Video and no image. I read all the threads and tried FFMPEG

[Michelle Lange]

Hi guys, I'm trying to download videos but I just get the audio. No image. Here's all of the things I've try so far

Windows 10 64-bit

Video DownloadHelper

Version 7.6.3.3

Chrome Version 114.0.5735.199 (Official Build) (64-bit)

I read these conversations:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/sNfTCMYfiTU
https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/SSgY9oLoHdw
https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/vl50CBaxUyg

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/kCHKDuk9GSU?pli=1 

And based on what they said I downloaded the ffmpeg and use this format to try to convert the file:

ffmpex.exe -r X -i "Your input video name here" -r X "The output file name you wish to have here.mp4"

ffmpeg -r 25 -i "in.mp4" -r 25 "out.mp4"

ffmpeg -r 30 -i inputfilename -r 30 outputfilename
ffmpeg -r 24 -i inputfilename -r 24 outputfilename
ffmpeg -r 60 -i inputfilename -r 60 outputfilename

I twitched those a little to match my file name and frames but I just get an error after executing the command.

Oh, I also uninstall the extension and reinstall it to see if that worked, and nothing!  

Could you please help me? 

[Wild Willy]

Well, you gave an almost perfect problem report. Almost. Unfortunately, you're missing
the one thing that would let me help you:

URLs

You haven't told me where your problem videos are. Don't be shy about posting a few URLs
of web pages on which your video content is hosted.

But if your content is behind a user ID & password, even a free one, then you're pretty
much on your own again. You've found all the relevant threads here that contain advice
that should have solved your problem. If your content needs a user ID & password, I
would have pointed you to the same discussions.

But you might be able to get some help even if the content is protected by a user ID &
password. In lieu of URLs that nobody else can visit, post screenshots of what you're
doing. That would be the next best thing.

[Michelle Lange]

I didn't share the URLs because they have a User ID and password.

I'm downloading the first one, it used to work. Even on that same website, but now it doesn't. 

And the VDH support is so limited that is hard to solve any problem.

Thank you for the help.

[Wild Willy]

While we're here, please learn how to not stealth quote. Click this:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/BzPLK2YyL-s

Do a search for "stealth quote" within the text of that web page. That will give you a
link to an explanation of how to avoid stealth quoting.

[Wild Willy]

That's really too bad. You say you tried ffmpeg. If there's nothing sensitive in there,
could you post the full text of the ffmpeg command you ran?

[Michelle Lange]

I installed the Ffmpeg with the info give here, not sure if that's right:

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-to-install-ffmpeg-on-windows/

I wrote the commands like this:

ffmpex.exe -r X -i "Asking Powerful Questions To Close Sales with Melissa1" -r X "Asking Powerful Questions To Close Sales with Melissa1.mp4"

ffmpeg -r 25 -i "Asking Powerful Questions To Close Sales with Melissa1.mp4" -r 25 " Asking Powerful Questions To Close Sales with Melissa1.mp4"

Both failed!

[mjs]

I see the problem and it's with the output file name, ffmpeg doesn't like spaces between the words & it probably threw up the invalid argument

message on one of the words. The solution is do your output file name like this:

the_name_of_your_video.mp4

the-name-of-your-video.mp4

the.name.of.your.video.mp4

There can be no spaces between words for the output file name so use hyphens, underscores or dots and it should work.

[Wild Willy]

-r X is never going to work. X is not a frame rate. Whatever you read, it was meant as
a representation of what you should code. You're meant to replace the X with a number
that is the frame rate you actually want.

Maybe 25fps is not the frame rate of the video in question. You need to find out what
the frame rate really is. If you run ffprobe on the damaged file, I think you will get a
bad number. It might be worth trying anyway. It might give you a good number.

You can also try to look at the Hit Details on the video you downloaded. Visit the page
again, get the secondary menu on the variant you downloaded, & click Details. There's
several examples in the various things you've read showing how to get the frame rate from
the Hit Details. But that's if you're lucky. It's not a guaranteed answer but it's
worth a shot.

