no audo/video sync, Google Hangout

[Allen Curtis]

I am using MacOS version for FireFox, Helper version 7.6.6

After downloading a video, the software says there is no media to process. A MP4 file is created. When I try to play the movie, the audio plays at the normal rate but the vldeo plays very quickly, completing in seconds. The audio continues playing fine.

Installed VLC and Elmedia players to test. VLC shows a still frame from the video but plays the audio. Elmedia starts out like the default Mac video player but stops playing the audio in a few seconds.

The video is a recording of a Google Hangout. This program worked great in the past. Tested multiple players so I don;t believe it is a player issue.

Ideas?

[Allen Curtis]

NOTE: This is a Google Hangout recording hosted on Vimeo

[Wild Willy]

Sounds like a classic case of this:

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

[Allen Curtis]

Thanks for the link!

There seems to be a long history with this issue. Could you point to a recent solution I could try? I did try the initial suggestion in the list where you copied a response to acquire the URL. This did not work for me.

THanks

[Wild Willy]

There's really no shortcuts. You have to try everything we offer in that other thread.
Yes it's long. There's no sugar coating it. Each case seems to require its own
handcrafted solution. Somewhere in that haystack there's a good chance you'll find the
needle for sewing up your case. Not guaranteed, but good chance. If you could offer a
URL to the web page on which the video resides, I might be able to figure something out.
Since we all have Google Hangout IDs, being part of our Google subscriptions, which
everybody must have to post here, there should be no problem posting a URL. Unless, of
course, it's private content in some manner.

[Allen Curtis]

When I open only the video in the browser, this is the URL displayed

https://player.vimeo.com/video/803969840?h=7b7279727a

[Allen Curtis]

I noticed that this link will not open. Here is a screen shot from web developer tools.

[Wild Willy]

Ah.  Vimeo.  We discuss that site at length in that long thread.  In your image above you should click on the column heading Domain.  That will sort the contents of the Network Monitor in alphabetical order by domain name.  Look for things in the vimeo.com domain.  That might be player.vimeo.com or i.vimeo.com or something along those lines.  You have to improvise.  The file name (in the other column) might be something like player.js.  This is one possibility.  I give another below.  You need to pop up the context menu on that line, cascade out the submenu from the top entry, then execute the Copy Response entry on the submenu.  Then immediately open a text editor window (Notepad or whatever you use) & paste into that window.  That will give you a file of unintelligible junk.  But buried in there you should find the string m3u8.  That will be hiding inside a particularly ugly URL.  The start of the URL will be above the m3u8 string & start with https:// of course.  You'll have to hunt carefully for the end of the URL, which will be somewhere after the m3u8 string.  It is likely to be marked by the string \".  Neither the back slash nor the quote is part of the URL.  The last character of the URL will be whatever is right in front of the \.  You must then pass that URL to ffprobe.  Interpret the report ffprobe gives you.  Then download your video with ffmpeg.  I'm skipping a lot of steps, some of which are in the long discussion you've been reading.  The rest is in the ffmpeg tutorial, a link to which is also in that long thread.

Another possibility, as I alluded to above, is that there is a file named master.json.  That will be only part of the name.  You can shorten your search by putting the word master into the filter field of the Network Monitor.  Pray this gives you a result.  Nothing I'm saying here is guaranteed.  You have to fly by the seat of your pants.  But assuming you find a master.json file, you need to once again pop up the context menu on that file & copy its URL.  That's the top entry on the popup context menu followed by the top entry on the cascaded submenu.  Then once again do a paste into your text editor.  That will be the full URL to the master.json file.  Find that master.json string within that text & change the .json to .m3u8.  Then pass this modified URL to ffprobe.  Then do as I describe above to download the video with ffmpeg.

Or not.  There's no guarantees that exactly these steps will work in your case.  You have to hunt around & make some judicious guesses.  I am not able at the moment to visit that video.  I will later if you still haven't figured this out.  But for now, be brave.  Try it yourself.

[Wild Willy]

I tried your URL & even when I'm logged into Google, it tells me:

Sorry

Because of its privacy settings, this video cannot be played here.

