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Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

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Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#91
post #36

I use yt-dlp (and back then youtube-dl) all the time to archive my liked videos. Started back in around 2010, now I have tens of thousands of videos saved. Storage is cheap and a huge percent of them are not available anymore on the site. I also save temporary videos removed after a time for example NHK honbasho sumo highlights which are only available for a month or so then they permanently remove them.

You are a digital hoarder. I have taken so many pics that I wouldn't even bother to look back that them (do we ever?) but Google memories is really a neat feature, it refreshes memories. I think you should run a similar service to refresh memory of your favourite videos like they are on speed dail.

I compulsively take pictures of the sky, same never to be looked at

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#92
post #12

I wonder why YouTube doesn't implement full DRM, such as Widevine, at this point. Is it because it would break compatibility with some devices? Is it too expensive? (not that I'd like that; I always download videos from YouTube for my personal archive, and I only use 3rd party or modified clients)

It's just an understandable reluctance to insert a bunch of additional dependencies in your playback stack unless you really, really have to.

People underestimate how much engineering Netflix have put in over the years to get it to work seamlessly and without much playback start latency, and replicating that over literally millions of existing videos is pretty non-trivial, as is re-transcoding.

It's not because of older devices - any TV that has got a YouTube app for a decade was required to support Widevine as part of the agreement to get the app, so the tail end of devices you'd cut off would be tiny, and even if they wanted to keep them in use you could probably use the client certificate to authenticate them and disallow general web access. It wouldn't be 100% fullproof but if any open source project used an extracted key you could revoke it quickly.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s such a wild possibility that more and more jobs will be able to be done with locked down tablets and smart phone while fewer will be done on laptops and desktops. We are already seeing it at the personal level - people are entirely forgoing personal computers and using mobile devices exclusively. The amount isn’t huge (like 10 or 15% in the US IIRC?) but 10 years ago that was unthinkable IMO. I was…

Just because the balance shifts doesn't mean the desktop/laptop stops being supported. Laptops aren't going anywhere. Even if phones and tablets replace them for a third of tasks, or a third of people. The idea that laptops with browsers would become so rare that YouTube would drop support, within any reasonably predictable future timeframe, is pure fantasy.

>within any reasonably predictable future timeframe

I think given the pace of technological advancement and given how every generation we see at least one major piece of electronics completely wipe out generations of predictions, this statement doesn’t serve a productive purpose other than to make “I don’t agree” sound like some variation of “it’s an objective fact that what you said is impossible.” You’re just spiking the conversation, even if that is not your intention.

I didn’t say this is definitely going to happen. I’m just saying clearly the way we engage with computers is shifting and that means companies will adjust accordingly. It’s not that far fetched.

As for “within any reasonably predictable future timeframe,” for all we know YouTube will become a relic.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#94
post #3

In ten years time YouTube will be entirely inaccessible from the browser as the iPad kids generation are used to doomscrolling the tablet app and Google feels confident enough to cut off the aging demographic.

i think a lot of millenials and older gen-z use youtube on browsers. It has more and more alternative competitors too, like bilibili in China.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#95
Seems its already in Arch's repositories, and seems to work, just add another flag to the invocation:

    yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser firefox --remote-components ejs:github -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best" 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXX'
It is downloading a solver at runtime, took maybe half a second in total, downloads are starting way faster than before it seems to me.

    [youtube] [jsc:deno] Solving JS challenges using deno
    [youtube] [jsc:deno] Downloading challenge solver lib script from  https://github.com/yt-dlp/ejs/releases/download/0.3.1/yt.solver.lib.min.js
It would be great if we could download the solver manually with a separate command, before running the download command, as I'm probably not alone in running yt-dlp in a restricted environment, and being able to package it up together with the solver before runtime would let me avoid lessening the restrictions for that environment. Not a huge issue though, happy in general the start of downloads seems much faster now.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have a cron job or something? i know it is probably trivial but eh

Popular self-hosted solution: https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist

You people always make everything more complicated than necessary.

  yt-dlp -o '%(uploader)s/%(upload_date)s - %(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s' --cookies-from-browser chrome https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=LL

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#97
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pffft, and good riddance, comrade! Just think about native application and native performance, great native animations and native experience (and native ads, of course)! We won't have this god-awful Web (that propelled modern tech world in the first place) anymore, we can finally have personal vendetta against awful JS and DOM. No more interoperability, no more leverage against corpos, just glorious proprietary encla…

Think of iOS. You can basically use just 1 programming stack on iOS devices: Swift/Objective-C. You can't have JIT except for the JIT approved by the Apple Gods. The biggest hack to this is React Native, which barged just in due to sheer Javascript and web dominance elsewhere, and even that has a ton of problems. Plus I'm fairly sure that the React Native JS only runs in the JIT approved by the Apple Gods, anyway. Ot…

> Plus we have tons of very promising battery techs very close to increasing battery capacities by 20-50%.

Could you elaborate a bit, please? Any links are appreciated.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#98
post #87
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the point was that yt-dlp is only possible, because of the mandatory protocols you need in the browser. Moving to native app makes it much easier to prevent downloading and denying access to the unencrypted content.

> Moving to native app makes it much easier to prevent downloading and denying access to the unencrypted content. It would still be possible with native apps. Somebody will have to reverse engineer it continuously. So it will be slower, but still possible. However, that won't be the case if they start using some secret (like a private key) that you can't access directly from an app, or if they decide that you can't r…

> That's what I believe to be the true intentions behind their push to adopt dystopian technologies like secure enclaves and platform attestation. Not really about security as they claim.

Yeah, that is exactly I was thinking.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#99
post #31
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’d need dedicated hardware to enforce any kind of effective DRM. Encrypted bitstream generated on the fly watchable only on L2 attested device.

Netflix is already there for 4k streams

It's not as easy as downloading a YouTube video though

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#100
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever go back and actually watch those videos? Whenever I start to journal, track, or just document something, after some time I notice again and again that most of the value has already been created the moment I finish working on a specific entry. Even with something seemingly very important like medical records. Maybe one exception I can think of are recordings of memories involving people close to you

I would be interested in knowing as well. I've been watching YouTube since it first came out and can't remember any times where I saw something I thought I needed to actually download and save in case I wanted it in 10 years. 10,000+ videos is a lot of videos to just seemingly save.

Whether something is worth downloading is a good heuristic for whether it's worth watching in the first place. e.g. university lectures, technical talks, hobby technique tutorials, etc. are something you may want to reference in the future, or you may want to save for your kids in case they're interested in it one day, etc. The latest slop from professional "content creators" that you can't imagine keeping so you can pass it down one day? Not worth your time today either.
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