You can get the real frame rate by splitting the video track out to a raw file. This is
probably a pretty reliable technique. One of the threads you read
(https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/sNfTCMYfiTU) contains a
reference to another thread. The reference is in a post I made just this past June 17.
I talk about how I "just provided what amounts to a new tutorial on the respeed issue."
Go read that. I discovered during that exercise that if you ffprobe the resulting raw
video track, it will tell you what it's frame rate really is. Then you can use that in
your ffmpeg command for repairing the video. That thread includes a complete ffmpeg &
ffprobe log showing all the steps of respeeding a damaged video. Look carefully for the
ffprobe of the raw video track. It shows the real frame rate. There's also the issue of
h264 or h265. In that particular example the original damaged video was h264. You need
to check whether your damaged file is also h264. That little tidbit is actually provided
by the Windows file properties. That's one of the things that isn't damaged about the
file. I show how you can find that in that tutorial.

I note that you've got a couple of typos in your sample ffmpeg commands. I'm sure those
are just errors of transcription & not what you actually executed. When you post again,
give cut/paste from the command window. Or attach the .bat file you ran. (You'll have
to change the file name because Google doesn't permit attachments of type .bat. Just
call it .txt & we'll know you mean .bat.) I would be most interested in the output of
ffmpeg. You should be using > and >>, which are Windows redirection directives, to
capture the output of ffmpeg. Don't let it just whiz by in the command window. Capture
it in a file so you can study it AND so you can post it here. My examples all show my
ffmpeg commands. You'll see the redirections on my commands. Mimic that.

No mjs, that's not correct. Ffmpeg has no problem whatsoever with spaces in file names &
directory names. Look at any of my examples. The answer is to do what Michelle is
already doing: surround the file name in double quotation marks.

[Wild Willy]

As for installing ffmpeg, there is no install. What those guys told you, Michelle, is
like crushing a peanut with a sledgehammer.

First off, you get ffmpeg from ffmpeg.org. Nowhere else.

Then, I say don't clutter up your boot partition with yet more things that don't really
belong there.

I have installed ffmpeg in M:\ffmpeg. There's nothing magic about my M drive. The point
is it isn't my boot partition, my C drive. I just unzipped the file I got from
ffmpeg.org into M:\ffmpeg. The unzip creates a subdirectory within M:\ffmpeg with a
weird & wild long name. Part of the name is the date of the build that was newest on the
day I went to ffmpeg.org to get it. This is the end of the installation.

You should be using .bat files to execute ffmpeg. It has all these strange parameters
with weird spellings & special rules for their placement within the command. Don't try
to remember all that. And for the love of Pete, don't retype it every time. Use .bat
files.

Don't mess with your system SET PATH. There is a better way. It doesn't require
rebooting. In the M:\ffmpeg directory, I have a one-line .bat file that contains this
line:

SET ffmpeg=M:\ffmpeg\the long weird name I got from unzip\bin

Even if there's spaces in any of that, don't code any quotation marks. Just code it
exactly like that. I named this one-line script Setffmpeg.Bat. In every other script
in whatever directory on my system where I use ffmpeg or ffprobe or both, the first line
is this:

Call M:\ffmpeg\Setffmpeg

When I want to invoke ffmpeg, I execute this:

"%ffmpeg%\ffmpeg" whateverparms -i "whatever" moreparms "wherever"

Note the quotation marks. Always code quotation marks. Make it a habit. I think you
already do this, Michelle. That comment is for anybody else reading this.

Now suppose one day you want to get a new version of ffmpeg. No problem. Unzip the new
ffmpeg into M:\ffmpeg. Now M:\ffmpeg will contain 2 subdirectories with long weird
names.

Edit the one-line script M:\ffmpeg\Setffmpeg.Bat. Change the long weird directory name
to be the one from the new unzip. Save it. Presto. All your other scripts will
magically start using the new ffmpeg. No reboot required.

But there's a problem with the new ffmpeg? Go back into M:\ffmpeg\Setffmpeg.Bat & change
it back to the old long weird directory. Presto. All your other scripts will magically
revert to using the old ffmpeg. No reboot required.

But there are no problems with the new ffmpeg? Great. Delete the old subdirectory with
the long weird name. Now you'll have only 1 subdirectory with a long weird name in
M:\ffmpeg. No reboots required. No reboots, & no closing of any other applications.

It's so simple. It just requires a baby-level grasp of Windows concepts. I learned all
of these concepts within the first couple of months after I started to use Windows over
30 years ago. Aren't they teaching this stuff in schools any more? I didn't get it from
a course, either. It's in the Windows documentation. You can get it from Microsoft or
you can find untold piles of educational content about it around the web. This stuff
ain't rocket science. It's computer non-science. Computer science is more complicated
than this. This is just basic usage stuff.

I still hope you post more about what you did so we can debug it.

[Michelle Lange]

Thank you so much for your reply! I'll try this!