Video DownloadHelper 7.7.0a2 for Firefox

[mig]

We have just released a new version of Video DownloadHelper (VDH) which addresses most remaining YouTube issues.

The remaining limitation is the inability to download 4K videos. We expect to fix this in a next update.

Be aware that version 7.7.0a2 includes many internal changes to prepare for new features and fixes. We expect this version to behave as it used to, but you encounter any new problem, please report them in this thread.

If you have already been using a VDH/Firefox beta version, it should update automatically. If not, you can install or update it from the following link: https://www.downloadhelper.net/firefox/betas

[Matheus Campos]

On Mon, Jul 3, 2023 at 11:53 AM Peter Jones <pj19...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you I have been trying to find an update but was not able to do so.

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[mig]

Did you try from https://www.downloadhelper.net/firefox/betas ?

[Matheus Campos]

Yes

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/0794d14a-20a3-47f2-b412-3841712320c4n%40googlegroups.com.

[mig]

Your screenshot shows that 7.7.0a2 is installed correctly.

[Matheus Campos]

Sim, mas mesmo assim só faz Download de 1 arquivo por vez.

Preciso recuperer minha licença. Apenas isso!

On Mon, Jul 3, 2023 at 12:13 PM mig <michel.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

Your screenshot shows that 7.7.0a2 is installed correctly.

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[mig]

Sim, mas mesmo assim só faz Download de 1 arquivo por vez.

> Yes, but it only downloads 1 file at a time.

Please provide details about what you are experiencing

Preciso recuperer minha licença. Apenas isso!

> I need to get my license back. Only that!

Your request will be addressed in the original topic you posted. This is definitely not the right place.

[bernard]

For me, new VDH beta version 7.7.0a2 seem to work exactly like 7.7.0a1 did. That is, it won’t work if my Firefox displays a list of YouTube videos, which way it did work before June.

To get it to work, I have to copy/paste the chosen video link, into a text editor such as LibreOffice, then launch it from that copied link (CTRL + Click). This will re-open a new session of Firefox displaying, not a list of videos, but only the chosen one. Then download does operate with no need to have the video playing.

[Dmytro]

After long period of not using addon (companion 1.6.3, addnon 7.6.6), found out, that it dosent downloads from YouTube with error pointing out to appdata folder, to some .tmp file. The error says that input data corrupted or something like that (deleted screenshots just 5-10 mins ago).

And thankfully you guys dropped new version of app. I installed it manually and YouTube downloads began to wark again.

Thank you so much for providing us this astronomically helpful magnificent add-on. God bless.

UPD: while writing all above i few questions raised. Gonna ask them in new discussion

понедельник, 3 июля 2023 г. в 18:24:29 UTC+3, mig:

[mig]

Where do you get your "list of YouTube videos" ? I mean from which URL ?

[Wild Willy]

I believe Bernard means "search results list." Do correct me if I'm wrong, Bernard. The
terminology you are using here is the same as what you used in another thread & it turned
out to be a search results list. You might help yourself the same way you did in that
other thread: post some screenshots.

Aside from that, it seems that the 2 keyboard shortcuts defined for VDH have disappeared.
They are still listed under the Firefox Addons dialog. But they have stopped working for
me.

[mig]

It is true that bulk download does not work on search result pages. This is clearly a bug and it will be fixed in the next version. Thanks for reporting.

However, clicking a link from the search result page should take you to the video page from which you should be able to download the video.

Regarding the keyboard shortcut, it works for me (Alt+Down or Ctrl+Shift+Down). Is there a chance another add-on does use (hence overwrite) the shortcut ?

[bd]

On 03/07/2023 18:25, mig wrote:
> Where do you get your "list of YouTube videos" ? I mean from which URL ?

Here it is below :

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=le+media

NotaBene : I tried using just https://www.youtube.com/ : another list
displayed and VDH behaved the same way as described.
When either pages do display, VDH appears in colors... but then, if you
try to see what is available for download, you only see JS and MP3 files
a few bytes long... with no surprise since no single video is playing or
even selected.

