Can I download ADP Video/Audio as two separate files?

[Gabe Heller]

Hello!

I have been posting videos on youtube for many years.  It has been recommended that I make a compilation video of my older videos in order to try to generate some interest in them.  However, I have lost my high-quality copies of the oldest videos.  Unfortunately youTube does not allow me to download those high-quality files.  I can download lower-quality versions of the videos or I can request that higher-quality versions be e-mailed to me but there are hundreds of them, that would clog up my inbox something horrible.  I would like to use Video Download Helper to download high-quality versions of my videos, but these are served as ADP and therefore require the converter.  I would not mind paying for the converter, but I am concerned that it will re-convert the files again resulting in a loss of quality.  I have never had a problem with my editing program recognizing ANY form of video or audio and would much rather have the separate video and audio files to work with as a guarantee that no quality has been lost along the way.  It will be no trouble at all to sync them up in my editing program when I create the compilation.  Is there any way for me to get these original separate files using Video Download Helper?

--Gabe Heller

[Wild Willy]

The usual advice:

1.  Go to the home page of this Google Group.  You do that by clicking the left pointing arrow at the top of this page, to the left of the big red POST REPLY button.  Look at the top of the home page.  Find the links for beta VDH & the CoApp.  Yes, beta.  Only the most recent beta, release 7.3.7a1 contains some fixes for problems that recently popped up on YouTube.  Ditto for the CoApp, which should be 1.3.0.  Or later releases if they are up there.

2. You generally need to help VDH recognize videos.  This can be true on many web sites but it is pretty much unavoidable on YouTube.  You have to launch the video then click the gear icon to open the YuuTube tools menu.  Then select a resolution.  Even if it claims your desired resolution is already being used, click it again.  This should add the higher resolution variant of the video to the VDH menu.

Of course, this may not be enough.  I don't know about downloading the audio & video separately.

If you do not have a VDH license (it is no longer referred to as a "converter license"), any of these ADP downloads will require aggregating, which involves the CoApp & the converter (ffmpeg).  This can be a very long-running process if you do not have a license because this is how VDH puts the watermark onto the video.  It writes the watermark into every single frame of the video.  For a video of any significant length, this can take hours.  But if you have a license, VDH doesn't write the watermark & it takes considerably less time.  It may still take a while for a video of any significant length, but it won't be as long as if you don't have a license.

I suppose you'll have to experiment to see if any of this helps you.  You may still not get what you're looking for.  It sounds like you have fairly exacting standards for what you want to do.  You might post a URL or two & I'd be willing to see what I can get in the way of a downloaded file.  I'm running Windows 7 64-bit, Firefox 67.0.4, and the VDH & CoApp I mentioned above.

[Wild Willy]

 Gabe, you sent me this as a private E-mail.  I don't see anything particularly sensitive in here except maybe the YouTube URL, which I don't know whether you want to keep that private so I'll err on the side of caution.  But the rest of it should be a post here in the thread so I'm taking the liberty of posting your E-mail to me since others ought to benefit frmo whatever we do.

I have tried downloading with the watermark.  But because the watermark was
inserted, obviously the video had to be re-encoded to accommodate it, which
resulted in a loss of quality and a bunch of extra time.  What I don't know
is whether, once I have paid for the license, if it will still re-encode
the file or not.  If it just aggregated it, that would be fine as well,
though a bit of a waste of time as my editing program could handle the
separate audio and video files.  Basically I don't want to pay for the
license until I know that I will actually get what I want.

Here's a link to one of the videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=????????

I can download the 360p version either directly from youtube using my
account or using VDH with no trouble.  But I would like to download the
480p version as that is the resolution I originally authored the video at.

If you have a license, perhaps you could download one of the videos without
the watermark and show me some of the result, so I know if I will get what
I want.

Thanks!

[Wild Willy]

I've fiddled with this as much as I'm willing to.  It's giving me errors.  I did manage to download the video once at allegedly 854x480, but it was audio only.  Other times I tried, the download simply failed before completing.  It was running along fine & then it just stopped for no reason.  Worse, YouTube appears to be throttling the bandwidth they'll give me.  I was seeing as bad as 32K at one point.  So I've spent as much time as I can on this.  Jerome is going to have to try it & if there's problems, he will have to hand it over to Michel for further investigation.  At this point, it's not looking like VDH is your tool.

[Gabe Heller]

Thanks for taking the time to look at this!  Hopefully someone else will have better luck.

[jc vdh]

Hi Gabe,

google takout doesn't provide you with the original files?

jerome