no media on youtube videos that need to age verify

[Valkyrie -]

video I found the issue on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zrofrUpROg

VDH will find no media on this page

firefox 119.0.1

VDH 8.0.0.6

coapp 1.6.3

windows 10

[Wild Willy]

This is a known old problem for that version of VDH & that version of the CoApp.
However, I can confirm that VDH 8.1.0.0a8 beta with CoApp 2.0.6 also doesn't work. The
VDH menu contains only short, useless variants. In addition, the technique I describe in
the thread with the title "How to download from YouTube" also does not work. When I give
the media URLs to Firefox, it does nothing. I get an empty page.

[mjs]

Using same version beta and companion app :

[Wild Willy]

You inspired me to try again. No change. I even launched playback this time (as you can
see). Makes no difference. Does your location matter? This content obviously is not
geoblocked where I am. Maybe it's a shortcoming due to the fact that I'm on stinky old
Windows 7. That means I'm on a slightly backlevel Firefox & I have a different CoApp.
These are, of course, just wild-ass guesses. I can't explain it.

More inexplicables. I retried my alternative technique using the Network Monitor & Save
Video/Audio As. It worked this time. The video download was pooping along at some
reprehensibly slow pace. But as soon as I started the download of the audio, the video
download sped up & the whole download of both tracks took about 3 minutes. I merged the
results because I chose to download webms & VLC doesn't do synchronous playback of webms
very well. The merged file played fine. I just sampled it at intervals but it was good
at each sample point.

[Valkyrie -]

updated to VDH 8.1.0.0a8 and coapp 2.0.6

gave firefox a restart and I can download, thanks

[mjs]

I don't know why you sent this to me.

When you need help, post it on the group.

On Thu., 16 Nov. 2023, 1:59 am Tom Robinson, <zxrob...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

Thanks for responding. I get the dropdown you show. When I choose one of the resolutions and then choose Download. I get the Companion application required page, AKA panel=dialog3.

I downloaded the .deb file from https://downloadhelper.net/install-coapp-v2. Then when used apt-get to install it, the message returned was net.downloadhelper.coapp is already the newest version (2.0.6). In the Synaptic package manager, I completely removed net.downloadhelper.coapp. Then I tried installing from the terminal again. Here is a transcript.

trobinson@mithrin:~$ cd Downloads

trobinson@mithrin:~/Downloads$ uname -a

Linux mithrin 6.5.0-10-generic #10-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Oct 13 13:49:38 UTC 2023 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

trobinson@mithrin:~/Downloads$ lsb_release -a

No LSB modules are available.

Distributor ID: Ubuntu

Description: Ubuntu 23.10

Release: 23.10

Codename: mantic

trobinson@mithrin:~/Downloads$ sudo apt install ./vdhcoapp-2.0.6-linux-x86_64.deb

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree... Done

Reading state information... Done

Note, selecting 'net.downloadhelper.coapp' instead of './vdhcoapp-2.0.6-linux-x86_64.deb'

The following NEW packages will be installed:

net.downloadhelper.coapp

0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.

Need to get 0 B/42.6 MB of archives.

After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.

Get:1 /home/trobinson/Downloads/vdhcoapp-2.0.6-linux-x86_64.deb net.downloadhelper.coapp amd64 2.0.6 [42.6 MB]

Selecting previously unselected package net.downloadhelper.coapp.

(Reading database ... 271784 files and directories currently installed.)

Preparing to unpack .../vdhcoapp-2.0.6-linux-x86_64.deb ...

Unpacking net.downloadhelper.coapp (2.0.6) ...

Setting up net.downloadhelper.coapp (2.0.6) ...

Installing…

VdhCoApp : VdhCoApp is ready to be used

Installing…

Writing /root/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/net.downloadhelper.coapp.json

Writing /root/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/net.d

ownloadhelper.coapp.json

VdhCoApp : VdhCoApp is ready to be used

After doing this, I tried downloading the YouTube video again, using the 1920x1080 MP4, choosing Download and I again get the Companion application required dialog.

Could it be that this is Ubuntu 23.10, not the current LTS release? I had to upgrade to get a new enough kernel to support my wireless USB stick. It appears that the app is installed properly and the extension in Firefox is working properly, but the extension is not recognizing that the app is there and that it can invoke it. Is the anything additional I can do to help you find the problem? Contents of config files? Tests?

Here's a screenshot of my web console:



These were the only two console messages that were written when I clicked the Download button from the extension...

Hope these help...

Tom

[Wild Willy]

Mjs is much nicer than I am. I would have just posted a comment here that I am not an
employee of VDH, just another user (same as mjs). I would have said I ignore all E-mails
I receive on the subject of VDH. I respond to posts in the group. I do not respond to
E-mails. I would have ignored your E-mail until you posted it here yourself. Like I
said, mjs is much nicer than I am.

In any case, you should search this forum for answers. Seems to me others have
encountered this problem & solved it. I've never used any flavor of Linux. You're lucky
I even recognized that Linux was the topic under discussion. So I'm not going to be any
real help here.