Whenever you select one of the proposed videos, VDH icon turns grey ;
whether the selected video is just selected or selected and started
playong, makes no difference : VDH is greyed and no download possibility
is offered.

Using the previous stable version of VDH, that is, before june, you had
to have a video playing before you could download it ; now, with the
beta version, you only have to have the video selected, not necessary
playing... So, I figure, if this is a list that is displayed, maybe VDH
doesn't know which one to download... this the way I try to understand
this strange phenomenon...

At least, that is what I can observe with my Firefox version in Debian 11.7
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[Wild Willy]

See attached. VDH is the only addon I have that defines any keyboard shortcuts, as you
can see in that screenshot. The shortcuts worked in 7.7.0a1. Maybe I just need to cycle
the browser. Which would be both annoying & weird. I'll let you know if that makes any
difference. But don't hold your breath. I've got other things going on so I won't be
cycling it for a while.

[Wild Willy]

Search results page.

Search results page.

Please, Bernard, learn this terminology. You are not looking at a list of YouTube
videos. You are looking at a search results page. If you use this terminology, search
results page, people will understand you better.

The confusion arises because every YouTube page includes a list, usually long, of other
videos down the right side of the page. That is what you might call a list of videos.
Those are the videos that are eligible (or will be) for bulk download. I do not know
whether the videos on a search results page are eligible for bulk download. I suspect
they are not, but I'm sure Michel can tell us the real truth.

In any case, Bernard, I went to your search results page & clicked the first video result
on the search results page. Actually, it was the second link on the search results page.
The first link on the search results page was a link to the Le Média channel page. So I
clicked the first link that went to a regular old YouTube video page. You are correct
that when you first visit that page, the VDH menu is empty. But for me, reloading the
page made VDH 7.7.0a2 beta populate its menu. I chose the first available variant, one
for a 1920x1080 video. VDH quite successfully downloaded that. It played fine in VLC,
although I didn't sit & watch it all the way through. I just sampled it at 1-minute
intervals to make sure it was fine. I had both video & audio at each of my sample
points.

I am also on Firefox 114.0.2 64-bit. But one major difference between our environments
is that I am on Windows 7 64-bit. Perhaps that is a significant difference.

I am missing something that would be really nice to have back again, Michel. You used to
show the clip duration on the VDH menu entries. You're not doing that now. It's a
critical bit of information to allow us to separate the ads from the real content.

[mig]

Whenever you select one of the proposed videos, VDH icon turns grey ;

By "proposed videos", do you mean click an entry in the VDH popup window or one of the videos proposed by youtube in the page as the result of the search ?

If it's in the page, by "select one of the proposed videos", do you mean you click the video name in the page or you highlight the video name using the mouse ?

 

[Wild Willy]

Here's what I did.

By the way, Bernard, this is how you should post screenshots like I've done right here.

Actually, the paper clip does not support every type of file as an attachment.  The list of permitted file types is documented somewhere here on Google.  But it's easier to just try to attach something, & if Google gives you an error message complaining about it, just change the file type to .txt & add a comment saying that's what you've done.  Your reader can then download the file & change its file name after the file is safely downloaded.

So you can post screenshots as either attachments or inline images, whichever seems more appropriate.

[Ramirez]

Still doesn't work. Won't find companion app through either method of installation on debian linux with Firefox 110.0

[Ramirez]

Also, appreciate all the effort you put in to making it work. Until now I have been using this app for a long time and it has been seemless. Hopefully you can continue!

[Wild Willy]

You might want to take a look in here:

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

I don't use Linux myself but I've read a few threads in here written by people who do & they seemed to manage to find solutions to their issues.  Perhaps one of their solutions will turn out to be yours.  Just go to that thread & look for the string "linux" within the text of that web page.  There's a few search hits so don't just stop on the first one.  Good luck.

[robj.r...@gmail.com]

DownloadHelper 7.7.0a2 just installed on my Windows 10 64-bit Firefox 114.0.2.

Videos on YouTube are not recognised. Same as previous release.

Videos from other source i.e. Vimeo are fine.

