Instagram story videos not detected

[B3ro1080]

I cannot download any Instagram story video since recently. Tested on both Chrome and Firefox. Both are up to date. Regular Instagram videos are detected just fine, though. 

[pvwyn]

I also noticed this in the last couple of days (in Firefox). I have various other add-ons specifically for Instagram downloads and none of them will currently download video stories. ('Media Helper for Instagram' at least seems to still download story pictures, but not videos.) It seems Instagram has changed something on their side which has thrown a spanner in the works. I looked at the Inspect Console to see if I could find anything (MP4, manifest, etc.) that might help, but couldn't see anything useful.

It will be interesting to see if any of the other add-ons (or Chrome extensions) manage to solve the problem. Very frustrating!

I have Windows 10, Firefox 106.0, VDH 7.6.3a6 and Co-app 1.6.3.

Pierre

[mjs]

Share a url to one of these videos if this is an issue you want looked at otherwise it will not get resolved.

--

A vdh user

[pvwyn]

The problem is that these stories are only available for 24 hours (similar to snapchat). You must have a Instagram account to view anything. Once you have, your Home page or Explore page will suggest many posts from different people. Most of these suggestions will be from people with public profiles. (The private ones you first have to follow and wait to be accepted.) Now you have to open any of the public posts and look for a RED circle around the person's profile picture. That indicates a Story has been posted. Clicking on the person's profile pic (with red circle) will open and start playing the Story.

There could be one or multiple stories posted - they will just play one after the other. You can go forwards and backwards between them. Be aware there are two types of stories: Images and Videos. (Some still pictures are presented as videos with a music background.) The actual images are not a problem - there are ways to save those. You have to look for a video. While they are playing, VDH will light up, but show various small files in the drop-down menu. None of them are the actual video and usually cannot be played.

Here is an example public URL that currently has two stories:

https://www.instagram.com/nature_friendly_earth/

At the time of posting, the first story had been up for 14 hours; the second for 4 hours. So they will still be there for a couple of hours.

Here are some screenshots. I struggled with screen capture, so used my phone camera:

VDH menu while story is running:

VDH after stories finished running (I had downloaded two files that seemed largest, but neither were playable afterwards):

VDH error messages:

Regards

Pierre

[mjs]

Thanks for the link but unfortunately it asks to login or make an account and I don't care to do that. Maybe I could look at it if someone shared

their screen while logged in. A program like TeamViewer can do that which has a meeting funtion. If whoever is interested to do that.

[pvwyn]

Thanks for the offer to try and work on it over TeamViewer. I might still take you up on it. I just want to spend some more time on it myself, but I have a couple of other things currently taking up my time. What I also want to do is create a clean Firefox profile with only VDH and one or two other add-ons. I currently have many add-ons, which might be conflicting. Then I also want to see if I can create a second Instagram account (actually, third - I already have 2!) so I can work on a 'clean' slate, if we're going to work over TeamViewer.

My time zone is GMT+2 (South Africa). What is yours?

Pierre

[mjs]

My time zone is GMT +11 Australia if you decide try this over TeamViewer. In the meantime l have been thinking over some ideas.

What happens if you try forcing the mobile view like this

https://m.instagram.com/nature_friendly_earth/

Does it go to mobile view or does it stay in the desktop site. You could also add an extension which can change the user agent to a mobile

device and see if VDH detects the videos differently. Let me know how goes.

[pvwyn]

MJS, you're an absolute star!! I don't know how often Ausies get compliments from a South African - fortunately I'm not much into sport, so I can give credit where it's due.

The solution isn't simple - so I still hope that somehow VDH might eventually detect the Instagram stories, or else one of the add-ons that I have used in the past gets updated to work.

Let me describe the steps that I tried (this is in Firefox - perhaps someone else can see if they can do something similar in Chrome or Edge):

• I have known about the Facebook trick for some time to download videos by going into mobile mode - replacing 'www' with 'm' in the URL. I didn't think of trying it on Instagram. However, when I do this in Firefox, Instagram immediately jumps back to desktop mode (changes back to 'www'). So this wasn't going to work.
  
