VDH/Firefox 8.0.0.4a1

[mig]

A new beta version for Firefox has been released.

This version should restore YouTube downloads that fail since august 11th.

For those already using a beta version, it should update automatically within 24 hours. For others or if you don't want to wait, you can install this version from https://www.downloadhelper.net/firefox/betas

[jethroburns]

Well, I downloaded it. Still couldn't download anything. Saw my licence needed re-registering. Did so. Got this message: " License locked (revalidating) ". What does that mean? Still no downloads. Do I also have to do the Behaviour -> Reset settings -> Video Qualities again

[jethroburns]

The Converter Helper Team very kindly wrote straight back to me and gave me a link, which worked fine and, touch wood, I can finally download videos again.

[GW]

Mine auto downloaded. I restarted everything, but sadly still the same problem with youtube downloads (other sites are fine as they always were). Sorry to be the bearer of bad news

[wyz...@yahoo.com]

I've been able to download from YT, so thank you, mig!  Unfortunately YT has struck back with massively slow speed throttling.  As others have experienced, VDH used to download at just under half of playback speed, so that a 8:08 video would download in about 4:12.  I just timed my download of a 8:08 video and it took 1:03:00, or about 15 times longer.  Other videos have the same problem, with even a 2 minute video taking 15 minutes to completely download.

[wyz...@yahoo.com]

I tried downloading 1920X1080 and that gave me the super long download speeds.  It did improve to only seven times slower than it used to be when I switched to a lower 1080X720 resolution.  The next problem I'm newly experiencing is that after the playback of the video I'm downloading ends (but the download is still far from finished), if I watch a new video and download that, it appears to be working, but then when I watch it later, I discover that it's the same, original video downloaded again under the new, but incorrect, title.  So something appears to have broken the smart naming feature, too.

On Thursday, August 17, 2023 at 10:49:25 PM UTC-5 Jay wrote:

The new version does see the versions and download them, however long videos or high resolution like 4K are doing something strange where they start to slow down around 50% downloaded and eventually slow to crawl by 59% and even after several hours they aren't completing. Maybe something to look into. Here are a couple example videos that don't come anywhere near completing when trying to download their 1440p or 4K resolution versions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEhq_Efx9Ug

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YQbZIy5WOA

That second one isn't even a very long video, and it still does the same behavior.

[Wild Willy]

So what was it this time? What did YouTube do on August 11? How did you resolve the
problem?

The keyboard shortcut for opening the VDH menu is still not functioning. You already
determined that this was a Windows-only problem. It is still a problem in this latest
beta.

I picked this one off the YouTube home page because it was short:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvtruQusk5M

On my first attempt to download this with 8.0.0.4a1 beta, I got the errors. Plural. You
are still generating 2 errors. You should be generating only one. The first error says
you couldn't get information from the web site. In other words, you never even launched
the download. The download did not fail. It never started. But then you go ahead & try
to aggregate this. You should not launch an aggregation when you never downloaded
anything. This is really annoying.

On my second attempt to download this with VDH, it ran fine. But as others have pointed
out, the download speed was putrid. It's bad enough that this one started out at only
143,000 bytes per second. That might have actually gotten the thing to download in half
its duration. In this case, the duration is 2:12 so the download would have taken 1:06
in the old days. But after maybe a minute, maybe less, the download speed dropped to
about 86,000 bytes per second. The download took about 5 minutes. 50% has turned into
200%. The resulting video did play fine in VLC.

I then referred to the thread on here with the title "How to download from YouTube." I
used the technique extensively documented in that thread. The video & audio tracks
downloaded in seconds. The 2 tracks played fine using VLC's synchronous playback
feature.

Sounds like one step forward & two steps back for VDH. People are not going to use VDH
if this is the speed we're going to get. At 50% of the duration, I found it tolerable.
At 200% of the duration, I will stop using VDH on YouTube & I will use the alternative
technique all the time.

The alternative technique has another advantage besides being faster than VDH. You get
access to the captions. Subtitles. Whatever you want to call them. YouTube supplies
captions in XML format. This does not work with VLC. But you can get the XML file onto
your system if you're persistent. I explained how in another recent thread. Once you
have it on your system, you can then use a freeware product called Subtitle Edit,
affectionately known as SE. SE converts XML subtitles into VTT captions. VLC loves VTT
subtitles. The subtitles that are associated with this video are not terrible. They
appear to be machine generated. There is no punctuation whatsoever & sentences begin in
one caption & end in the next. A few words are wrong but I have to admit most of the
words are correct. With a moderate effort, you could use SE to fix these subtitles. I
am not so motivated.

[mig]

Right, the download speed with 8.0.0.4a1 is not bearable.

We just pushed 8.0.0.4a2 that returns to the situation before august 11th.

[mig]

Two of the videos did eventually complete, they just took around 12 hours, so at least they do work, even though extremely slowly. I suppose that's better than not being able to download at all?

We released  8.0.0.4a2 about 6 hours ago so, if it took you 12 hours to download a video, my guess is that the experience you report is with 8.0.0.4a1

 

[mig]

That is correct, I am referring to 4a1.

Do things improve with 8.0.0.4a2 ?

 

[Jay]

Since it is stated that 4a2 returns to previous situation, which for me means constant errors and almost no successful downloads, I haven't updated it, as I'd rather have slow downloads than none at all :)

[Wild Willy]

Jay, you're being unreasonably harsh. By return to previous situation, Michel means just
that download speeds have returned to what they used to be.

Since I tried that cat video I mentioned a few hours ago upthread, I have cycled the
browser. I've just installed 8.0.0.4a2 beta. The cat video indeed did download in about
1 minute, as expected. Plus, I didn't have the initial failure requiring a page reload.
So we have marked progress.

I did observe one rather odd occurrence installing this beta. Usually, an installation
of VDH ends with a congratulations screen. I didn't get one so I installed this beta
again. I didn't get the congratulations screen on the second install, either. I've had
problems in the past when the congratulations screen didn't appear so I'm now in the
habit of expecting it. I'm not getting it. It seems it installed fine anyway but the
confirmation would be reassuring, not to mention consistent with past behavior.
Consistency is always what you should strive for.

But I ask again. What did YouTube change on August 11? What did you do to deal with it?
And now there's a new question. What did you do to restore reasonable download speeds?
Come on, Michel. Stop ignoring my questions.

Also, what about the keyboard shortcut for opening the VDH menu on Windows?

And what about the useless failure to aggregate error following a failed download?

Why do I have to ask everything 3 or 4 times? Do you really think that if you don't
answer me, I'll just forget about it & drop it? Come on. You should know me better by
now.

[Jay]

Apologies, was not intending to sound harsh, just thinking practically. I may have misunderstood what the latest version does.

[mig]

Willy, we cannot tell for sure what youtube actually does when they change their video process and we won't tell what we exactly do to try keeping our service up. The important thing to understand is that we have several methods to obtain media streams urls from YT and those methods may produce various bitrates or may stop working like it happened on august 11th.
The "open popup" keyboard shortcut should work. It's purely declarative, so there is no real code of us we could have broken. Maybe an issue in the browser or a change in the declaration. I must admit this is not our priority but the issue is listed in our backlog.

[Wild Willy]

OK. Thanks. On the keyboard shortcut, you did say that you don't observe it on Linux or
Mac, only on Windows. And I would assume you are running W10 or W11, unlike me on W7.
So it's not just me. I can live with it for now but whenever you get around to it, I'll
be happy to see it fixed.