On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 12:32:40 AM UTC+10 mig wrote:

[Wild Willy]

Please provide at least one URL of a YouTube video that VDH does not download.

And Vimeo?  Seriously?  That has been a total thorn in our side.  Search this forum & you won't have any trouble finding lots of people who have had trouble with Vimeo, in particular, videos on other sites that turn out to be hosted on Vimeo.  Now THAT one I REALLY want to see.  Do please post some examples of that.  There's a whole lot of people who would just love it if VDH works for Vimeo content now.

[Wild Willy]

On the subject of the keyboard shortcuts, I have just discovered that Alt+DownArrow actually does work.  That's a function I just about never use.  Alt+UpArrow I use all the time, but I don't like the idea of the other one.  Just my personal preference.  Everybody has theirs.  That's mine.

[Koz Myk]

Yay !! It Verks !!

Actually a1 was working fo me too 👍

[vdh_tech_user]

the 7.7.0a2  worked Perfectly on the first video with the registered companion helper on Win10-64 Firefox 114.0.2 64 bit.

On the 2nd video it pulled in 17:41 of a 19:16 length video.

Here's the problem video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3YaUnRNz78

I decided to try it again.   I had to Close Firefox as when I attempted to download that video again VDH would start to play the local truncated copy using VLC.

I don't know if it makes a difference but I may have viewed the ad this time (possibly I didn't before)?

At any rate if downloaded the correct length of the video this time.

So .. if there's way to check the download file for the correct length - that might be rather useful as there was no indication of failure?

[John]

VDH finds the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai_7Fkv6igw (in mkv format) but never goes past 0% downloading!

Any help is much appreciated!

[jcv...@gmail.com]

Hi John,

This entry seems to work well for me

jerome

[Wild Willy]

I want to repeat something I said above but it might have gotten lost among other things.
The VDH menu on YouTube used to show the duration of the variant it was detecting. The
7.7.0a2 beta does not show durations. This makes it impossible to distinguish the ads
from the content. Please fix this as a reasonably high priority.

[vdh_tech_user]

working quite well .. with a few glitches.   A few videos have not been downloaded in the correct length but re-downloading them fixed the issue.

I had a few with missing audio that didn't occur until later in the video.  Re-downloading fixed the issue.

I'd started downloading 2 at a time .. not sure if that was a bad idea or not but .. just reporting in case that was not advisable yet?

I had to re-download this 3 times to get a full audio for some reason.  Probably just a quirk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rolp1CYvvpo

I have the licensed 1.6.3 companion installed.

Great Job!!

[Wild Willy]

I downloaded this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rolp1CYvvpo

I picked the 1920x1080 mp4 & it came in with audio & video all the way from start to
finish on the first try.

There are so many variables on the Internet that it's hard to say why certain things work
fine on the first try & some require retries. Line errors, other applications on your
system (especially things like antivirus, VPNs, & firewalls), little hiccups on the
server due to who knows what that the devs might be tweaking, the list is endless. It
seems to be a way of life with YouTube. Probably for anything anybody tries to get from
there, you should always be prepared to have to try it 2 or 3 times. Set your
expectations low & every so often you'll get a pleasant surprise, like I did with this
one. It seems like, "Your mileage may vary," is just the nature of things.

[Wild Willy]

Oh yeah. Two at a time. That's been discussed on here on several occasions. Michel
made a design choice to leave the moov atom (a thing with mp4 objects) in program storage
until the download finishes, which leaves it to the operating system paging algorithm to
manage the moov atom. When your operating system is Windows, this is simply an awful
design choice. I have seen endless freezes & thrashing when I've tried to download
multiple concurrent mp4s. Have seen. On occasion. This isn't a regular occurrence.
This isn't an issue for mkv because there's no such thing as a moov atom with mkv. That
might be an argument for preferring the mkv variants we're being offered on YouTube these
days. In any case, I would say try as many concurrent downloads as you please & if
there's problems, come back & post about them. Of course, with the retry issues you're
having, this might not be a good idea, but that's not so much about any shortcoming in
VDH. I don't think there's any concern about this VDH beta "being ready yet" for
concurrent downloads. I believe. Michel might correct me if I'm wrong.