• I created a new ('clean') Firefox profile with the only add-ons being VDH and the ' User-Agent Switcher' add-on. Creating the clean profile is  probably not important - I just wanted to ensure no other add-on interferes. Plus it allows me to have one profile running in mobile mode and the default profile still running Win10 mode. But your suggestion of changing the user agent led me to the mentioned add-on. With 'User-Agent Switcher' you can fool websites into thinking the Firefox browser is running on various systems. I chose 'Android Phone / Firefox 83'.
  
• I launched  https://www.instagram.com/nature_friendly_earth/ (changing 'www' to 'm' isn't necessary as it knows it should be in mobile mode) and clicked on the active Story, which was a video. Unfortunately, in mobile mode, Instagram goes Full Screen while the Story is running. If I press ESC, the Story ends prematurely and goes back to normal Instagram. The same thing happens if I do any mouse clicks on the screen. The normal Firefox toolbar isn't visible - so I can't even see the VDH icon. I tried the VDH shortcut key (Alt + I) but it didn't show the VDH pop-up screen. That's a pity, because I think if I could access VDH in this mode, it would most probably be able to download the Story video.
• I then launched the Inspect console on the Network tab (Ctrl+Shift+E). I cleared any entries that might be there from before, filtered on Media, and refreshed the page (F5). I launched the Story. It still went to a pseudo full screen, but had the Network monitor open at the bottom. What do you know? A MP4 entry appears in the list! I double-clicked on the entry, which opened a new (Facebook type!) tab containing the video. Here it allows me to right-click and Save as ... Mission accomplished!
  

Thanks again for your suggestion. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gone along this route on my own. I hope the original poster can also benefit from this method.

Pierre

[mjs]

Fantastic!! , so looks like TeamViewer won't be required now with it solved.

Now that you got it to work and get the video , I have two questions on it. With it in full screen I was wondering if you could right click and save

video. VHD has a a right mouse click context menu unless Instagram had the right clicking disabled.

The second part of the question was if it went out of full screen did VDH remain lit up with the detection of the hit. Or did it go back to

no media detected.

[pvwyn]

Brilliant!! You definitely seem to have some uncanny intuition for these things.

When the Story is in full screen, right click does nothing - so is disabled. Left click prematurely ends the video (* see caveat further down).

But here's the weird unexpected part (again, I would never have looked for this if you didn't ask):

Firstly, when the Story launches in full screen, there is a play button if the story is a video, not a picture. There is also on the top left of the screen a progress bar that runs to completion, whether you play the videos or not (in this mobile mode the videos don't seem to play automatically), after which the Story exits full screen. Stories can consist of multiple segments with videos and/or pictures. The mentioned progress bar is broken into segments if multiple parts, but it runs through all of them.

After going back to the normal Instagram screen (the second part of your question) VDH is not lit up. Big disappointment!! But when I open VDH, there is a grey 'Orphan' dot with hits. The number of hits is the number of video segments that the Story has. Note, pictures are excluded (VDH only downloads videos). Also, if you exit the full screen before it has run through all the segments, only those videos encountered appears in the hit list.

Next thing to remember: Orphan hits in VDH disappear after a set time. Default is 60 seconds, but it can be changed in Settings. So, download while you can - otherwise you have to do the process again.

Stories often consist of only one segment, but can also contain many segments. (In Instagram they also have a Saved Stories feature, where the user can keep Stories permanently.) This is shown in the progress bar having multiple segments. You can leave it to happily run through all the segments. Videos won't actually play, unless you press the play button - but you don't have to play them (and it's faster not to play them). VDH still detects them as a hit. You can make the progress bar move quicker through the segments by left clicking anywhere on the screen. (Yes, I know I said that left clicking exits the Story, but that's only on the last Story, or if there is only one segment.) *

As we all know, nothing is ever simple and predictable. When you speed up going through multiple segments by left clicking, afterwards VDH actually has some proper hits (it is lit up) and some sitting in orphans. I think it might have something to do with whether a particular video segment had enough time to actually appear as an image (they sometimes take a second or two to load) or not. It seems random (probably isn't) but I won't investigate that further. I think if you leave the progress bar to go at its own pace, or when you click to speed it up, at least wait for each image to appear, they will all go into orphans. At least they are all together then.

