Why do music videos from Youtube no longer download?

[miked400]

I don't know if it is something that just changed, or if I am just now figuring it out but VDH doesn't work with Youtube videos. Here is a link to a video.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HyZsroCvrg
Firefox 47.0.1
Video DownloadHelper 5.6.1
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1

[Wild Willy]

Not true, at least not for me.  Same Firefox, W7 Pro, all current maintenance.  I downloaded the video you point to.  It downloaded in a minute or two.  It then took about an hour -- yes, nearly 60 minutes -- to aggregate.  Did you make sure to wait until the aggregate step completed?  Like I say, it did take nearly an hour for it to complete on my system.  But it did complete.  I then played it back to make sure I had both audio and video, which I did.  It was all there.  In the interest of full disclosure however, I did play it back at rather a high speed since that is not my kind of music.  This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u0M4CMq7uI is more my kind of music, and not just because of the HOT BABES, although that certainly doesn't hurt.

[Wild Willy]

And speaking of HOT BABES . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf42IP__ipw

[Wild Willy]

Facetious references to HOT BABES in an attempt to get people to look at the videos aside, I am seeing something rather odd just now.  Sometimes when I look at the 3 videos mentioned in the posts above, VDH opens a dropdown offering one or several options for downloading the video on the page.  And sometimes clicking on the VDH icon opens a blank box.  Completely blank.  No selectable videos visible, but the box is as big as you would expect given the little number on the VDH icon in the tool bar of Firefox.  But the selections are not visible.  I seem to be able to make VDH populate its list by closing all browser windows & retrying.  But it works for just one of these videos.  As soon as I try to show the VDH list for a second of the videos, the VDH list flickers for a moment & all subsequent attempts to open the VDH list show the blank dropdown.  And it doesn't seem to matter which one I do first.  I've tried the Fuel video first, it shows selections, then I go to one of the Babe videos & it's blank.  Or I try one of the Babe videos first & it works but then the other Babe video & the Fuel video don't work.  It's like you get one shot & then you're done, unless you are willing to close all browser windows to grant yourself one more shot.

[Stewart Andreason]

I'll chime in because I'm seeing the same problem, and not for either the rock'n'roll nor the opera. Very funny Willy.

#1 Fuel: protected lock showing in VDH. Obviously the intent is copyright protection.
#3 same as #1, although it tried to show an ad my autoplay=no stopped.
When I try them in a clean profile with only VDH installed, then it shows "No media to process."

Note to google undoubtedly watching this, You bring my browser to a crawl and make it impossible to play videos in my modern firefox browser on a 2Ghz single core 3999 bogomips processor, with all the ads and JS and bloated CSS eating up cpu. If you would respect the customer, we wouldn't be looking for ways to view the videos outside the browser!!!

#2 Blond opera: My results differ from yours Willy, I took a screenshot to prove VDH can see 6 choices, 480x360 MP4, ADP 854x480 MP4, 176x144 3GPP, ADP 854x480 MKV, 480x360 WEBM, and 320x240 3GPP. I see no protected lock for this one. I don't know what is different in your computer's configuration, but I suspect it can be fixed. Just gotta find the annoying little conflict like detail.

[Wild Willy]

Thanks for the chime.  The more at the party, the merrier.

Screenshot?  So where is it?

OK so now I can't replicate the results I described earlier.  I'm attaching (I hope this works) 3 screenshots of what I just did.  First I opened the Barcarole video & showed the VDH dropdown.  Then I closed that web page, opened the Flower video in the same browser session, & showed the VDH dropdown, but I waited for VDH to clear away the orphans from the first video.  Then I closed that web page, opened the Fuel video in the same browser session, & showed the VDH dropdown, but I waited for VDH to clear away the orphans from the second video. As you can see, I got actual selections in the VDH dropdown.  All I did between my earlier post & now was other stuff on my system, not looking at YouTube videos.  Most specifically, I did not reboot since my earlier post.

OK.  So now let's see if I can attach those screenshots . . .

Looks like it worked.

