VDH not seeing Patreon audio files

[Chas Clifton]

For some time I have been using VDH to download audio podcast files. Today I have tried a couple on Patreon (creators whom I support), but I get the "No Media Files" error message.

I have installed 7.7.0a3 on Firefox 115 (Mac), but the problem seemed to begin with Firefox 114.

Any help appreciated.

[Wild Willy]

That's a site with paying memberships, right? In that case, you'll have to post detailed
screenshots of what you're doing. URLs won't be useful to any of us. Be sure to show
the contents of the VDH menu at each step. Nobody here is going to be able to get on
there & try what you're doing . . . unless by some happy accident another member of
Patreon is on here & can figure out what to do.

[Chas Clifton]

Yes, I 'am a member. (That is why I said "creators I support" -- with money.)

It's not just one URL. Each Patreon podcast page has an embedded player.

But when I got to the page, the VDH icon on the browser stays gray -- no colors.

And I get a message  "No media to process in the current tab."  

Even when the audio file is playing!

Up until two days ago, VDH worked with that site.

BUT I m getting the same "No media" message on YouTube, and that aint' right.

Chas

[Wild Willy]

Quick answer for now. Better answer later. You should be paying attention to other
activity in this forum. Browse some other threads. There's been several new beta
versions of VDH within the past week. You should try the latest, 7.7.0a4 which just came
out earlier today. Let us know whether that fixes anything. I will be able to post more
later.

[Wild Willy]

Oops. I see now you are aware of the new betas. Sorry. Was trying to rush.

Meanwhile, here's some standard advice I should have given earlier. Click here:

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

Be sure you carefully read the first 2 paragraphs there. Once you have read that, you
can check out the references within that web page that I am about to give you. But don't
just find the relevant link & click it. READ the context around the link. I recommend
you bookmark that link & read the entire page, if not now, if not in one sitting, bit by
bit over time.

You find a reference on that web page by searching the text of that page using various
search keys. The search keys I am suggesting are these:

stealth quote
short tutorial
using gmail to post here

Next, look for "stealth quote" within the text of that web page. That will give you
another link to click. Click that, read what you find, & follow the advice, not just for
your posts in this thread, not just for your posts in this forum, but for your posts
anywhere on Google Groups.

Next, look for "short tutorial" within the text of that web page. That explains why your
response here will use the Reply all button. It also explains why you will NOT use the
Reply to author button.

Next, look for "using gmail to post here" within the text of that web page. That will
give you a couple of links to read, at least one of which is sure to apply to you. Even
if you don't use GMail, even if you use another E-mail tool to post here, even if you
don't post here via E-mail, what it says there about how to construct posts to the group
applies to you no matter how you post here. If you ignore the advice in that reference,
you will appear to be rude. You don't want to be rude, do you?

[Wild Willy]

This is going to be an exercise in you being my eyes on Patreon.  The first thing you want to do is open a Firefox window with nothing in it.  I'm using about:blank in this sample but anything OTHER THAN the page we're really interested in is fine.  Once you're on that empty page, you want to open the Network Monitor.

Now surf to a page on Patreon where there is content you want to download.  Maybe it's a bookmark, maybe it's a URL you saved in a text file, however you do it.  Just go straight to the page.  Since I'm not a Patreon member, you'll have to use your imagination with what follows.

Now, you're going to send me your Network Monitor.  Here's how.  In that image, I'm hovering my mouse over the little gear I've circled.  You can see there's a tooltip that has hovered up just below it.  Now, click that gear.

You want to select the entry on that menu that is highlighted in that image.  After you send your Network Monitor to me, I will use the Import function on that menu to read your Network Monitor.  But that's at my end.  You won't be doing that.  Back to the story . . .

That's an ugly name.  You can see it's got the site name in there as well as a date & time.  But it's just bloated.  So I'm going to change it.

You pick whatever makes sense when you do this.  When I save it, I get this.