I used the Shift key while selecting the downloads to prevent VDH from closing the drop down screen. I find it better to start at the bottom, as these are short videos and very quickly reappear as a downloaded video but with a play button, which you can accidentally launch. Here it would be very useful to have a VDH function to select 'Download all videos'. I think the feature has been asked for before.

Conclusion: In my earlier method, you can skip creating a fresh Firefox profile (unless you want a permanent profile set as Mobile user agent). Just install the User-Agent Switcher add-on in Firefox, select Android / Firefox 83 mode when you need to download a Story video, and run the Story. Afterwards, check VDH for the grey orphan hits and download the videos there. Afterwards you can switch the user agent back to default mode.

Thanks again, Mjs!! It was a very fruitful collaboration. (By the way, I am a retired electrical engineer and programmer - so used to fiddling with things, though I don't always have the enthusiasm and energy for it anymore!)

Pierre

[pvwyn]

Unfortunately the solution proposed above no longer works.

Instagram Story videos now show up in VDH as small 'chunks', similar to many other video sites these days. There is no single video download that shows up in VDH, even when using the Mobile user agent, as explained above. Obviously Instagram again changed something in the way they serve up the videos for Stories.

I must point out that I am able to use VDH successfully to download normal video posts in Instagram (Reels). It is the Story videos that present a problem.

Hopefully VDH will in a future upgrade be able to download Story videos. In the meantime, I am using other Firefox Add-ons to download in Instagram. These add-ons also vary in their success rate from time to time. So, the following is my experience at this current time:

1. SaveFrom.net helper (all-in-1 / youtube downloader):

       This extension currently seems to be the best option for Instagram. It works on pictures and videos, for normal posts and reels, as well as Stories.

       It puts a little down arrow on top of the image. Clicking it produces a 'Save as' dialogue.

2. Instab - Save Instagram photos, videos and stories:

         This one puts two large buttons on top of the image - the one says 'Open', the other says 'Save'.

         When you click Open, it opens the image (picture or video) in a new tab. On that screen you can do the normal right-click, 'Save as' image or video.

         Unfortunately this one doesn't seem to work on Story videos, probably also because of the change on Instagram's side. It does work on Story pictures and on normal posts of videos and pictures.

3. Instagram Media Downloader:

         This one puts a down arrow on the right side of the screen (not on the image), next to the cancel (X) button.

         It only works for Stories (pictures and videos), but not for normal posts. (Weird!) This is the one I mostly use for Stories.

I hope it's okay to include information about other products on the VDH forum.

VDH is a wonderful product and I use it successfully (with license) on many sites. But where it does not (yet) work, I think we need to share alternative methods.

Pierre

[Wild Willy]

4.  Don't ever visit Instagram.  Never join any so-called "social" network.  They're all anti-social.  Yes, I have my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.

5.  More seriously, if I were a member there, I'd try to use ffmpeg:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/oYDFx367MSY

I'm hoping somebody takes that as encouragement to try it & tell us if you succeed, or even if you don't.  Failures can be educational, too.

[pvwyn]

Sorry for only replying now. I was just so busy catching up with all my social media :)

Mjs and I are going to hopefully connect up next week to look at the Instagram issue together.

It seems that Instagram is just as unpredictable as Youtube when it comes to serving up videos. It now seems that the Story videos are served up in at least two ways. The one can easily be downloaded using VDH. The other produces the typical 'chunk' format, with no hits in VDH containing the full video. I looked at the network monitor in Firefox and couldn't find anything that looked like a manifest file. The MP4 hits in the network monitor were none playable by opening in a new tab. This is the part that Mjs has offered to take a look to see if he spots something that I'm missing.