I even got into Google Hangouts, something I think I last did about 3 or 4 years ago, & did a search for you.  I got a hit on your E-mail address.  But since you haven't explicitly shared anything with me, I didn't see anything.  I think if you attach a read-only permission on the video in Google Hangouts, a read-only permission for me of course, I will see it.  My user ID in Hangouts is, unsurprisingly, Wild Willy, same as here.  I'm not sure how you grant a permission since I've never done it before in Hangouts.  I've done something like that in Google Drive so I have to think there's something very similar in Google Hangouts.  But that might just be applying too much logic to the situation, a habit I never seem able to kick.

I hope you're making progress studying the too fast video thread.

[Wild Willy]

Allen & I had an exchange of E-mails in which he gave me his logon credentials.  I accepted them, reluctantly, only because he assured me his subscription runs out soon.  (And I have now discarded them.)  When I logged into his ID for a video, I trolled through the Network Monitor looking for anything like one of the many objects we discuss in the too fast video thread.  I found one in the player.vimeo.com domain that was an HTML document.  It may be hard to find the spot in that other discussion where we mention this one but we do.  I tried to do a Copy Response on that one but it gave me a very short file.  So I did a Save All as HAR.  That gave me a considerably longer result.  In there, as in other Vimeo cases, I did find 7 occurrences of URLs for HLS master manifests, each containing the string m3u8.  Not willing to investigate every single one of them, I picked the first such URL & ran it through ffprobe.  I got a 403 Forbidden error.  I had taken rather a long time getting to that point so I reloaded the web page & went through it again, much faster this time.  I still got 403 Forbidden.  This tells me that they have "stealth DRM" implemented.  The master manifest has some sort of password protection on it & they have very effectively locked out downloading as a possibility.  Your only recourse now is a screen recorder, OBS being one possibility, which is definitely not the preferred approach since it will take however long to record this thing as its stated duration.  In this case, we're talking about a video of nearly 2 hours.

It's too bad.  This sort of thing happens.  If you absolutely have to have this content on your system, downloading is not going to work.  Screen recording is the only way forward.  Such is life.

[mjs]

What about the screenshot Allen posted showing the media urls. That's another method thats been explained where the media can be opened in

new tabs and saved to the computer. The video and audio has to be merged afterwards though.

[Wild Willy]

Oh yeah.  Never thought of that.  I don't know why I keep forgetting that alternative.  Yes, it works.  There is a 4K variant of this thing available.  I can't seem to get the 4K video to open in its own tab, even after trimming the &range from the end of the URL.  Ditto for 2K.  The best I could get was 1280x720.

But hold the phone.  This time, as I was messing around with setting various different resolutions in the player, I managed to get this:

This was an entry that did not appear when I was working on this earlier.  As per your (mjs) brilliant insight, I grabbed the URL for that entry, swapped the file extension .json for .m3u8 & presto, ffprobe gave me something useful.  I've attached that as ffprobe.txt.  You'll note that the Stream 0:0 audio is shared by all 7 video resolutions.  That's something VDH would erroneously interpret as separate video & audio.

Accordingly, I ran ffmpeg, like I show below.  Note that the URL of the master manifest appears in this command.  Aside from the fact that you have to logon to even see the video, the URL is full of the usual gibberish strings.  These strings most likely constitute a unique identifier for my web connection.  In addition, they probably also include a timeout period.  So this URL is unlikely to work if you just click on it here.  You have to do your own logon & go to the page yourself so the web site can generate all the gibberish especially for you.

ffmpeg -fflags +discardcorrupt  -hwaccel auto -protocol_whitelist file,crypto,data,http,https,tls,tcp -strict experimental  -i "https://126vod-adaptive.akamaized.net/exp=1678534878~acl=%2Fe8d046ca-29b8-49e0-8391-cbaebc3adabd%2F%2A~hmac=88caa5dfb68345ebd7529763f24e16f526c831514255bf4354ad789601b7eb8c/e8d046ca-29b8-49e0-8391-cbaebc3adabd/sep/video/17ac0aeb,182ea452,285f4cb1,2e889e6c,4f62bae2,705556b0,b2276351/audio/1eb44ca8,3d0b797c,483778d5/master.m3u8?base64_init=1&query_string_ranges=1" -codec: copy  -map 0:4  -map 0:0 "M:\VDH Testing\Ceramics.mp4"  1>"M:\VDH Testing\Ceramicsmp4.Err" 2>"M:\VDH Testing\Ceramicsmp4.Log"

Worked like a charm.  The download lasted about 20 minutes.  This site offers reasonable service, on the order of 4-6 million bytes per second.  I've attached the ffprobe of the file ffmpeg downloaded below as ffprobe from ffmpeg.txt.