[mig]

Good catch ! This will be fixed in 7.7.0a3.

 

[mig]

Just released 7.7.0a3 for Firefox:

• Fixed YouYube videos not showing duration
• YouTube bulk download can now be used from any YouTube page, including search result pages, channels, ...
• YouTube pages script injection now includes a retry mechanism. This might solve the problem of some users having no media detected in YouTube pages. Please report success (if it failed with 7.7.0a2) or failure (video still not detected in YouTube page)
• Fixed an old problem with videos not being filtered out or in properly based on their size

[mig]

On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 3:41:21 AM UTC+2 Wild Willy wrote:

Oh yeah. Two at a time. That's been discussed on here on several occasions. Michel
made a design choice to leave the moov atom (a thing with mp4 objects) in program storage
until the download finishes, which leaves it to the operating system paging algorithm to
manage the moov atom. When your operating system is Windows, this is simply an awful
design choice.

I have seen endless freezes & thrashing when I've tried to download
multiple concurrent mp4s. Have seen. On occasion. This isn't a regular occurrence.
This isn't an issue for mkv because there's no such thing as a moov atom with mkv. That
might be an argument for preferring the mkv variants we're being offered on YouTube these
days.

Sorry to say Willy but this is technically deeply incorrect :) Keeping some data in memory while downloading a video is only for HLS videos, and only synchronisation data are kept with a very low memory footprint.

MKV, MP4, WEBM default formats are chosen based on available codecs that are not supported by all formats. VDH tries to offer MP4or WEBM, but if it cannot, it offers MKV that accept any codec but is less popular, so it's the last choice.

 

In any case, I would say try as many concurrent downloads as you please & if
there's problems, come back & post about them. Of course, with the retry issues you're
having, this might not be a good idea, but that's not so much about any shortcoming in
VDH. I don't think there's any concern about this VDH beta "being ready yet" for
concurrent downloads. I believe. Michel might correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Yes, those beta versions are supposed to support concurrent downloads, otherwise this is a bug that must be reported.

[vdh_tech_user]

just upgraded to a3.

1st video I tried was 22:24 long but a3 downloaded a 225 KB file that's 5 seconds long.

Tried a 2nd time after closing Firefox with same result.

File was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K40MuUltc_E

[Wild Willy]

I can confirm that this video causes problems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K40MuUltc_E

I also got just a 5-second video. I dug further using my technique from over here:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/S9BPzSdwtPw

I had not thought to open the Network Monitor before my first visit to the page so I did
not get a player json. Perhaps that would have been helpful. I fell back to a log_event
object & tried to find the whole video. But the URLs in there were also for video tracks
of just 5 seconds. The json was full of this sort of thing:

\"targetDurationSec\":5,

That says that YouTube is sending information for only 5-second slices. The individual
chunks of the video do appear in the Network Monitor as objects of type:

application/vnd.yt-ump

It used to be possible to remove a section of the URL for these objects & get the URL for
the whole video. The section you could remove was of the form:

&range=xxx-yyy

But it seems the googies got wise to that & the URLs no longer have anything obvious you
can remove to get the whole thing.

I'm stumped. I can only hope Michel is not.

[Wild Willy]

 Brainwave!

I did a search that would present this video among its search results.   Being careful not to hover the mouse over the page after the search was completed, I scrolled the page down until I found it.  The 22:24 video was not at the top but it was near the top.  Once I had the page positioned like that, I opened the Network Monitor, then moved my mouse up over the link WITHOUT CLICKING.  The whole business about positioning the mouse off the page, then opening the Network Monitor, & only THEN moving the mouse into position is critical.  I talk about that over in that other thread I already mentioned:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/S9BPzSdwtPw

Here's what it looked like at that point.

Once I had something in the Network Monitor, I resized it which expanded the very useful part of the information on the right.  Again, that's all explained in the other thread.  I'm just doing once again what I did in that other thread.  This search, open Network Monitor, hover process yielded me the coveted player json.  And very much like what happened in the other case, I got both a DASH manifest AND an HLS manifest.  Here's how I extracted those URLs.