I am grateful for all the work that you have put in investigating the ffmpeg method of downloading videos. It is obviously a powerful tool when all other methods fail. However, I don't think it is practical to use for these short video clips that are now so popular in all social media. Typically one would be following a number of people, each having uploaded a few Story videos. You decide that there are 5 or 10 or 20 video clips you want to download. You need something (like VDH) that you can just click for each video and that will download it without doing any further processing. Hopefully, in time, it will. The add-ons I mentioned obviously found a way to do it. But, as with Youtube, I think it is going to remain a moving target.

Pierre

[mjs]

Ok Pierre and I looked over the Story videos and they sending the media in small pieces. The media can be opened in a new tab by removing

the part of the link at the end and then press enter.

Refer to this :  https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/Y_r8oglS3UI/m/39vyqCMmBwAJ

I have a screenshot of a media url for Facebook but it applies to Instagram .So basically you can open the video and audio in new tabs

and save the media then use the merging tool in VDH. But this does not seem easy and convenient for most users.

If you want these videos use other tools or google instagram story downloader.

[pvwyn]

Sorry for the sporadic (and long-winded) responses. This seems to be an evolving Story (pun intended) ...

After Mjs and I had our live collaboration last week, I discovered a few more 'facts'. (We all believe in the scientific method, right? A theory is only true until proven false ... or something to that effect?)

I have been using the following random Instagram site for testing, as it is public (though you still need an Instagram account) and it seems to always have at least 2 or more Stories published.

To play the Stories, just click on the round profile picture and it will play them one after the other:

https://www.instagram.com/mr10minutes/ 

I hope the owner of the page doesn't mind the 'free' advertising ...

I previously stated that Instagram seems to serve Stories in two formats: One that can easily be downloaded by VDH (a single MP4 hit) and another which is served up in chunks.

I am now modifying my theory. It would seem that the first of the Stories is always served as a single hit, and the others are always served up as chunks.

These stories disappear 24 hours after they were posted. I witnessed one particular Story that was 2nd in the list being served up in chunks. When the 1st Story expired, the 2nd Story now became the first in the list. It was now served up as a single MP4 hit, not in chunks anymore.

I don't know if this information is of any use, but my theory (hypothesis?) is that the 1st Story can always easily be downloaded with VDH (if it is a video - keep in mind that Stories can also be JPG's).

The Stories that are served up as chunks are not currently handled properly by VDH. I therefore use other Firefox add-ons, as previously discussed. But Mjs discovered a brilliant work-around for chunked videos, as described in his previous post. It seems to work for Facebook and Instagram. It would be interesting to know which other sites it might work on. As stated before, this involves a number of steps - so it is only useful if you don't want to install other add-ons or have problems with getting them to work.

When you are on the Instagram page, press F12 to open the Developer Tools. Click on the 'Network' tab and then filter on 'Media'. This will ensure that MP4 hits are shown and not much else. Refresh the Instagram page (F5) and run the Stories.

The first MP4 hit should be the complete 1st Story, including video and sound. You can right-click on the hit and click 'Open in New Tab'. That one Story will play there with sound and can be downloaded using right-click, 'Save Video As'. (You could also download it using VDH.) Currently this URL looks like below, but it will change after a couple of hours:

Current 1st hit - 1st Story, complete (video and sound):

https://scontent-jnb1-1.cdninstagram.com/o1/v/t16/f1/m78/99484B5AE4375707F29053B882129AAC_video_dashinit.mp4?efg=eyJxZV9ncm91cHMiOiJbXCJpZ193ZWJfZGVsaXZlcnlfdnRzX290ZlwiXSIsInZlbmNvZGVfdGFnIjoidnRzX3ZvZF91cmxnZW4uNDgwLnN0b3J5LmJhc2VsaW5lIn0&_nc_ht=scontent-jnb1-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=110&vs=543450514432869_1915179591&_nc_vs=HBksFQIYUWlnX3hwdl9wbGFjZW1lbnRfcGVybWFuZW50X3YyLzk5NDg0QjVBRTQzNzU3MDdGMjkwNTNCODgyMTI5QUFDX3ZpZGVvX2Rhc2hpbml0Lm1wNBUAAsgBABUAGCRHT1h4NHhJWGtpWUtpM3dBQUpqSDNydFVYcjBsYnBSMUFBQUYVAgLIAQAoABgAGwGIB3VzZV9vaWwBMRUAACb054nA%2FMK5PxUCKAJDMywXQC4AAAAAAAAYEmRhc2hfYmFzZWxpbmVfMl92MREAdegHAA%3D%3D&_nc_rid=2334b78368&ccb=9-4&oh=00_AfDPELxNJg99XbMK60vj-AD_PJpMN2ozme_PmQyZQ4g1LA&oe=63E1D4F3&_nc_sid=276363

