Vimeo videos only sound

[kolia]

Hi,

Haven't been able to download properly videos from a training website. They host their videos on Vimeo. The videos are detected and I can download them but when I try to open them, I only get the sound and maybe the first frame.

Settings:

Firefox 118.0.2

VDH 8.1.0.0a5

VdhCoApp 2.0.5

Example of video:

https://vimeo.com/794949127

Thank you for your help.

[Uri F]

in Windows cmd:

yt-dlp https://vimeo.com/794949127

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases

You have to instal Python

[mjs]

@Kolia , what's your OS ? Do you get sound only or a fast video then audio.

[Wild Willy]

Such a great problem report (although you didn't mention your operating system, but that
actually doesn't matter here). Thank you. I have to respond to a problem report like
this. I am pleased to see that you are using the latest versions of VDH & the CoApp.

I downloaded your video, as shown in attached images #01 & #02. You'll notice in image
#02 that VDH downloaded this with vdhcoapp.exe. This means that it was not a "side"
download. Side download is not being offered for this content. So VDH used its
old-fashioned approach. That means that the time stamps on the file for creation & last
update are the same because the file is created from an aggregation of temporary files.
This is different from the new side download. Unfortunately, we don't have an accurate
measure of how long this download took. But image #02 shows the download speed was quite
good so I can only report that it took only a few minutes.

The results are shown in attached image #03. Clearly, all the numbers for the video
track are bogus. This is exactly what we have come to expect with this sort of content,
as we have discussed at great length over here:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/sNfTCMYfiTU

Using techniques explained in detail in that thread, I repaired the file I downloaded.
That repair is logged in the attached log file. I settled on changing the frame rate to
30fps by looking at the Hit Details of the item, something that is eplained in detail in
that other thread. The results of the repair are shown in attached image #04. That file
played just fine in VLC. I did not sit & watch it, just skimmed it. There was good
video & audio at every one of my sample points. Except for the last minute or so. The
guy seems to have done something to his microphone because the audio got really low at
the end. This has to be a fault in the original source because it's fine up to that
point. Just crank up the volume for the last minute & you should be able to hear that
part.

No, you do not need any tool besides VDH. You do not need Python nor yt-dlp. But you do
need ffmpeg. Yes, there is an ffmpeg distributed as part of our CoApp. But this is a
trimmed-down, tailored version & it probably will not do what we need for this case. You
need to get ffmpeg from ffmpeg.org. There are usually several choices there for what to
get. Get the one that has the most features. Don't skimp on this. And notice that I am
saying get ffmpeg. I am not saying install ffmpeg. You don't install ffmpeg. You just
unzip the zip file you get from ffmpeg.org & that's all the installation there is. That
places ffmpeg in a directory of your choosing & you can just execute it from there.

Once you have ffmpeg, there is an alternative to VDH for downloading this content. You
can use ffmpeg yourself to download the content in a form that does not need repairing.
How? Search this forum for a thread with the title, "VDH can't download it? Maybe ffmpeg
can." That is a tutorial on how to use ffmpeg. So you can either download the content
properly with ffmpeg, no repairs necessary, or you can download it with VDH & repair it
after the download. Your choice.

Now, the real question is why didn't VDH recognize this as being eligible for Side
Download? It is my understanding that the VDH devs (probably Paul) has this on the
agenda. We have no estimate when this will be released to us publicly. The new
VDH/CoApp combination uses ffmpeg to download content so at some point, I expect VDH to
do what we talk about in the thread whose URL I cite above. But for the time being,
Vimeo content still isn't handled properly by VDH.

[kolia]

@Uri F : thanks. I tried and had big hope since it seemed initially working but there is an error at the last step when merging formats:

[info] 794949127: Downloading 1 format(s): dash-google_mediacdn_sep-video-86f6b56e+dash-google_mediacdn_sep-audio-c51ad1ff
[dashsegments] Total fragments: 802
[download] Destination: Les principes de base [794949127].fdash-google_mediacdn_sep-video-86f6b56e.mp4
[download] 100% of    2.48GiB in 00:23:59 at 1.76MiB/s
[dashsegments] Total fragments: 803
[download] Destination: Les principes de base [794949127].fdash-google_mediacdn_sep-audio-c51ad1ff.m4a
[download] 100% of   52.15MiB in 00:14:13 at 62.55KiB/s
[Merger] Merging formats into "Les principes de base [794949127].mp4"
ERROR: Postprocessing:   Stream #1:0 -> #0:1 (copy)

@mjs: Win 11 Pro 22H2. I don't remember well, it's possible that it's an extremely quick video at the beginning (but really just a few frames then), then sound only.

@Wild Willy: thank you very mch for the time spent and the analysis. I'll dig into this and give a try to ffmpeg when I have a moment!

[Uri F]

I gave a link to releases.