While I'm at it, let me try that other video . . .  Well look at that!  I must have pushed my luck too far.  Look at the lovely BLANK dropdown VDH is giving me.  What I've been seeing with that video is that VDH has been offering me about 5 or 6 different selections to choose from to download the video.  But the list has NOT included the selection I actually downloaded a few days ago which was at a high resolution (something like 1920x1080).  So this screenshot actually shows a regression.

The problem here is not that VDH is doing strange things, although that is a problem.  The problem is that VDH does DIFFERENT strange things at DIFFERENT TIMES.  Computer programs are supposed to be deterministic entities.  They are supposed to act the same all the time.  And when they act up, they are supposed to act up the same way all the time.  VDH is acting up different ways at different times, and apparently in different ways for different people.  Stewart, are you running Windows?  Seems to me I saw a post from you that said you are running Linux.  So that's another variable in the mix, if that is case.

I can only hope that we dedicated problem finders can connect with a dedicated problem solver to get these issues fixed.

[Wild Willy]

I had to shut down all my browser windows so I could attach this screenshot of the Marc Anthony video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VmoZrxXbmg with an actual VDH drop down.  You'll note there's only 2 choices for download.  A couple of hours ago when I was looking into all of this, that video was offering me something like 5 or 6 possible downloads.  But in any case, the one I actually downloaded the other day at the high resolution is simply not appearing in the list any more.  I'm wondering if this is because I did actually successfully download that particular selection and now VDH is being smart & not showing it.  If that is the case, I'd like to know if there's a way to make VDH not be so smart and just show all selections, including ones I may have already downloaded.

While we're at it, I have a question for the VDH guys.  I have, as I've mentioned, seen videos take as long as 7 hours to aggregate, the high-res version of Flor Palida being one such.  And that's on an Intel Core i7 quad CPU @ 4GHz.  During that time I have not had any YouTube page actively open in the browser.  I've visited other web pages & done other things on my system outside the browser, but I've carefully held at least one browser window open.  The minimum has been the All Bookmarks page of Firefox.  I believe aggregation is performed by a program named avconv.exe.  I have seen that as a Process in the Windows Task Manager.  This leads me to wonder if I could close the last browser window.  Obviously, avconv is launched from inside Firefox by VDH.  But is it launched in such a way that taking down the last branch of the browser tree also takes down avconv?  Or is it launched in such a way that it is independent of the browser tree & will complete the aggregation even if no Firefox thread is running?

And now, just to annoy me I'm sure, all the videos mentioned on this page are showing me the empty VDH dropdown.

[Wild Willy]

Oh.  One more thing.  Stewart, you mentioned something about "protected lock."  I don't know what you're talking about.  Please post a screenshot of that.  And the other screenshots you mentioned earlier.

I suspect you are talking about how YouTube doesn't let people in different countries see certain things.  If that is the case, I can communicate with you outside Google Groups to get you around that.

[Stewart Andreason]

Looking at the Barcarole selection, I don't like seeing ADP at the top. Please open VDH - Options - More - Video Qualities
Are the entries ordered (sorted) differently than the defaults?

For the other screenshots, the only thing shown are the ADP choices, so the issue of taking hours is clearly seen in the path being taken to download the videos in separate streams and remuxing them on your computer, which is what takes time. Lots of time. Unacceptable choice when there are whole, (or non-ADP) entries right there, as in the Barcarole example.

I can easily imagine the drivers and libraries installed, can influence how different computers act differently, but I really don't see why VDH would not present the non-ADP choices, when other people can see them.
Also going via 9xbuddy.com does work just fine without any of the ADP paths, so VDH seems to have not figured out whatever trick is being used to get the whole MP4 and WEBM videos just fine.

Yes I'm running Debian Linux. I sent the screenshot.
http://www.seahorsecorral.org/images/tests/Screenshot-20160717_0628_vdh.png

[Stewart Andreason]

1920x1080 ? That takes Hours to remux.

I'm attaching the protected lock example.