All the following MP4 hits represent chunks. The 2nd hit and the 3rd hit both represent the video of the 2nd Story, but at different resolutions. It would seem as if the highest resolution always appears first.

It has no sound.

Current 2nd hit - high resolution video, 720 x 1280, without sound:

https://scontent-jnb1-1.cdninstagram.com/o1/v/t16/f1/m78/36428D8FF3F5B37A2447EB1B36930794_video_dashinit.mp4?efg=eyJxZV9ncm91cHMiOiJbXCJvaWxyMWNcIl0ifQ&_nc_ht=scontent-jnb1-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=106&ccb=9-4&oh=00_AfDP0ec_DFWwqfvl5hwqHXwqSPSSbSYCZ0jiYdIdJ1xQTg&oe=63E19812&_nc_sid=276363&bytestart=844&byteend=899

You can also right-click and click 'Open in New Tab'. You will however get an error message: 'No video with supported format and MIME type found'.

To make this video play, go to the end of the URL in the Firefox tab, and delete the last bit starting with &bytestart (as highlighted above).

[This is the discovery that Mjs made some time ago.]

Hit Enter and the video should play. You can save using the normal 'Save Video As', or using VDH.

Current 3rd hit - low resolution video, 480 x 854, without sound:

https://scontent-jnb1-1.cdninstagram.com/o1/v/t16/f1/m78/414ECFC45A79CFCAECC1D38191C146B3_video_dashinit.mp4?efg=eyJxZV9ncm91cHMiOiJbXCJvaWxyMWNcIl0ifQ&_nc_ht=scontent-jnb1-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=100&ccb=9-4&oh=00_AfDyyOqB5wUf3Uw3WlG_vwu_H9_pTFpM_WHBRmm06Ua8gQ&oe=63E1E48A&_nc_sid=276363&bytestart=841&byteend=896

You don't need to download this if you only want the higher resolution.

Current 4th hit - audio only, without video:

https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t50.12441-16/328291431_1673816733056566_3516314002615848499_n.mp4?_nc_ht=scontent-jnb1-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=110&_nc_ohc=OKn8_pS0AiQAX9SH8qr&tn=xt0X2Z_tG2h8pKE9&edm=ANmP7GQBAAAA&ccb=7-5&oh=00_AfD7qTSFAWFS_BftoU2BeGwRBkelFRW76uelNH6x32IZkw&oe=63E1FF09&_nc_sid=276363&bytestart=783&byteend=850

Do the same as before, deleting the last bit, and hit Enter. A sound file should now play, without video.

Right-click on the audio bar and click 'Save Audio As', or use VDH to download. It will still be an MP4 file, but audio without video.

You now have two MP4 files, one with video only, the other with audio only. They can be played synchronously in VLC Player.

Alternatively you can use the Aggregate functionality in VDH to merge the two files:

Click on the VDH icon in Firefox, hover mouse over the right pointing arrow, and then click the icon showing two paths merging to one:

If you now want to save the 3rd (or subsequent) Stories, you will have to go further down the 'Hit' list. It won't start at the next hit. The next few hits are the same video as before, just different chunks.

You have to look for entries where the first part of the URL (in the File column of Developer Tools) changes to something different to what you had for the first Story.

It will get messy if there are many Stories. I didn't say this was going to be a walk in the park!

I couldn't find anything in the video hits (shown above) that indicate the resolution. It might be there, but I can't see it. So, trial and error, for now.

If anybody has further ideas, please feel free to comment.

Perhaps these ideas will serve as hints for Michael to enable a future version of VDH to be able to download Instagram and Facebook Stories??

Pierre