. Ethically, if you don't only think “fuck Google”, I feel like it's reasonable to stop after the first optimization (“pass the real browser test to get regular browser speeds”). There you're not “wasting” any more of YouTube's resources than a browser user with ad-block. Getting full Gb/s without paying anything feels to me like you're pushing all the ad-blocked users' luck. But then agai…

It's the cost of doing business?

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#186

Post by thrashh »

chii wrote: post #66
londons_explore wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think a lot of people watch YouTube on their TV or phone or on a browser without an ad-blocker. I rarely watch YouTube on my laptop.

I think Twitch users tend to watch on their computer mostly? And I think Twitch viewers are more techy so they would be more likely to have ad blockers.

I have no data on any of this. I'm just throwing shit at the wall.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#187

Post by mgdlbp »

AltruisticGapHN wrote: post #126
mgdlbp wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What filter the player uses for scaling (and chroma scaling) affects sharpness. Playing a native resolution stream fullscreen should eliminate differences here for monochrome edges. Depending on OS you might be able to toggle rapidly between two fullscreen apps to test for differences (cf ISO 29170-2, which recommends 5 Hz). Colour shifts (as in, input != output, not gradients) can come from bad handling of video col…

I'm "eyeballing" switching between Infuse and YouTube on an Apple TV 4k 2nd Gen (2021). The Sony TV is 1080p but I've been chosing 1440p now in YouTube as it definitely looks better overall (more details). The downloaded video is also 1440p, same audio/video streams as far I can tell. So both Infuse and YouTube will do some scaling to the viewport 1440 > 1080p. This is an example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?…

Ah that makes sense - the first video was only uploaded 3 weeks ago. It's known that, on youtube, formats become available in increasing resolution after upload as they finish encoding. Your experience now shows that the higher-res streams are encoded in a rush at first and later replaced with better compressed versions.

.

I've never seen such a long format list in youtube-dl before. Are 6xx new? Apparently,[1] they were introduced together with that 'premium 1080p' this April.

Comparing older 4k videos to your video: this one[2] now has 6xx, and 4xx are gone, and curiously the reported bitrates of all streams have since changed (reencoded?). 137 stayed about the same this time, but 18 dropped from 730k to 493k. For this video[3] 4xx are still available.

.

616 is not the actual premium 1080p as the posters at [4] think, is it? Currently youtube.com chooses 248 when playing [2], but yt-dlp can list and download 614 and 616 without any account cookies.

Rather, 6xx seem to comprise (of) vp9 spanning a medium, high, and sometimes low bitrate in all resolutions. Is yt considering replacing the older formats with these?

I just hope the original 18 and 22 remain for older videos, where any difference in quality also matters the most. When still available, in most cases the H.264 streams with creation_time prior to ~2013 are dramatically clearer than any more recent formats.

[1] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q=605+604+603+sort%3...

[2] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/1863#issue-106877303...

[3] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/389#issuecomment-103...

[4] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/6770

lets not discuss how often the h264 streams for new videos are higher quality than the vp9

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#188

Post by thrashh »

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.

Google probably wants to discourage third-party clients but allow people to archive. Quietly taking this half measure is the perfect and only solution to achieving this goal.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#189

Post by dotancohen »

jonatron wrote: post #155
stavros wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use something like mitmproxy or HTTP Toolkit to examine things exactly, as those can't be interacted with or detected like the dev tools can.

You can also use mitmproxy to remove or add debugger statements.

How does that work with certificate pinning?

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#190

Post by swyx »

> he most popular one is yt-dlp (a fork of youtube-dl) programmed in Python, but it includes its own custom JavaScript interpreter to transform the n parameter.

ah i remember this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32793061

i confess i still dont really understand why they had to make this but i'd love to hear the story behind it

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