I don't know if it is only the country restriction. Seems to me like ALL videos with any music in them are now flagged protected.
9xbuddy does not have that restriction, and I hope it does not "break" in the near future.

[Wild Willy]

VDH - Options - More - Video Qualities is something I have looked at before but I have never changed anything on that page, so I assume whatever I have there must be the default.

Interesting that on your system VDH is offering 6 choices & I'm seeing 9.  Maybe this has something to do with the countries we're in.

As for ADP vs non-ADP, I'm not entirely sure what the technical ramifications of that are.  When I download something, I purposely look for the choice that has the highest resolution.  If I'm going to keep a video on my system permanently for repeated viewing, I want the prettiest one on offer.  The thing that can be kind of annoying is the fact that it takes hours to aggregate certain videos.  It does militate against my downloading a lot of videos.  I don't think I would amass a large collection of videos in any case.  But that's just me.

The ADP thing seems to be an affliction unique to YouTube.  I guess VDH just deals with whatever they are presented with the best they can.  In any case, I had somebody on another thread (I think he's a VDH developer) tell me most people get aggregation to complete in minutes if not seconds.  I'm curious to get some other people to report how long aggregations take on their systems.

[Wild Willy]

Oh.  Protected.  Interesting.  I've never seen that little lock beside an item in VDH.  Mind you, I can't say I've looked at a huge amount of videos on YouTube, and I haven't been interested in downloading a whole lot of them, either.  And I'm seeing the blank VDH dropdown now on everything so I'm going to have to close all my browser windows to see what I get on that video.  Hang on . . .

[Stewart Andreason]

I never saw that icon before, about, 1 month ago.

On the VDH support thread, it was suggested I create a new clean profile, so to remove the influence of other plugins.  It is odd that I get No media that way, and yet my normal profile shows the videos, but unavailable being locked.

It's clear there is a coding race going on between youtube and plugin developers.

[Wild Willy]

Not only do I get only 1 entry in my VDH list & you get 3, but there's no overlap between what you get & what I get.  Plus I'm not seeing the little lock.  When an entry has one of those locks, does VDH refuse to download it?

[Wild Willy]

Wait.  I take that back.  The selection I'm seeing is the same as the second one in your list.

[Stewart Andreason]

That's correct, I specifically get a zero length file, and an error shows up in the VDH window:
Downloaded file is empty. Media might be protected.

So the lock tells me there is no point in trying to get the video by this path.

The real question is why doesn't your windows configuration (drivers,programs,libraries,register entries,etc) keep you from seeing the normal files? I think only the VDH developer can answer that, and I hope he can provide a test or query for your system to see what is different. Once the difference is identified, and he can replicate it on his equipment, then he can recode the plugin to resolve that issue.
At least that's how I would approach it from a programmers perspective.

[Wild Willy]

I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment, Stewart.  And the fact that you are running Linux while I'm running Windows 7 could be a factor as well, not in the systems per se but in something about VDH or some other part of the system configuration that affects the way YouTube pages are recognized . . .

IF

If indeed this is a VDH programming issue.  If, on the other hand, this is an issue about which country you are in, then there's nothing anybody at VDH can do to program around it.  But there IS something you can do about it & I repeat my offer to discuss that with you outside this Google Group.

[miked400]

OK it all started working. I have no idea why but it all works. I downloaded the Fuel video and it took about 28 min. It took about 6 or 7 seconds to download and 21 min to aggregate. The file was not very big, 320*240 14.1MB. Avconv.exe used about 48,000-50,000 KB memory and Disk Load was between 3 and 70 KB/s. I did reboot the computer but I had been doing that all week when VDH was not working.

Inspiron 1525

2.00GHz Core2 Duo CPU

3Gigs Ram

About 50Mbps internet speed.