Just for yucks, I also downloaded what VDH offered for the 3840x2160 variant.  That also took about 20 minutes.  But it was damaged in the classic too-fast video way.  I resped that file to 30 fps, which is the frame rate from what ffmpeg downloaded.  That is running at the moment & looks like it's going to take about 3 hours & 16 minutes.  I'm deciding to post here now.  I have every expectation that the respeeding will give me another copy of the video, identical to the one ffmpeg downloaded.  Assume that if I don't post to say otherwise that that is indeed how it worked out.

This illustrates the fickle nature of these processes.  You have to fiddle with it & maybe eventually you will stumble upon something that works.  I failed totally earlier.  Now, it works.  I don't know why.  Maybe fiddling with trying to do Open in New Tab on the MP4 items in the Network Monitor perturbed something.  More likely, reloading the page a few times made the master.json appear.  I also managed to download it with VDH.  However, the unavoidably slow respeed process makes the ffmpeg approach far more attractive.

About the attachments.  Google has a nasty habit of attaching files not in the sequence you attach them.  I first attached ffprobe.txt, then ffprobe from ffmpeg.txt.  If form holds, they won't be in that order.  I don't see any way to change that.  I tried dragging the icons around before I posted this.  That didn't actually move the icons.  It's silly.

[Wild Willy]

Of course. This time, Google put the attachments in the right order.  I don't know why that is not consistent.  One of the mysteries of the universe, I guess . . .

[Allen Curtis]

So, to record these videos I need to use the command line utilities, not the download helper plugin?

Are these programs installed with the plugin? They do not appear in my system path.

Thanks

[Allen Curtis]

BTW, I am running on the Mac with Firefox plugin.

[Wild Willy]

Yes.  VDH will download these videos but they will be damaged.  To repair them, you will need ffmpeg.  But if you're going to need ffmpeg anyway, you may as well figure out how to use it to do the download instead of using VDH.  Download with ffmpeg won't require the repair (which ran for 2 minutes shy of 3 hours in the case I mentioned above).  Just do the download in a few minutes with ffmpeg & you'll have a video that won't need to be repaired, saving you countless hours.

[Allen Curtis]

Are you saying you need to use the command line and not the plug-in to download?

- Allen

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On Mar 10, 2023, at 9:10 PM, Wild Willy <grampaw...@gmail.com> wrote:

Of course. This time, Google put the attachments in the right order.  I don't know why that is not consistent.  One of the mysteries of the universe, I guess . . .

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[Wild Willy]

Yes.

[Wild Willy]

Allen, please don't send me help requests by E-mail.  As I have said many times before, I don't work for VDH.  I am under no obligation to investigate any problem.  It might so happen that I am not able to look into something at any given moment.  I am not undertaking to be your personal tech support, nor anybody else's.  If you have something to say, please post it here in the thread on the forum.  That way, anybody can read it & perhaps somebody else can help you faster & maybe even better than I can.  Thanks.

[Allen Curtis]

After looking above again, it looks like I missed that part about changing the master.json name to master.m3u8

Will update group with progress when the command line tools get installed to try again.

Note: I had to refresh the page a couple times with the developer tools enabled to see the manifest URL.

[Wild Willy]

That trick about changing the name from .json to .m3u8 actually doesn't make a lot of sense.  You'd think if the web site has a master manifest with a file extension in its name of .m3u8, that it would send that to your web browser as part of whatever it has to do to play the video, not this .json nonsense.  Obviously, the file exists on the server, otherwise we wouldn't be able to ffprobe it.  My suspicion is that they are trying to make it hard for anybody to download their content.  Not very hard, just slightly hard.  If they really wanted to protect their content, they would implement DRM.  It's all quite silly as far as I'm concerned.

Refreshing the page a few times was also what I had to do to make the master.json appear,  If a few refreshes actually make the master.m3u8 appear, so much the better.  I didn't see that but maybe I didn't refresh it enough times.  That master.json file is not actually a manifest.  That's the problem.  A manifest would have a file extension of either .m3u8 (for HLS) or .mpd (for DASH).  Ffprobe doesn't care which it gets.  It generates the same type of report either way.  You then use the information in the ffprobe report the same to build your ffmpeg invocation.