That's way too big for a post here.  The size limit for a post is 8M.  This is a limit imposed by Google.  Not only is it the maximum size of a post, it is also the maximum size of an E-mail permitted by GMail.  Even if I zip the file, it's still too big.

So you're going to have to chop the file up into parts.  This one looks like 2 parts will work.  I don't know what size HAR you will get on Patreon.  You'll have to play it by ear once you've saved your HAR.

By the way, HAR stands for HTML Archive.  You'll be creating one so you can look inside it & see what it is.  What's it for?  Beats me.  I just know it's a type of file that has come in handy cooking up alternative approaches to VDH for downloading content.  It's also convenient for sharing a Network Monitor from a pay site with someone who is not a member there.  Sound familiar?

A HAR is just a plain text file.  I'm going to open it in Notepad++, which is a replacement for the standard low-featured Notepad that Microsoft distributes with Windows, has distributed with Windows since forever.  I don't know what equivalent you might have available on Mac.  I have never used a Mac.  I'm not sure I've ever even been in the same room with a Mac.  I did check the Notepad++ web site & it appears to be a Windows-only program.  Too bad he hasn't built a Mac version.  But I have to believe that if your standard text editor doesn't include some of the features I'm going to rely on in what follows, there must be something available in your world analogous to Notepad++.

I'm going to try to find the midpoint of this file.  That is usually not the line at the halfway count of lines.  HARs seem to be asymmetrical like that.  After a sequence of trial & error, I came to this position.

This is the start of line number 11,500.  That's quite a bit past the halfway number of lines.  But in bytes, it's rather before the midpoint of the file.  Moving to the end of line 11,500 . . .

It's only 1 line but it's about 1.4 million bytes long!  So the midpoint of the file is somewhere within that line.  I don't want to split the file in the middle of a line.  So I will split it after the }, at the end of line 11,501.  I used simple text copy/paste to create 2 files: Yuja Half #1.har & Yuja Half #2.har.

Then I put each half HAR into its own zip file.

Each one of those zip files easily comes in under Google's limit of 8M.

If I were trying to share this HAR with somebody else, I would then write 2 posts here.  The first one would have Yuja Half #1 har.zip attached, the second one would have Yuja Half #2 har.zip attached.  You will have to to do something like that.

Once you have posted . . .  Posted.  Not E-mailed.  Posted here.  Don't E-mail those things to me.  Once you have posted however many files it takes to split your HAR into acceptable chunks, I will download them out of this thread, put the parts back together, & then load that HAR up into my Firefox.  Then I will nose around & see what I can find.  Of course, I won't be able to actually inspect any of those files since they'll all be behind the Patreon security.  But I will be able to get an idea of where we might be able to pursue things next.

So there's your project for today.

[chas.c...@mac.com]

Willy,

Thank you for your detailed response. I am going to hold off on doing all that today, however,
because after Firefox pushed another update to v.115, it SEEMS to be holding hands with VDH again

On the other hand, VDH is mostly NOT working with YouTube, for me at least,
and I suppose that would be a bigger issue with most VDH users.

Do we blame Firefox?

Is Google trying to make YouTube download-proof?

VDH works some video sites and but not others.

I wish I knew.

Chas

[Wild Willy]

Chas, you did not read all the advice I gave you above. It is good that you did not
stealth quote anything. But I received your post as an E-mail in addition to seeing your
post here in the forum. I say again, I am not an employee of VDH. I am just another
user. I will see posts here on the web site. I do not want my E-mail inbox cluttered up
with E-mails from Google on behalf of this group. Before you post, please follow the
advice I gave above about using GMail to post here. It looks like you might not be using
GMail. It looks like you're using something called Apple Mail, something I am totally
unfamiliar with. But if it's some kind of E-mail client application, you need to follow
the advice I give in that reference about posting via GMail. Before you send, check the
addressee list. Remove all entries except for this group. The ONLY destination for a
post should be this group, no other addressee. Don't echo your posts to me in E-mails.
I won't respond to E-mails. I will post here. That's enough.