[mig]

To answer some of the concerns raised above:

• VDH deals with the variants it can see. Some YT videos offer downloads in various qualities and formats, so VDH presents non-ADP variants to the user. In some cases, only the variants played in the page are available, and nowadays, these are only ADP (audio and video streamed separately). Here is a tip: before you request the download with VDH, try going fullscreen video for a few seconds. The YT page embedded player is likely to switch to a higher quality which will be detected by VDH and offered for download. But the reality is still that YT decides what variants are offered based on algorithms they only knows, it can be based on visitor's country, your browser, its version, your OS, your bandwidth, their resources, the fact you are logged or not, some random stuff, ... we cannot tell. But one thing is sure, given a version of VDH, the add-on acts deterministically regarding the information it gets.
• VDH is 10 years old this month. If we could go that far, this is because we always took care not using tricks that could make our product illegal. So yes, you may find some sites that offer more choices for YT protected videos. Google regularly close down those services. We make the choice to protect our users and our service.
• Regarding aggregation duration, if you are running Windows, make sure you run version 3.2 of the converter (http://www.downloadhelper.net/converthelper/windows/page/3.2). Also, open VDH settings > More > Conversion, check Advanced, and try to uncheck parameter Force H264 tuning in aggregation. This may accelerate the aggregation operation. Make sure you can still watch the generated videos on your system afterwards.

[Wild Willy]

On Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at 8:33:14 AM UTC-4, mig wrote:

To answer some of the concerns raised above:

I greatly appreciate your participation here, Michel.

• VDH deals with the variants it can see. Some YT videos offer downloads in various qualities and formats, so VDH presents non-ADP variants to the user. In some cases, only the variants played in the page are available, and nowadays, these are only ADP (audio and video streamed separately).

What is the advantage in streaming the audio & video separately?  Is this a technique that is likely to catch on across the web?  Or will it remain unique to YouTube?

• Here is a tip: before you request the download with VDH, try going fullscreen video for a few seconds. The YT page embedded player is likely to switch to a higher quality which will be detected by VDH and offered for download.

BRILLIANT!  That made the high-res format of that Marc Anthony video reappear in the VDH list.  I was beginning to think people might think I had hallucinated downloading that format.  I'm tempted to post a screenshot but people can try it for themselves.  I must say though that I have seen that video offer . . . I forget exactly how many now . . . but more than 5 choices for downloading the video.  But just now it offered only 3.  My feeling is that's non-deterministic.  I should get the same list every time.  And going full screen for a few seconds should not be required.  But could that just be YouTube being capricious?

• But the reality is still that YT decides what variants are offered based on algorithms they only knows, it can be based on visitor's country, your browser, its version, your OS, your bandwidth, their resources, the fact you are logged or not, some random stuff, ... we cannot tell. But one thing is sure, given a version of VDH, the add-on acts deterministically regarding the information it gets.

A lot of companies have developer relations conferences where they share information, offer developer tool kits, explain inner workings of their software up to a point, all to facilitate providing better service & software to the clients shared by the company & the developers building on the company's software.  I am gathering YouTube, or actually Google as the owner of YouTube, has not implemented such a policy.  I suppose that makes VDH a little miraculous that it works as well as it does.

• VDH is 10 years old this month. If we could go that far, this is because we always took care not using tricks that could make our product illegal. So yes, you may find some sites that offer more choices for YT protected videos. Google regularly close down those services. We make the choice to protect our users and our service.

See attached birthday cake.

• Regarding aggregation duration, if you are running Windows, make sure you run version 3.2 of the converter (http://www.downloadhelper.net/converthelper/windows/page/3.2). Also, open VDH settings > More > Conversion, check Advanced, and try to uncheck parameter Force H264 tuning in aggregation. This may accelerate the aggregation operation. Make sure you can still watch the generated videos on your system afterwards.

That page says I have version 3.2a2 of the converter the the H264 check box is not checked.  I have never changed anything on that page because I didn't understand any of it.  So I've had your recommendation in place all along & still aggregation takes a long time on my system.  What does "Recheck converter" do?  What is "Conversion outputs" for?  When I looked at the conversion rules, I had none.  Should I have any?  Like I say, I have looked but not touched that stuff since I don't know what I might break if I do.

