Want I really want is an *arr style app that I can give a list of Youtube channels I want archived, and it would just keep the archive up to date indefinitely.
Just found out about https://github.com/DialmasterOrg/Youtarr today.
The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press
101–110 of 251 posts
Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press
#102The claim that Google secretly wants YouTube downloaders to work doesn't hold up. Their focus is on delivering videos across a vast range of devices without breaking playback(and even that is blurring[0]), not enabling downloads. If you dive into the yt-dlp source code, you see the insane complexity of calculations needed to download a video. There is code to handle nsig checks, internal YouTube API quirks, and const…
To be fair, the article doesn't say Google "secretly wants" downloaders to work. It says they need downloaders to work, despite wanting to make them as annoying as possible to use. The argument isn't so much about Google's feelings as it is about whether the entire internet would continue making YouTube the video hosting site to use if downloaders were actually (effectively) blocked.
I don’t think companies are asking “can people download this video” but rather “can people watch this video” - downloaders seems like an afterthought or non issue.
Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press
#103The author makes the case that EULAs are "toothless." However, what about federal law? In the U.S., at least, it is illegal to make copies of other people's work. This is not an offense against YouTube (who does not inherently own the media they present), but the publishers, the creators, etc. Somehow, I doubt that Alan Becker would approve people downloading and sharing his videos willy-nilly.
Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even with DRM video you can fetch it losslessly. At some point, some part of your system requires access to the raw, decrypted video stream. As long as that's the case, you can get bit-perfect netflix rips.
The problem is that if you have the raw data, you’ve lost the original compression information, so you can’t get it back to a sensible size without double compressing. e.g. Think about what you get when you save a jpeg as a bitmap.
You can get the original compressed h264/h265/etc stream back out, that's the entire point.
Even DRM media is using regular accelerated video decode.
Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press
#105The claim that Google secretly wants YouTube downloaders to work doesn't hold up. Their focus is on delivering videos across a vast range of devices without breaking playback(and even that is blurring[0]), not enabling downloads. If you dive into the yt-dlp source code, you see the insane complexity of calculations needed to download a video. There is code to handle nsig checks, internal YouTube API quirks, and const…
While I do agree (mostly, I've never had a download NOT work, on the rare occasion I grab one), they haven't made it impossible to download videos, so that is a win IMO.
> mostly, I've never had a download NOT work
Well, how about thanks the people who's maintaining the downloader to make it possible?
> they haven't made it impossible to download videos, so that is a win IMO.
At some point you can just fire up OBS Studio and do a screen rip, then cut the ads out manually and put it on Torrent/ED2k.
Will you still think it's a win then?
Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The argument the article is making is that if they really wanted YouTube downloaders to stop working, they'd switch to Encrypted Media Extensions. Do you think that's not plausible?
Using DRM would make it illegal for YouTubers to use Creative-Commons-licensed content in their videos, such as Kevin MacLeod's music or many images from Wikipedia.
When you upload a video to YouTube, you agree that you own the copyright or are otherwise able to grant YouTube a license to do whatever they want with it [0]:
> If you choose to upload Content, you must not submit to the Service any Content that does not comply with this Agreement (including the YouTube Community Guidelines) or the law. For example, the Content you submit must not include third-party intellectual property (such as copyrighted material) unless you have permission from that party or are otherwise legally entitled to do so. [...]
> By providing Content to the Service, you grant to YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable license to use that Content (including to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works, display and perform it) in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and Affiliates') business, including for the purpose of promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service.
If you include others' work with anything stronger than CC0, that's not a license you can grant. So you'll always be in trouble in principle, regardless of whether or how YouTube decides to exercise that license. In practice, I wouldn't be surprised if the copyright owner could get away with a takedown if they wanted to.
Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press
#107Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and the organization does not have the resources to setup an alternative. Can confirm at least one tech news website argued this point and tore down their own video hosting servers in favor of using Youtube links/embeds. Old videos on tweakers.net are simply not accessible anymore, that content is gone now This was well after HTML5 was widely supported. As a website owner myself, I don't understand what's so hard n…
> As a website owner myself, I don't understand what's so hard now that we can write 1 HTML tag and have an embedded video on the page. You acknowledge that it's not that simple: > running ffmpeg at a few quality settings upon uploading (there are maybe 3 articles with a video per day, so any old server can handle this) Can any old server really handle that? And can it handle the resulting storage of not only the hig…
Here's me hosting a bunch of different bitrates of a high quality video, which I encoded on a 2016 laptop. http://lelandbatey.com/projects/REDLINE-intro/
The server is $30/month hosted by OVH, which comes with 2TB of storage. The throughout on the dedicated server is 1gbps. Unlimited transfer is included (and I've gone through many dozens of TB of traffic in a month).
Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press
#109The claim that Google secretly wants YouTube downloaders to work doesn't hold up. Their focus is on delivering videos across a vast range of devices without breaking playback(and even that is blurring[0]), not enabling downloads. If you dive into the yt-dlp source code, you see the insane complexity of calculations needed to download a video. There is code to handle nsig checks, internal YouTube API quirks, and const…
Written by somebody who hasn't taken 1 look at yt-dlp source code or issues. Google regularly pushes updates that "coincidentally" break downloaders. The obfuscation and things they do to e.g. break a download by introducing some breaking code or dynamic calculation required only part way through the video is not normal. They are not serving a bunch of video files or chunks, you need a "client" that handles all these things to download a video. At this point, if you assert that Google doesn't want to secretly stop it, you are either extremely naive, ignorant, or a Google employee.
Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press
#110The claim that Google secretly wants YouTube downloaders to work doesn't hold up. Their focus is on delivering videos across a vast range of devices without breaking playback(and even that is blurring[0]), not enabling downloads. If you dive into the yt-dlp source code, you see the insane complexity of calculations needed to download a video. There is code to handle nsig checks, internal YouTube API quirks, and const…
I miss the system where, when I was watching a flash video in Firefox, that video was already present on my hard drive as an .flv file in /tmp, and I could just copy it somewhere.