I'm not showing it in the image, but I did the same thing for the .m3u8 URL.

As always, I pasted those 2 URLs into invocations of ffprobe.  That report is attached.  Two invocations of ffprobe, a single output file.  Curiously, ffprobe couldn't interpret the DASH manifest.  It claims to have encountered invalid data.  It wouldn't surprise me if this is just another manifestation of YouTube doing things according to rules they cook up as they go along.  At least the HLS manifest yielded usable results.

Which I used, as you can see in the attached log file.  That got me the full 22:24 of the video, which VLC was quite happy to play without incident.  I admit I only skimmed through it to make sure it was all there & it did seem to be.  This claimed to be of resolution 1920x1080.  But you can see the bitrates in the ffmpeg log.  They are, quite frankly, pitiful.  It showed.  The image was quite blurry.  I like to emphasize this every chance I get.  The resolution here is 1920x1080.  That is NOT quality.  It is resolution, regardless of the words YouTube likes to use.  The resolution is 1920x1080 & the quality is pitiful.  Resolution is NOT quality, & here's a perfect example.  There's nothing anybody can do about this lousy quality.  That's what's there.  We can't make it any better.  The poster made it that way.

I think maybe somebody at YouTube was asleep at the switch.  (Note the terribly clever use of a railroading metaphor.)  I got quite an acceptable download speed for this.  The usual YouTube throttling was not in effect.  My experience is that this is totally capricious.  You can get things lickety split, like this.  Or you can get putrid speeds like we used to get in the era of dial-up modems.  I haven't figured out how to predict what you're going to get.  Youse rolls them dice & youse takes yer chances.

So yippee, you can get this with ffmpeg.  What does that mean for VDH?  Only Michel can answer this.  This is the second time I've managed to get what was previously a livestream & is now archived.  In both cases, YouTube yielded up regular old manifests, however begrudgingly.  Maybe there is some way to program this admittedly weird approach into VDH to save us this trouble.  The HLS manifest I found here was perfectly ordinary.  Each video Stream was paired with its own captive audio Stream.  No sharing.  This is the kind of manifest VDH has historically handled flawlessly.  The trick appears to be finding it.  I can only hope Michel comes up with something that will deal with this.

[gtm...@gmail.com]

Damn. I have the beta version and this did not show any download links. Can anyone?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMKDCo54s6g

[Wild Willy]

Do you not see what I have in the attached image? Won't VDH download the variant
highlighted in that image? I didn't try it myself since I didn't feel like downloading
something over an hour long, which would waste half an hour of my bandwidth. Maybe all
you need to do is reload the page once or twice. As you can see in that image, I have
not even launched playback of the video & VDH is offering me the usual array of variants
of the video, as well as a few things that don't look related. Or maybe they are. I'm
not checking them out to find out but you might be motivated to do that. They're pretty
small so I believe it wouldn't take much to download them.

[Wild Willy]

Just wanted to mention I still can't do Alt+UpArrow to open the VDH menu. Alt+DownArrown
still works. I even deleted both shortcuts & recreated them. Alt+UpArrow still doesn't
work.

[mig]

vdh_tech_user: could you post a screenshot showing the VDH popup where the download offers are displayed ?

[mig]

On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 3:37:33 AM UTC+2 Wild Willy wrote:

I can confirm that this video causes problems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K40MuUltc_E

Willy, when you see this issue with that video, can you run the Details action on the detected variant prior to download ?

On my side, the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K40MuUltc_E desperately works fine.

By the way, version 7.7.0a4 is on its way with several important fixes.

[Wild Willy]

I've got 7.7.0a4 now.  Alt+UpArrow still doesn't work.

So now it seems I'm seeing more variants than I did on this one previously.  That's a good sign.

The details took 3 scrolls to capture.

The download is progressing as I speak.  If I stall here long enough, it looks like I will get the last of it in a couple of minutes & I can report how it looks.  But that length of download is disturbing.  When I did this yesterday with ffmpeg, it took only 1:16 to download.  Here, today, with VDH 7.7.0a4, it's back to taking half the duration, which in this case was about 12 minutes.  Surely there is something you can do about this.