You say, "when the command line tools get installed."  But you've already run ffprobe.  Didn't you already install ffmpeg?  You do understand that there is no real install process for ffmpeg the way there is for fancier applications with an actual GUI.  You just unzip what you get from ffmpeg.org & that's it.  You then execute the ffmpeg.exe that you get when you do that unzip.  It's all rather retro.

[Allen Curtis]

This morning when I tried this on my laptop, the master.json file appeared. Later today I tried to do this from my desktop. It is an iMac so installed ffmpeg using brew. After it was installed, tried to repeat the results form the morning. Now the master.json file will not appear. Go figure.

I am an old Unix/Linux guy so retro is my middle name... ;) 

Just trying to decipher how you got from the master.json file to the commands entered. Then everything should be obvious after that, assuming I can get the file to appear again.

[Wild Willy]

Wait.  I just looked at the MAC download page at ffmpeg.org.  It's not like the Windows download page.  The Windows download gives you a single zip file containing the 3 executables (ffmpeg, ffprobe, ffplay) plus some documentation all in one zip file.  The MAC stuff is packaged differently.  It looks like the 3 executables are 3 separate downloads.  Still, I don't think there's an install process.  You just unzip what you get & there it is.  I think.  I have no experience with MAC & clearly, assuming analogies to Windows is not a good idea.  I can't help you with the details of what you have to do to get the tools on your system.  You apparently already got ffprobe.  It looks to me like you do the same thing to get ffmpeg.  You don't really need ffplay.  That's just a video player based on ffmpeg.  I've used it once or twice just to see how it works.  VLC is a much better idea.

[Wild Willy]

Just reloading the page may not be enough.  You might have to actually click the play button & let it play for a couple of seconds, then stop it.  I believe the server doesn't send all the necessary files to your browser until you click play.  And you might have to go through a few reload/play cycles before you get what you need.  These things really shouldn't be this hard . . . but they are.

[Allen Curtis]

Yes, all the tools are installed. Unix based systems like Linux and MacOS have good package manager support so installation is easy.

Nothing really appears until you click the play button. Need to keep messing around find the secret combo.

Back to the question of using the master file information to construct the proper ffmpeg command line. I assume the "-codec: copy  -map 0:4  -map 0:0" options is how you choose the audio and video streams which are represented as "Stream #0:0: Audio" and "Stream #0:4: Video" in the file?

[Wild Willy]

Yes, exactly.  Of course, the actual Stream identifiers in any given case may not necessarily be 0:4 & 0:0.  That is precisely the information that ffprobe gives you.  But I think you're on the right track.

[Allen Curtis]

Quick update.

Using the instructions provided I was able to record the video!

Another interesting thing is that the video recorded in this manor played perfectly in the QuickTime player! Recording video with the Dwhelper plug are jerky but play correctly in Windows. (probably VLC too)

[Wild Willy]

This is excellent news!

As for the QuickTime thing, I'm not really surprised.  There have been numerous documented cases in here of VDH downloading things that are "jerky."  I found one case -- well, a fellow user reported the case & I investigated it -- of a video that actually had no soundtrack.  It was just some stock footage & lasted only a few seconds.  The ffprobe report on the thing showed only a single video Stream.  The video showed a woman walking on a path in slow motion.  The VDH download showed she had a hitch in her step, even in VLC.  But the ffmpeg download looked fine.  Other cases of jerkiness have been linked to timed_ID3 data.  But that isn't the case for you.  At least, going by the one video you shared with me, there was no timed_ID3 data in it.  I would assume your other videos don't have it either.  It's pretty obvious whether that is present.  Ffprobe reports on it, which is a bit ironic, because ffmpeg simply ignores such Streams.  I don't know what is in those things when they are present because I've never gotten one.  My research turned up the rather non-informative conclusion that they could contain anything.  But I can't say I've ever played anything that I could definitively say oh yeah, this has timed_ID3 data.  As for VLC, it is a pretty tolerant application.  QT is probably more finicky.

I'm glad this case is closed.  Great work!

[Allen Curtis]

New weirdness.

An interesting this happening now when trying to record the videos. After a period of time the media transfer seems to stall out. It does not break the connection but the recording never completes. I have left ffmpeg recording for hours to see if it would complete but it doesn't.