Any ideas about the blank VDH dropdown?  (See the example in my Flor.jpg attachment above.)  I got one just now & tried letting the video play a few seconds in full screen.  That didn't make anything appear in the blank dropdown.  The only workaround I've discovered is closing all browser windows & relaunching the browser fresh.  Something less drastic would be nice to have.

[mig]

On Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at 3:44:02 PM UTC+2, Wild Willy wrote:

What is the advantage in streaming the audio & video separately?  Is this a technique that is likely to catch on across the web?  Or will it remain unique to YouTube?

I sincerely don't know what are the exact advantages of this method. Many other sites prefer HLS or DASH to adapt the quality to the available bandwidth. So far, we've only seen that on YouTube.
 

See attached birthday cake.

Thanks for the cake :)
 

That page says I have version 3.2a2 of the converter the the H264 check box is not checked.  I have never changed anything on that page because I didn't understand any of it.  So I've had your recommendation in place all along & still aggregation takes a long time on my system.  What does "Recheck converter" do?  What is "Conversion outputs" for?  When I looked at the conversion rules, I had none.  Should I have any?  Like I say, I have looked but not touched that stuff since I don't know what I might break if I do.

3.2a2 is ok and H264 unchecked is the way to go if it works for you. It was worth checking those information.

Other questions about the converter: check http://www.downloadhelper.net/conversion-manual
 

Any ideas about the blank VDH dropdown?  (See the example in my Flor.jpg attachment above.)  I got one just now & tried letting the video play a few seconds in full screen.  That didn't make anything appear in the blank dropdown.  The only workaround I've discovered is closing all browser windows & relaunching the browser fresh.  Something less drastic would be nice to have.

I haven't seen that problem before. Maybe this is a bug revealed by a bad timing. Anyway, the next version, 6.0.0, changes that panel completely (current dev version 6.0.0a6  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/versions/ ). It might solve the problem. Or not :/

 

[Wild Willy]

OK.  I read the converter manual.  It looked familiar when I opened it so I think I may have read it before.  Everything there tells me that I don't want to mess with any of that.  I am sure I will break something if I fool around with any of it.  I think perhaps I don't need any of that functionality.

The blank dropdown happens whenever I've already looked at the VDH dropdown successfully on one video.  And it may be unique to YouTube because I've been fooling around with it using only links to videos found in posts in this thread.  The replication is easy for me:
1.  Open a YouTube page.
2.  Click the VDH icon.  It shows one or a few selections.
3.  After letting the video play for a bit, close that YouTube page.
4.  Open another YouTube page.
5.  Click the VDH icon.
6.  The VDH dropdown flickers for a moment and it does look like there's valid entries in there.  But it flickers for only a moment so I could be wrong.  The dropdown closes on its own without me clicking the icon a second time.
7.  Click the VDH icon again.  The dropdown now opens and stays open but it's just a white rectangle.  I've tried clicking randomly all over the white space but nothing happens.  I've even gone to full screen while the video is playing and seen the number on the icon increase by 1.  But the dropdown remains blank.  I can even go back to the first video, which did show a properly populated dropdown, and now it will be blank.
8.  The only way out is to close all browser windows & visit the video page again.  VDH will show a proper dropdown this time.  But don't try to look at a second video.  You'll end up in the same place again.  And once you get a blank dropdown, every YouTube page will give you a blank dropdown.

Development version, huh?  How soon to official release?  Any warnings about using a development version?  Is it easy to reinstate the official release version?

[Wild Willy]

I've just discovered what may be another workaround, less drastic than closing all browser windows.  Instead of clicking on the animated VDH icon with the number, click on the little down arrow on the other VDH icon to the right.  That opens a list that looks like what ought to be in the blank dropdown.  I think you can do all the same things with that interface that you can do with thing that's not working.  OK.  It's a workaround.  Not a fix.  It's still a bug but I think I've got a way around it.

[Justin Coolidge]

Same here Weird Al Word Crimes. Does not work. No matter how many times I report that YouTube isn't working. I don't want it to watch illegally. There is text I need to screenshot for DaFont to identify in it