VDH tutorial?

[edino]

Is there such a thing?  Written or video,  Particularly something that discusses the individual settings in detail, their functions and their relationship with each other.

[jcv...@gmail.com]

Hi,

Not yet, sorry.

jerome

[Wild Willy]

There is this:

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

You will want to bookmark that. Make sure you expand that so the full text of every post
is visible. Then read the first 2 paragraphs. Then keep reading until you hit a link to
another thread. That link will take you to a tutorial on how to use VDH. Back in the
thread you will bookmark, you will want to read the whole thing, but not necessarily now
in one sitting, rather bit by bit over time.

The only thing I will add to the tutorial, which is now about two and a half years old,
is that the latest versions of VDH introduced what is called a Side Download. If VDH
offers you a Side Download on any given video, you should use that instead of the other
type of Download.

When it comes to the settings, they are pretty much self explanatory. If there's some
particular ones you want to ask about, post your questions here. But for the most part,
I have found them pretty much intuitively obvious. There is no proper manual or tutorial
for the settings.

[edino]

That's what I needed.  An interpretation/definition of the technical jargon, and their relationships.  I'll try not to overload.  If I still have questions, I'll be back

Side Download.  Definitely wondering about that.

Thanks

[Wild Willy]

Prior to VDH 8.x/CoApp 2.x, VDH had always included a stripped down build of ffmpeg. But
VDH used ffmpeg only for certain functions. The only functions I can think of are
converting files & merging tracks. Converting allowed you (still does) to change among
the file types: mp4, avi, mkv, etc. Merging was necessary (is still available) because
VDH used to erroneously show us certain videos as separate video & audio tracks. You had
to download each track as a separate file. So Michel added a function to merge tracks
together as a post-process. VLC can play separate video & audio tracks synchronously,
but it is more convenient for most people to have the video & audio tracks of an item in a
single file. If you encounter a case of VDH recognizing video & audio separately, you
should report it in a new thread here.

But VDH did not use ffmpeg to download content. There was some sort of licensing issue
that prevented Michel from using ffmpeg for that function within VDH. But earlier this
year, ffmpeg changed something about the way it is licensed & it meant Michel was free to
use ffmpeg for the media download function. I do not completely understand the issue.
I'm not programming the product & I don't understand the legal ramifications of this
licensing stuff. I don't think most users much care. I certainly don't. But using
ffmpeg for the download engine inside VDH automatically cures a number of problems, among
them the separate video & audio bug. Michel chose the label Side Download for the new
functionality of VDH downloading with ffmpeg.

Aside from the separate video & audio thing, our downloads from YouTube have sped up by
several orders of magnitude. Used to be that a download from YouTube took half the
duration of the item. A 5 minute clip would download in 2.5 minutes. A 1 hour clip
would download in 30 minutes. And so on. It seemed that Google was throttling our
downloads to enforce this half-duration rule. I watched Resource Monitor reporting
YouTube download speeds anywhere from a couple million bytes per second to under 50,000
bytes per second, utterly putrid. And my bandwidth that I am paying my ISP for runs to
over 60 million bytes per second. But I never got anything like that from my VDH
downloads from YouTube. Just the other day, using a VDH Side Download from YouTube,
Resource Monitor reported a download speed of 22 million bytes per second. This is one
reason I say that if you see a Side Download in VDH, you should use that in preference to
the old-fashioned way. Side Download just means download with ffmpeg. There is
something about the way the requests are constructed with ffmpeg that gets Google to not
throttle our downloads from YouTube now. It's a bit of magic I don't really understand
but I am happy to use.

Probably, that's all more than anybody really needs to know in order to enjoy the
benefits of VDH. But you asked so . . .