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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

#251
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 run into that download issue all the time. I need to pause downloading each video. Force close the youtube app. Then unpause the downloads to get them downloading again. It has been happening for years and is still unfixed.

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

#254

Days of just getting data off the web are coming to an end as everything requires a full browser running thousands of lines of obfuscated js code now. So instead of a website giving me that 1kb json that could be cached now I start a full browser stack and transmit 10 megabytes through 100 requests, messing up your analytics and security profile and everyone's a loser. Yay.

This 1kb os json still sounds like a modern thing, where you need to download many MB of JavaScript code to execute and display the 1kb json data.

What you want is to just download the 10-20kb html file, maybe a corresponding css file, and any images referenced by the html. Then if you want the video you just get the video file direct.

Simple and effective, unless you have something to sell.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question! Indeed you can run the challenge code using headless Chromium and it will function [1]. They are constantly updating the challenge however, and may add additional checks in the future. I suppose Google wants to make it more expensive overall to scrape Youtube to deter the most egregious bots. [1] https://github.com/LuanRT/BgUtils

LLMs solve challenges. Can we not solve these challenges with sufficiently advanced LLMs? Gemini even, if you're feeling lulz-y.

Yes, by spending money.

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

#257

It's incredible how much work goes into these open source projects for downloading youtube videos, especially since youtube keeps breaking them. There are nearly 1500 contributors

To be fair yt-dlp supports a lot more than just YouTube

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/tree/master/yt_dlp/extracto...

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

#258
post #64
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 also a premium subscriber, and have struggled with the same issues on the iPad app. I try to keep some shows downloaded for my toddler, and the download feature never seems to work on the first try. I finally got so fed up, I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 off ebay for $50 and flashed it with LineageOS. I can now load whatever media I want onto the 1 TB sdcard I've installed in it. The 5 year old hardware plays v…

I use yt-dlp inside of a-shell on iOS, then play files using VLC.

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

#259
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that's a problem for Youtube. What does it have to do with me rendering Youtube videos on my own computer in the way I want?

You don't have that right. When you view copyrighted content, you do so at the pleasure of the licensor.

How you watch copyrighted content has never been something that copyright has controlled.
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