Is there a way to throttle the download/record speed? My assumption is that the fast download is triggering a trap.

Thanks

[mjs]

I'm guessing you're getting all the downloads from https:// vod-adaptive. akamaized. net , do they think too many requests are being made.

That I don't know but there is another host you could try and see if the issue still happens. This host is https://skyfire. vimeocdn. com

If you do a Copy Response on player. vimeo. com look for Skyfire master manifests or Skyfire master json links in your preferred text editor.

The json links like before have to be altered to be .m3u8

What is the result, does it succeed or does the issue persist.

[Wild Willy]

The so-called too fast video is strictly an artifact of a bug in VDH.  The video is not actually too fast.  I have not so far seen ffmpeg get a video with a too-fast video track.

The particular downloads you are doing don't happen to be of livestreams, are they?  In the ffmpeg tutorial, rather a long way down, I talk about 3 parameters I discovered that deal with livestreams.  I show a sample ffmpeg invocation that includes all 3 parameters.  But those parameters apply ONLY if it's a livestream.  Otherwise, don't use those parameters.

[Allen Curtis]

It doesn't seem to download either. Attached ffprobe output and ffmpeg script for review.

This is the command line used for record.sh:
./record.sh "https://skyfire.vimeocdn.com/1679047856-0x80c4128a12a962836f6772d177956f04c3b4336f/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d,bbbe3047,3d3f0d70/master.m3u8?base64_init=1" 5 2-2-23

There seems to be multiple audio tracks listed. Tried -map 0:0 and -map 0:1 for the audio for video stream 0:5

[Allen Curtis]

"too fast" in this case it not referring to the playback. Speculating that downloading fast is triggering something so it stalls.

[Allen Curtis]

This is what I found in the player dot vimeo dot com JavaScript file.

                        "akfire_interconnect_quic": {
                            "avc_url": "https://53vod-adaptive.akamaized.net/exp=1679047856~acl=%2F83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc%2F%2A~hmac=35c53b8f9a7e4ae31a2a4fc01c9e63aba18f2d64dd89d641fc8eba3364c302a5/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d,bbbe3047,3d3f0d70/master.json?base64_init=1",
                            "origin": "gcs",
                            "url": "https://53vod-adaptive.akamaized.net/exp=1679047856~acl=%2F83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc%2F%2A~hmac=35c53b8f9a7e4ae31a2a4fc01c9e63aba18f2d64dd89d641fc8eba3364c302a5/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d,bbbe3047,3d3f0d70/master.json?base64_init=1"
                        },
                        "fastly_skyfire": {
                            "avc_url": "https://skyfire.vimeocdn.com/1679047856-0x80c4128a12a962836f6772d177956f04c3b4336f/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d,bbbe3047,3d3f0d70/master.json?base64_init=1",
                            "origin": "gcs",
                            "url": "https://skyfire.vimeocdn.com/1679047856-0x80c4128a12a962836f6772d177956f04c3b4336f/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d,bbbe3047,3d3f0d70/master.json?base64_init=1"

[Allen Curtis]

The same JavaScript file does have master.m3u8 URL references. However when you try to probe them you get 403 FORBIDDEN errors.