You might also look in here:

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

Search for "linux" within the text of that web page. Be sure you expand the thread so
the full text of every post is visible. There are a few search hits for "linux" on that
page. Maybe one of them will be the magic spell that cures your problem.

While you're in there, you should look for some other text strings within that page:

stealth quote
short tutorial
using gmail to post here

Those are references to advice on how to interact in this forum. You should find those
helpful. Even if you don't use GMail, that last reference is useful for anybody
participating in this forum.

[Wild Willy]

I just noticed something in your image, mjs. Those aren't Side Download icons, are they?
They don't look like it to me but I just want to make sure.

[mjs]

Its the older method using the companion app, side downloading hasn't been added yet for dash streams.

Although there was no HLS options on that particular video. It seems not every video has a HLS variants.

[Wild Willy]

But this content isn't DASH. It's neither DASH nor HLS. It's ADP. Lots of other
YouTube content presents the Side functions & they're neither HLS nor DASH; they're all
ADP. Very little content on YouTube offers HLS/DASH. There were a couple of examples I
stumbled across investigating problems for other users. I think it was archived versions
of what had originally been livestreams. As I recall, those things offered both HLS &
DASH master manifests. But run of the mill everyday content like what we're looking at
here doesn't offer master manifests. It just offers the jsons in YouTube's inimitable
non-standard way. All the audio-visual content is described in the player json. The
player json acts as a master manifest. This is what Michel is labeling ADP. If you look
in the player json under the Response heading on the right, it's got a section called
streamingData. Inside that, there's a section called adaptiveFormats. I think that's
where the label ADP comes from, adaptiveFormats, ADaPtiveFormats. The adaptiveFormats
section acts like a master manifest. It's got the URLs of all the variants, typically
labelled video/webm, video/mp4, audio/webm, & audio/mp4. That's where I get the URls to
do the Save Video/Audio As functions. On YouTube content that is not labeled age
restricted, VDH has no problem presenting us with variants that are amenable to the Side
functions. What I saw in this age restricted video looked just like non-age restricted
content. There was a player json & I could use the URLs to get the content, even though
VDH wouldn't do it for me. Apparently, VDH did offer you content to download, but I find
it very strange that it didn't offer the Side functions. The stuff I saw in the Network
Monitor looked just like what I see on everyday non-age restricted content that has
offered me the Side functions, even on W7. I suppose there's something to do with W7
that is giving me problems here, but even for you, you should be seeing the Side
functions. And once they fix . . . I don't know what. My guess is that the problem is
in the W7 CoApp. I could easily be wrong. But whatever they fix, both of us should be
able to see Side functions. From what I see, the age restriction isn't making any
difference in what the web site is presenting to the client browser.

[Paul]

Can you confirm that your issue is that you don't see HLS/SideDownload content for age restricted youtube video?

[Wild Willy]

Both mjs & I posted screenshots of what we got from VDH on this particular video. In my
case, VDH did not present me with variants for the actual video. For mjs, VDH presented
ADP (neither HLS nor DASH) variants that were the actual video but they were not Side
variants. The major difference between our setups is that I am on Windows 7 & he is not.
I did retest this (but didn't post about it) with 8.1.0.0a8/2.0.7 but there was no change
in my results. It's all in the images included in our posts above.

HLS Side Download on YouTube is something you're pretty much never going to see. ADP
Side Download is something you're going to see a lot . . . just not with this particular
video. ADP Side Download is what I claim should be what VDH offers here. And that
should be on both Windows 7 & newer Windows.

I can't say whether this age-restricted video is typical of all age-restricted YouTube
content. I don't come across much age-restricted stuff in my wanderings on YouTube. I
practically never log on to YouTube, which is to say practically all of what I look at on
YouTube is not age-restricted.

[mjs]

It does look like age restricted content does not offer HLS versions. I think this isn't a bug in VDH as I got a log on another age restricted

video using yt-dlp. Look at the attached file. Also Willy I think you're getting confused about what is HLS side downloading and what is

ADP downloading. Part of that is because HLS versions are also marked as ADP. At least one variant is, the others also show ADP if a

download is started.

What I tried to say earlier is that the normal older ADP variants do not yet offer side downloading. It's really dash because dash streaming

supports almost any codec and file extension. Mig or Paul mentioned somewhere that side downloading is not supported yet for dash.

But for the purpose of the discussion we'll call it ADP.  Only HLS streams offer side downloading.

 Look at the screenshot, all the versions inside the red box are HLS and the others inside the orange box are ADP.

[Paul]

Thank you for the message.

The way youtube is providing content depends on tons of variables (locations, bandwidth, logged-in or not, etc).
We do not expect everyone to have the same hits. But we do expect everyone to have downloadable hits.

So your issue is that you're only seeing the "MP3" hits, whereas, mjs is seeing more options?

[Wild Willy]

Right.