I can't download age-restricted videos on YouTube

[Eunah Choi]

Hello, I have been using the VDH for Firefox for a long time. I also bought the Conversion license for VDH and the Companion app is installed on my Windows 10 PC.
I am glad to say that I can download most videos on YouTube with the VDH add-on for Firefox, but I am also mystified why I can't download age-restricted videos on YouTube.
Let me give you an example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gnn4tqdWGg
I am using the latest versions of Firefox, VDH and the Companion app, and yet, I am unable to download age-restricted videos on YouTube.
Could anyone of you please tell me how to fix this problem? Or, at least, share some kind of workarounds?
Thanks.

[Thomas Pullins]

i use minitool utube downloader for  youtube videos   might be worth a try

[Wild Willy]

I find it extremely weird that the nightly news should be age restricted. Anybody can
watch it on any TV, even without a cable subscription. Then again, maybe news should
just be permanently censored for everybody. But that's all opinion. Fact is I can't get
it from VDH, either. The most I got was some small mp3 variants listed in the VDH menu.
I believe -- I have not downloaded them to verify this hypothesis -- these mp3 files are
the weird sounds that accompany certain mouse clicks that cause popups, like error, must
log in, other events like that. I'm not an avid consumer of YouTube content so I am not
intimately familiar with this sort of thing. I just download the occasional video here &
there. Plus I investigate things my fellow users post about here. So I don't know what
quirky things you have to do to make a YouTube page squawk at you. I think these mp3
files are the little squawk sounds.

However, using techniques fully documented in this thread:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/S9BPzSdwtPw

I was able to download this content. Actually, the downloads are in progress as I write
this. But the Firefox Download Manager is telling me that download of the audio track
has another 15 minutes to go while the video track will take another TWO HOURS AND THIRTY
EIGHT MINUTES. The usual onerous YouTube throttling. I'm even logged in since this is
allegedly age restricted.

For good measure, I disabled DRM for this test. I didn't know if perhaps YouTube would
protect this content with DRM. But it turns out they do not.

Oops. I just noticed I'm downloading the news from July 19. Your link is to the news
from July 18. I'm assuming the issues are the same. I'm not trashing the downloads I've
already started to find out. Maybe you can try the alternative technique on the July 18
broadcast to see if you can download it.

In any case, if I don't come back here to report anything, assume the downloads completed
fine. I chose to download mkv files for this. Since VLC does not do well at all with
synchronous playback of mkv files, unlike synchronous mp4 tracks which it handles fine, I
will merge the 2 tracks & play the merged file. To merge the 2 tracks, I will use the
command script that is an attachment within the thread whose link I've just cited. I
suppose I could use VDH to do the merge, too. But I like my little script.

The fact that I can download this content using Firefox's built in Save Video/Audio As...
function says to me that VDH really ought to process this content properly. What I see
in the Network Monitor is very much like what I've been seeing on every YouTube video
I've investigated since this issue blew up at the beginning of June. Michel fixed VDH to
handle all the other cases we've hit. I don't know what might be unique about this
content. Maybe it's related to requiring a login, maybe not. Only Michel would be able
to determine what the issue with this one is. I do hope he looks at this one.

[Wild Willy]

To my surprise, the downloads both completed in about a half hour, contrary to what Firefox was telling me earlier.  I don't know if Firefox just doesn't calculate the speed right or if maybe the download for the video suddenly sped up.  The audio took a full 30 minutes.  That's terrible.  The file is only 14.2M.  I wasn't watching the Resource Monitor.  I was composing the above post.  In any case, everything went according to plan.  The merge succeeded, as it always does.  The resulting news broadcast played fine in VLC, although I didn't sit & watch it.  I avoid news.  I couldn't tolerate sitting & watching that.  But I sampled it at 1-minute intervals.  I also played about the last 30 seconds or so to make sure it was there all the way to the end.  It was.

So I still say that if I can do this, VDH should also be able to handle this.