                "hls": {
                    "captions": "https://53vod-adaptive.akamaized.net/exp=1679047856~acl=%2F83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc%2F%2A~hmac=35c53b8f9a7e4ae31a2a4fc01c9e63aba18f2d64dd89d641fc8eba3364c302a5/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d/subtitles/70624568-English%20%28auto-generated%29-en-x-autogen-cc/master.m3u8?external-subs=1\u0026f=dash\u0026subcache=1\u0026subtoken=0961f95e541633b0f3001f0803f2c53710f9fddc9bba6181fc2bdd0aef71e3f7",
                    "cdns": {
                        "akfire_interconnect_quic": {
                            "avc_url": "https://53vod-adaptive.akamaized.net/exp=1679047856~acl=%2F83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc%2F%2A~hmac=35c53b8f9a7e4ae31a2a4fc01c9e63aba18f2d64dd89d641fc8eba3364c302a5/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d/subtitles/70624568-English%20%28auto-generated%29-en-x-autogen-cc/master.m3u8?external-subs=1\u0026f=dash\u0026subcache=1\u0026subtoken=0961f95e541633b0f3001f0803f2c53710f9fddc9bba6181fc2bdd0aef71e3f7",
                            "captions": "https://53vod-adaptive.akamaized.net/exp=1679047856~acl=%2F83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc%2F%2A~hmac=35c53b8f9a7e4ae31a2a4fc01c9e63aba18f2d64dd89d641fc8eba3364c302a5/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d/subtitles/70624568-English%20%28auto-generated%29-en-x-autogen-cc/master.m3u8?external-subs=1\u0026f=dash\u0026subcache=1\u0026subtoken=0961f95e541633b0f3001f0803f2c53710f9fddc9bba6181fc2bdd0aef71e3f7",
                            "origin": "gcs",
                            "url": "https://53vod-adaptive.akamaized.net/exp=1679047856~acl=%2F83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc%2F%2A~hmac=35c53b8f9a7e4ae31a2a4fc01c9e63aba18f2d64dd89d641fc8eba3364c302a5/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d/subtitles/70624568-English%20%28auto-generated%29-en-x-autogen-cc/master.m3u8?external-subs=1\u0026f=dash\u0026subcache=1\u0026subtoken=0961f95e541633b0f3001f0803f2c53710f9fddc9bba6181fc2bdd0aef71e3f7"
                        },
                        "fastly_skyfire": {
                            "avc_url": "https://skyfire.vimeocdn.com/1679047856-0x80c4128a12a962836f6772d177956f04c3b4336f/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d/subtitles/70624568-English%20%28auto-generated%29-en-x-autogen-cc/master.m3u8?external-subs=1\u0026f=dash\u0026subcache=1\u0026subtoken=0961f95e541633b0f3001f0803f2c53710f9fddc9bba6181fc2bdd0aef71e3f7",
                            "captions": "https://skyfire.vimeocdn.com/1679047856-0x80c4128a12a962836f6772d177956f04c3b4336f/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d/subtitles/70624568-English%20%28auto-generated%29-en-x-autogen-cc/master.m3u8?external-subs=1\u0026f=dash\u0026subcache=1\u0026subtoken=0961f95e541633b0f3001f0803f2c53710f9fddc9bba6181fc2bdd0aef71e3f7",
                            "origin": "gcs",
                            "url": "https://skyfire.vimeocdn.com/1679047856-0x80c4128a12a962836f6772d177956f04c3b4336f/83b968b1-caf4-483a-9fd9-5d80b382dadc/sep/video/2e12a9d6,32ad634d,55c62e6e,b330f2fb,c798026b,cf1d84ab,ff650419/audio/40051f1d/subtitles/70624568-English%20%28auto-generated%29-en-x-autogen-cc/master.m3u8?external-subs=1\u0026f=dash\u0026subcache=1\u0026subtoken=0961f95e541633b0f3001f0803f2c53710f9fddc9bba6181fc2bdd0aef71e3f7"
                        }

[mjs]

It looks like the ffprobe on the Skyfire manifest worked, did try to download from it.

[Wild Willy]

Going by what's in the ffprobe report you posted, I would have used Program 2 for my download.  That would mean -map 0:4 since it's the highest video resolution at 3840x2160.  It's paired with -map 0:1 for the audio.  But you can download any of them.  For testing, you might go with the lowest resolution just to shorten the download time.

Yes, there appear to be 2 audio Streams.  Some of the video Streams are paired with 0:0 & the rest with 0:1.  Stream 0:0 shows bit rate 140 kb/s while 0:1 shows 255 kb/s.  I would presume that means 0:1 has a higher fidelity sound.  Whatever you download, you should use 2 Streams from the same Program.

In your 2 posts where you quote those ugly long URLs, you'll note that there is actually only 1 URL from each site.  In the first case, there's the same URL repeated from adaptive & the same URL repeated from skyfire.  In the second case, there's 4 occurrences of the same URL from adaptive & 3 from skyfire.  So the total number of unique URLs you've provided in your 2 posts is actually only 4, even though it looks like you've supplied 11 URLs.  This is what I usually see with these embedded Vimeo videos.  I experimented with one video one time.  I found that I got the same file downloaded from both sources, both adaptive & skyfire.  I assumed all their content would be like that, but maybe that's not true.  It certainly doesn't hurt to investigate both sources.