OK.  The VDH download of this thing has now completed.  It worked correctly.  Good work!  What did you fix?  Is it anything like my strange things I do with the Network Monitor & the json named player?

I'm going to have to hunt down one of my 4K things to see if it's any better now.  And some other things that haven't been working.  But I"m going to the opera tonight so I will probably not do any more with this for a few hours.

[robj.r...@gmail.com]

Yes, seriously Vimeo. Even the three coloured balls worked.

Have recently received VDH version 7.7.0a3 that installed on Firefox 115.0.

When playing a YouTube video, eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu1GLEh3wO4, the three coloured balls are now filled in and not greyed out.

When the three ball icon is clicked on all possible saving options are listed.

With version 7.7.0a2 the saving options could only be found under the Orphan icon.

VDH 7.7.0a3 looks like a goer.

[Wild Willy]

I can confirm that this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqDj7o19CWw

does offer a 4K variant on the VDH menu. I did not try to download it. It's 2 and a
half hours long. I'll take your word for it on this one.

On this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FcERjMlsAI

I confirm the 4K variant is not displayed on the VDH menu. I did do my little search
results trick to get a player json for this one. I was able to find a webm of resolution
3840x1574 that allowed me to open a separate tab on the provided URL & do a Save Video
As. There was no mp4 at that resolution. At least, I don't think there was. These
things are usually in descending order in the json & this webm didn't have an mp4 paired
with it, which is unusual. But I didn't expand every variant in the json so maybe . . .
Also, 3840x1574 is weird. Normally, you'd expect 3840x2160. Maybe this "off" height is
tripping up VDH. I can't imagine why but I'm not capable of reading this code, let alone
writing it, plus it's not in my possession anyway. The highest resolution mp4 was
1920x786. In any case, Firefox was telling me the video track was going to take 4 hours
to download. Strangely, it completed in just 8 minutes. That's still double the
duration of the video, which means it was a putrid download speed. But it did complete.
I also found an audio webm of "medium" (YouTube's word) quality to go with it. It took 6
minutes to download, also putrid. I decided to merge the files because VLC doesn't do
skipping properly with synchronous webms. The merged file played fine all the way
through. It was short so I just let it play. I ended up not skipping through it. So
the 4K variant is there & the information for downloading it is there. VDH just isn't
picking this one up. Sadly, unlike in a couple of other cases recently, this one did not
provide a DASH/HLS master manifest pair. YouTube is so inconsistent. We shouldn't be
surprised Michel is having so much trouble with this.

[Wild Willy]

Two videos I have investigated before are these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD3eveWBEUU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkH6jz1gy3Y

The first one is quite short, only 1920x1080, but VDH wasn't downloading it. That would
be VDH 7.6.5a0 beta back in early June when VDH just wasn't working on YouTube. I was
also unable to get this one using my alternative technique with the player json because
the URLs for this one have the signatureCipher. 7.7.0a4 downloads it fine. What did you
do to solve the signatureCipher enigma, Michel?

The second one has a 4K variant. 7.7.0a4 downloaded it just fine. It still took half
the duration of the clip to download, but the result was perfectly playable in VLC.

[mig]

On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 9:19:58 PM UTC+2 Wild Willy wrote:

I've got 7.7.0a4 now.  Alt+UpArrow still doesn't work.

Alt+UpArrow is supposed to open the VDH popup window under the toolbar icon. It does for me on linux running firefox 140.0.

Don't you get this behaviour ? Can others give a try ?

[mig]

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 8:05:53 AM UTC+2 Jay wrote:

Here is a 4K video that does not offer me a 4K download option: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FcERjMlsAI

Thanks. This video will offer 4K for this video in the next version. Resetting Video qualities will be needed.

 

MPC-HD could not render some of the pins in the graph, you may not have the needed codecs or filters installed.

 

Could you try playing the video with another player like VLC ?