You can try daily builds here anywhere.  You can also send them bug report.  As you understand it is an open source application

https://github.com/ytdl-patched/youtube-dl/releases

I use both applications (yt-dlp & VDFH app)

[Wild Willy]

If you look carefully at the repair log I posted above you'll see rather a lot of errors
in the source video. Extracting the video track encountered a lot of errors, then
merging the video with the audio encountered yet more errors. This may be tripping up
yt-dlp. Ffmpeg seems to know what to do with such errors, in addition to my using the
-fflags +discardcorrupt parameter. Putting in the effort to learn ffmpeg is worth it.

[Uri F]

The problem is that ffmpeg doesn't know how treat a encrypted stream.  The problem is that very frequently we have 2 streams (audio + video) + decryption key.  yt-dlp and VHD solve problem how to use ffmpeg to download segments, AND AFTER DOWNLOAD everything join segments, decrypt streams and merge audio and video streams.  Moreover both applications give you a chance to select different resolution (it it is available), i.e. select one stream from all of given by a stream provider.  That's it.

[Wild Willy]

Decryption can be a problem for ffmpeg. However, Kolia's example video is not encrypted.
Ffmpeg has no problems with that one, as shown in the text files attached to this post.
By the way, yesterday I mentioned a problem with the audio at the end of this video. As
expected, that problem exists in the video I downloaded just now with ffmpeg.

If the content is not encrypted but simply behind a user ID & password, you supply those
on the URL of the master manifest or video, whichever you happen to be using with ffmpeg.
The syntax for that is:

https://userid:password@site/qualifier/qualifier . . .

If your user ID contains the character @, which would be true if for example your user ID
is your E-mail address, replace @ with %40. Similarly, if your password contains @, make
the same replacement.

If the content is protected by DRM, forget it. Ffmpeg downloads garbage video, which is
the intent of DRM. VDH does the same thing with DRM content, if it manages to download
anything at all. DRM is one form of encryption. I suppose there are other forms of
encryption that are not intended to thwart downloading but simply to make the content
private. In those cases, I think there actually is a way to get ffmpeg to work. But I
haven't figured it out.

A word to Kolia if you decide to learn ffmpeg. You can't use the URL for the HLS master
manifest you can see in the attached text files. This is because the web site constructs
these URLs for each web visit. Each visitor to the page gets a custom tailored manifest
with its own unique URL. That's the purpose of the strings of gibberish characters: to
make these URLs unique. They identify your visit to the web page. They also expire. If
I were to try to reuse the URL I just successfully used perhaps 4 or 6 hours from now, it
would fail because it had timed out. You will have to learn how I found that URL by
reading the "too fast" thread whose URL I cited in my post upthread with the attachments.

[mjs]

One thing I'll add is if you use yt-dlp then you also need ffmpeg in the same directory to merge the files together. 

If you've already done this then I don't know why it had that error. As an alternative to selecting streams you can also do

yt-dlp -f bestvideo+bestaudio vimeo link , to download best quality video and audio.

[kolia]

@mjs that was it! just added ffmpeg and it merged what I had previously downloaded immediately. Sweeet! Thanks a lot! Now on to figure the different parameters so that I can select the quality I want.. default is best one I think but I don't need that good.

[kolia]

@Wildwilly Some of the videos are prviate (in the paying part of the site wher eI am a member) so I will probably have to sort it out as you pointed out with username/id parameters.

Thank you all for your help.

I used to tinker a lot with open source software and be under Linux, but I just don't have the time anymore. I loved not to have to do anything like this after paying VDH : D

[Wild Willy]

Putting ffmpeg in the same directory as anything else, yt-dlp being just the example at
hand, is never necessary. It is certainly the easy thing to do. But then, if you have
multiple applications that use ffmpeg, are you going to proliferate copies of it all over
the place? When it comes time to upgrade to a new release, you'll have to chase all over
the place updating every stinkin' copy you scattered about.

There's a better way. It involves SET PATH & .bat files. But that's basic Windows
theory & far off topic for this forum.

This concept applies to any application, not just ffmpeg. A never has to go in the same
directory as B. Windows gives you better alternatives. No, I'm not going to teach this.
You'll just have to go to Windows "school" & learn these things yourself, same as I did
decades ago. This PATH idea has been around since at least Windows 3.1. It's nothing
new & nothing complicated. Web search for your learning materials.

[kolia]

Hi again,

So, I could finally download a video that was in the private part of the website (private embedded vimeo video).

I followed this post from @mjs, the second method using the developer tool to find the video and audio URL and clean them:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/sNfTCMYfiTU/m/czlX2L1aAgAJ

and just save them locally, then used VDH to assemble them. Didnt need to tweak any parameters or what.

Pffiuu.

I'm curious why it doesnt work in VDH since it seems rather easy to reproduce?

I could not use yt-dlp for this one as opposed as the first one I mentioned originally in the post (which is a public vimeo one), because I can't find a direct url for it.

I have a dozen or so videos I want to save so I hope it will work again in VDH :) It used to work until mid-october I think.

Cheers!