Video DownloadHelper Q&A and PBS videos - from registered user

[Dean Pennington]

I have had mixed success when recording from PBS videos, like Frontline and American Experience, etc. Sometimes I get sound and video.. Sometimes only video.

I know when I deploy Video Download Helper on PBS there are a wide variety of choices in resulting video image size, and in many cases it says it's only mp3 audio being offered. So, when I want both, as in the recent NATURE video on Wood Peckers I selected a choice that suggested it had video & sound. Before-hand, in case it mattered in the outcome, I turned CC=off before invoking Video Download Helper.

In four tries I got a p3rfect video with no sound. I assume PBS is somehow defeating audio capture with the video on some choices, or somehow Video Download Helper just isn't capturing it. I mixed up my choices in the 4 tried and got perfect video without audio in four different runs at it..Naturally if I just PLAY it the way it's offered in plays sound and video.

You can see the same pull-down list of choices at https://www.pbs.org/video/woodpeckers-the-hole-story-xjpqdf/?utm_source=whattowatchnews&utm_medium=email&utm_term=mainpromo1&utm_content=20221104&utm_campaign=naat_2022

If it's me (and it could be) I don't understand where I'm missing the Video Download Helper clearly detects the video offering. This absence of sound capture is not on all PBS offerings, and I have a PBS account, so I presume it's not denying me because I'm not a member, and I signed in as a PBS member beforehand. Thanks

[Wild Willy]

I've answered a question about PBS not too long ago. The answer is buried toward the
bottom of this thread:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/8V2cRB-bcK4

That is a really long thread, and as proud as I am of the work we all did in that one, I
don't really expect you to read the whole thing . . . unless you're especially dedicated
to learning something new. The discussion of the PBS issue is in the last posts in the
thread (today), which are dated 2022/9/22, a bit over a month & a half ago. That
discussion includes a description of how I got video, audio, & subtitles for that PBS
show.

I see in there that I retrieved an audio track with HLS as M2TS enabled in the VDH
settings. Just within the past 24 hours I've discovered that I probably could have
repaired the audio that I thought at the time was broken. That new learning is
documented over here:

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

There are other threads mentioned in there that might also be helpful. This stuff isn't
totally straightforward. You might have to do rather a lot of reading, even though I
said that other thread was long & mostly not relevant. There's no way out of it. You
have things you have to learn. I have every confidence that, as an enlightened human
interested in things natural & scientific, you can deal with these annoying tech issues.
Once you've gone through this learning curve once & you look back, you'll see it's not
that hard.