It is interesting that the json claims there are captions.  You're using -strict experimental so ffprobe should show any captions that are there.  But it didn't find any so I don't know what's up with that.

The 403 Forbidden error always needs a second try.  You need to reload the page & find the manifest URL again.  Reloading will generate new URLs.  You need to do it as quickly as possible since these things expire.  If you think you were fast enough twice in a row, then you can admit defeat.  But you always need to try it twice before you give up.

I've mentioned I'm not a Linux guy.  I'm assuming your .sh file is using the command environment on your system.  I'm assuming the $ things are parametric substitutions.  I have to trust that you're doing all that correctly.  But I'm wondering about your 1> & 2> things.  In Windows, those are redirects.  And I'm not 100% certain but I believe you can't say 1> filename.  It has to be 1>filename, no space.  I think.  I always code those without the space.  But I'm surprised to see those in Linux.  I didn't know they would work.  I thought the > notation was purely a Windows thing.  You educate me on that.

On Windows, only the 2> redirect ever collects anything from ffprobe & ffmpeg.  1>, 2>, my understanding is that it is a programmer choice what goes in each of these.  Whoever wrote ffmpeg/ffprobe, chose to send output to 2>.  I've seen other tools that put their output in 1>.  I've seen things that put output in both redirects, one example being the dir command.  The directory listing goes in one of the redirects & any error messages (there could be none)  go in the other.  I can't remember now which way round it goes so I always code both of them when I'm doing a dir on a directory with a lot of files.  That habit spilled over to ffmpeg & that's why I always code them both.  I've never seen either command put any output in 1> but it doesn't hurt to code it, so I do.  Just being a little anal retentive, I guess.

I don't know why it's not working for you.  If you can get an ffrobe report, that usually means ffmpeg will get that content.  So I'm surprised.

[Wild Willy]

I don't think the speed of the Internet connection should cause what you're seeing.  I have always thought there's no such thing as a too fast download.  Did you get any output in the ffmpeg log file?  What did it tell you?

[Wild Willy]

Your .sh file shows this:

-map 0:$2 -map 0:1

That's asymmetrical.  Shouldn't the second -map also have a substituted parameter?

[Allen Curtis]

It looks like it is working! Looking at the script I made the following changes:

1. added a parameter to specify the map value for the second media channel. When this investigation started it appeared that all video streams used the same audio channel. Subsequent examples showed different pairings.

2. the actual output file for *ffmpeg* was not specified! This is probably the cause for the download stall.

Let me try to address other comments:

- Linux vs. Windows - pick your poison.

- skyfire probably works now but I did not try it

What browser are people using? I was using Firefox but the "Network" tab in the develop tools was not reliable. Switched to Safari, on the Mac, and much more information was provided.

[Wild Willy]

You're just an endless source of good news.

You have a $6.mp4 in your .sh file you attached yesterday.  That looked to me like the output file.  Or is it that you forgot to provide the sixth input parameter when you invoked the script?  Still, it's weird that it stalled instead of giving an error message of some kind.

I'm using Firefox, as you can see in this screenshot:

That tools window has a lot of other possibilities on it.  For our purposes, the 2 items I've highlighted are the ones you need to select, at least initially.  Occasionally, instead of All, I select Media.  But I usually keep All & sort on Type instead (by clicking on the column heading labelled Type).

I'm astonished that you didn't get as much in the Firefox Network Monitor as you did in the other browsers.  Did you make sure to select the 2 things I'm showing in that image?  Also, you might miss stuff depending on the size of the Network Monitor on your screen.  You can see I've got it set to full screen width & about half screen height, with my system resolution at 1920x1080.  It seems to be as functional as I need it to be.  You can drag the edges of the Network Monitor around to adjust its size.  The column widths are also adjustable via dragging.

I should point out something you should be doing with your posts here.  Go back to here:

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

Do a string search for "stealth quote" within the text of that web page.  That will give you a link.  Click it & internalize what it says there.

[Allen Curtis]

Yes, the bug for stalling was the $6, It should have been $3 like the ones following

[Giovanni Antoni]

Non ho firefox.

ho un mac book pro m1

macintosh hd

ventura 13.2.1

Per me e’ impossibile capire cosa state scrivendo.

Mi fate funzionare e basta il programma per favore ?

[Wild Willy]

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/o8iQ-_1OoQ8