Live data from Hacker News

Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

blog.0x7d0.dev

211–220 of 242 posts

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#211
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 could flip a switch tomorrow and limit access to only signed-in users Huge amount of users of youtube are literally babies, they don't know how to read or write so they don't sign in. I'm starting to also suspect the trend of YTs algorithm insisting on recommending videos you've already watched is also a decision from this huge baby user base.

Their parents will sign in when magic rectangle stops working.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#212

"Have you ever tried to download videos from YouTube? I mean manually without relying on software like youtube-dl, yt-dlp or one of "these" websites. It's much more complicated than you might think." This reminds me of some sort of fizzbuzz test. This is not complicated at all. There is no need to use the Range header or run Javascript. The short script below does not download anything because there is no need. It do…

[deleted]

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#213

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…

Doesn't youtube ultimately use the browser's video player now that flash is no more? In addition to what the other poster said about checking if you're downloading the exact same codec etc as you're watching, you could try playing the downloaded video with the browser and see what it looks like.

Most websites use JS to tell the player what to do, so the JS decides what streams to play based on asking the browser what it supports.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#214
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a sidenote am I imagining things or do videos actually look a tiny bit better in YouTube? I'm not [ADVERTISEMENT] sure, because my YouTube viewing [ADVERTISEMENT] experience nowadays is so [ADVERTISEMENT] [ADVERTISEMENT] frequently interrupted with ads that it [ADVERTISEMENT] breaks my focus. #pleaselikeandsubscribeandclickonthenotificationbell

Get sponsor block and ad block extensions or a client with it built in and never think about this again

Or you know, pay for a subscription.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get sponsor block and ad block extensions or a client with it built in and never think about this again

Or you know, pay for a subscription.

I can't, even if I want to. Premium is not sold in my country. So, more creative solutions are called for.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#216
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Because if we were less cowards and calling them for what they are - evil - they wouldn't hold so much power over us. three years of covid nonsense -> crickets video download speed throttle -> rage Something is wrong here.

That's because there was a very good reason for that Covid "nonsense" as you put it: reducing infection rates and keeping healthcare systems from collapsing. If you disagree with that, then I'm sorry you aren't living in reality and believe in idiotic conspiracy theories and microchips in vaccines and the like.

(That said, there really was some real nonsense, such as certain dumb countries that penalized people for going on bicycle rides in rural areas by themselves.)

There's no good-for-society reason behind throttling video download speeds.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#217
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.

> It's only natural I behave similarly. Are you meaning towards everyone? Or are you meaning your behaviour back towards those companies?

I hope he means back toward those companies, in which case he's exactly right.

You wouldn't treat a deranged serial killer with respect and courtesy. Why should poorly-behaved amoral corporations be treated as you would treat normal humans?

Corporations should be treated in accordance with their own behavior. The mom-n-pop shop down the street that uses an LLC for legal purposes and treats you like a valued customer? You should treat them with respect and kindness. The evil megacorp that tries to lobby for shitty laws to screw you over? You should screw them over too. (And alternatively, the big corporation that makes good products for decent prices and doesn't seem to be actively trying to blatantly harm society and twist things to their advantage with legal tricks or lobbying? You should treat them respectfully too.)

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no throttling when using the JSON returned by the HTTP request in the shell script or generated by the utilities I wrote. it's not the key the author is using, it's the post-data. Moreover, to get throttled videoplayback URLs with the "WEB" key and client info like the author is using, one does not need to make POST requests to /youtubei/v1/player. There are throttled videoplayback URLs in the HTML of the /w…

Interesting. I ran the script to extract the json - that part was almost instant, then i used the first `url` field of `streamingData.adaptiveFormats`. I then ran curl 'https://...googlevideo.com...' --output video.mp4 for me the download is throttled to "768k", i assume thats in bits per second and not bytes which is very low: the random video i tried would take 8 minutes. on the other hand, yt-dlp videoIdHere does…

Is 768k too slow to watch the video from the URL. If not, then I would not call that "throttled". Don't need 500 MB/s to watch a video. From what I've seen, when people discuss YouTube throttling online they are referring to max speeds of 60-70k. That's too slow to watch the video from the URL. Not too slow to download, though. And that's why this idea that YouTube is "preventing" downloads doesn't make any sense. There are download URLs in every /watch?v= YouTube page. Those are throttled. Max speed 60-70k.

Use this post-data and should get same speed as yt-dlp.

    {"context": {"client": {"clientName": "ANDROID", "clientVersion": "17.31.35", "androidSdkVersion": 30 }}, "videoId": "$x", "params": "CgIQBg==", "playbackContext": {"contentPlaybackContext": {"html5Preference": "HTML5_PREF_WANTS"}}, "contentCheckOk": true, "racyCheckOk": true}
I do not use curl, except in HN examples. I generally do not download from YouTube. I use the URLs in the JSON to watch the video.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#219
post #194

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…

> On a sidenote am I imagining things or do videos actually look a tiny bit better in YouTube? I'm not [ADVERTISEMENT] sure, because my YouTube viewing [ADVERTISEMENT] experience nowadays is so [ADVERTISEMENT] [ADVERTISEMENT] frequently interrupted with ads that it [ADVERTISEMENT] breaks my focus. #pleaselikeandsubscribeandclickonthenotificationbell

Youtube without Premium is unbearable for me. I rather pay a few € than submit my family to the advertising terror, and even the creators get more (6x, any yt creator here that can chime in?) revenue from a Premium view.

Imagine we could have Internet Premium and never see ads again.

Re: Bypassing YouTube video download throttling

#220
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm watching with AppleTV, comparing Infuse with YouTube. So I can only "eyeball" it. Wish AppleTV let me do screenshots it would be fun!

I don't know what Infuse is but I could screen record Apple TV from the web browser just fine back when I had that subscription. Otherwise, try a VM

I think he means he's watching YouTube on an appletv device.
Post reply on HN