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Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

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Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#241
post #9

I’m a paying YouTube premium subscriber. Last weekend, I wanted to download something so I can watch it on my way in the train. The app got stuck at “waiting for download..” on my iPad. Same on iPhone. Restart did not work. I gave up after an hour (30 mins hands on trying stuff, 30 mins waiting for it to fix itself). Downloaded the video using yt-dlp, transferred it to my USB c flash drive, and watched it from that.…

I'm constantly baffled by how bad the implementation of YouTube Premium downloads is. Videos will buffer to 100% in a matter of seconds but get endlessly stuck when I hit the download button. Why? All the bytes are literally on my device already.

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#242
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what Accelerate means? I want them to go overboard. I want BigTech to go nuts on this stuff. I want broken systems and nonsense. Because that’s the only way we’re going to get anything better.

Accelerationism is a dead-end theory with major holes in its core. Or I should say, "their" core, because there's a million distant and mutually-incompatible varieties. Everyone likes to say "gosh, things are awful, it MUST end in collapse, and after the collapse everyone will see things MY way." They can't all be right. And yet, all of them with their varied ideas still think it'll be a good idea to actively push to…

I'm not waiting for the collapse to fix things - I'm waiting for it so that I won't have any more distractions and I can go back to my books.

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#243
I did download YouTube videos a few years ago, I did value that YouTube could keep your place.

But it’s a real mess it keeps crashing, something I might too humbly put down to me having too many files, but passive aggressively put it down to YouTube on iPad not having a limited amount of storage space.

On the other hand there’s a number of amazing videos I’ve downloaded to watch which have been remotely wiped. Grrr

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#244

Good to see the mice are still winning the cat-and-mouse game. Selfishly, I kind of want the cat to start to win, to satisfy my curiosity. I predict that if YouTube ever actually blocked downloading, a YouTube competitor that supports downloading would start to immediately gain popularity. I want to know if I'm right about that, and there's no way to test unless Google actually starts to win. Go, Google, go! I believ…

Those who download videos are a minority and targeting minorities will never give you exponential growth. Furthermore, the same minority probably abuses ad blockers so it would be difficult to squeeze a single cent from these freeloaders.

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#245

Nsig/sig - Special tokens which must be passed to API calls, generated by code in base.js (player code). This is what has broken for yt-dlp and other third party clients. Instead of extracting the code that generates those tokens (eg using regular expressions) like we used to, we now need to run the whole base.js player code to get these tokens because the code is spread out all over the player code. PoToken - Proof…

If you ever wondered why the likes of Google and Cloudflare want to restrict the web to a few signed, integrity-checked browser implementations? Now you know.

Weird people talking about small time creators wanting DRM I've never seen that... Usually they'd be hounding for any attention? I don't know why multiple accounts are seemingly independently bringing this up, but maybe it is trying to muddy the waters? This concept?

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#246
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also pay for YouTube Premium, but I still use ReVanced on my smartphone just to disable auto-translation. It’s absolute madness that users can’t configure this in the official app.

The auto-dub feature is madness. I noticed it first a couple of days ago, I'm crossing my fingers that few authors choose to enable it, and that YouTube makes it easy to disable as a default in settings (not currently possible, you have to do it as you watch, every time). I'm in a Spanish speaking country, but I want to watch English videos in English. Auto-generated subtitles for other languages are ok, but I want t…

What about the auto translated titles? It also happens for chapters in the video...

Sames languages as you. It drives me nuts because the translations are almost always wrong.

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#247
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not though. You can't download an mp4 to use however you wish with YouTube Premium. And definitely not via an API.

None of that was mentioned in the comment?

did you miss the word "API"? it was there.

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#248
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever wondered why the likes of Google and Cloudflare want to restrict the web to a few signed, integrity-checked browser implementations? Now you know.

>If you ever wondered why the likes of Google and Cloudflare want to restrict the web I disagree with the framing of "us vs them". It's actually "us vs us". It's not just us plebians vs FAANG giants. The small-time independent publishers and creators also want to restrict the web because they don't want their content "stolen". They want to interact with real humans instead of bots. The following are manifestations of…

I don’t feel like dollars are stolen from me. It’s more of companies abusing my goodwill to publish information online. From higher bills as a result of aggressive crawling, to copying my work and removing all copyright/licensing from the code. Sure, fair use and all, but when they return the same exact code it just makes me wonder.

Nowadays, producing anything feels like being the cows udder.

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#249
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also pay for YouTube Premium, but I still use ReVanced on my smartphone just to disable auto-translation. It’s absolute madness that users can’t configure this in the official app.

The auto-dub feature is madness. I noticed it first a couple of days ago, I'm crossing my fingers that few authors choose to enable it, and that YouTube makes it easy to disable as a default in settings (not currently possible, you have to do it as you watch, every time). I'm in a Spanish speaking country, but I want to watch English videos in English. Auto-generated subtitles for other languages are ok, but I want t…

Comments are quite good at pointing out when the creator has accidentally left it on (it is of course enabled by default and authors have to actively disable it).

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#250
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There could be valid reasons for fighting downloaders, for example: - AI companies scraping YT without paying YT let alone creators for training data. Imagine how many data YT has. - YT competitors in other countries scraping YT to copy videos, especially in countries where YT is blocked. Some such companies have a function "move all my videos from YT" to promote bloggers migration.

Then they should allow a download API for paying customers.

But even if you’re a paying customer, the creator is only paid if you watch it on the platform.
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