[mig]

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 1:23:44 PM UTC+2 Jay wrote:

Also, I have noticed all downloads are slower than they used to be before Youtube made the change. So just want to confirm that what you're experiencing is not just you. Downloads are slower for me too. I have no complaints though, just happy to be able to download at all. :)

Yes, it looks like they now limit the bandwidth of each download socket to about twice the bitrate  of the video, which makes sense as you can fast-watch video up to 2x.

[Wild Willy]

Alt+DownArrow launches my default action. That has always worked & it still works. But
I think it was between 7.7.0a1 & 7.7.0a2, Alt+UpArrow quit working. It had always
worked, going back to just plain VDH 7, the first one. But suddenly, this week, that has
disappeared. I've cycled the browser. I've even deleted & redefined the 2 available
shortcuts. Alt+DownArrow works, Alt+UpArrow does nothing.

What exactly does Reset video qualities do? There isn't a regular setting by that name.
What does this clear? I just exported my VDH settings to a json. There's a section that
starts:

"adp_video": {

You seem to have every resolution listed there. But it seems we are encountering "off"
resolutions. In fact, this approach seems terribly cumbersome to me. Why can't you just
detect whatever is there & deal with things ad hoc? Why do you have to have this set of
templates to match against? Every time some weirdo comes along with a resolution he's
decided to concoct, you're going to have to update this list. Seems like an annoying
burden for you. It's like the difference between hard coding a file name in a program
instead of accepting the file name as an input parameter on the invocation of the
program. No no. This code walkthrough says you should change this to be more accepting,
more flexible.

As for download speed . . .

> they now limit the bandwidth of each download socket to about twice the bitrate of the
> video, which makes sense as you can fast-watch video up to 2x

This has always been the way VDH has worked on YouTube. Your download always lasts about
half the duration of the clip. A one-minute clip will take 30 seconds. A 4-hour clip
will take 2 hours. I noticed this ages ago. This isn't new. According to my
observations, there is neither an improvement nor a degradation in the annoying
throttling that is inflicted upon VDH downloads from YouTube this week with any of the
7.7.0ax betas.

But every once in a while, when I've been isolating video & audio tracks & using the
Firefox Save Video/Audio As... selection on the popup context menu, I'll get really fast
downloads. I don't know how to predict it. Randomly, Firefox will download something
from YouTube at 4x or 9x or 14x normal speed. I'd sure like to know how you could get a
faster speed all the time.

Then there's signatureCipher. What did you do?

And I no longer get the 2 spurious Short Content errors. What did you do?

And I no longer get 1912x1088. It's always 1920x1080 now. What did you do?

[Wild Willy]

> But every once in a while, when I've been isolating video & audio tracks & using the
> Firefox Save Video/Audio As... selection on the popup context menu, I'll get really fast
> downloads. I don't know how to predict it. Randomly, Firefox will download something
> from YouTube at 4x or 9x or 14x normal speed. I'd sure like to know how you could get a
> faster speed all the time.

I meant to say that the opposite has also been true. Every so often I'll get a download
via the Firefox built-in Save Video/Audio As... running at 0.5x or 0.2x or 0.06x. A
5-minute clip will take 3 hours. A 1-hour clip will take a day and a half. I've seen it
both ways. I don't know why YouTube discriminates against some downloads. My ffmpeg
downloads more often than not get dropped to a putrid speed. Every once in a while one
will run at a decent speed. But mostly ffmpeg is so slow it's not worth using on YouTube.

[Wild Willy]

I'd also like to understand what I'm not understanding about multiple concurrent
downloads. You & I had a conversation in here once. I have no idea how I could even
find it again. But you told me there was something you maintain in program storage
because you purposely left it to the operating system paging algorithm to manage. If it
wasn't the moov atom, then it was my mistake to jump to that conclusion. But you said
there was some chunk of storage that you maintain until a download completes & you write
it into the file only at the end. When several downloads complete at about the same
time, I have observed my system thrashing for the better part of an hour. If I can
manage to get the Resource Monitor to open, which is not always possible, the Disk tab
will show pagefile.sys getting totally hammered. I have been careful to avoid multiple
concurrent downloads with VDH since I had several of these occurrences in a cluster. If
I want to download a bunch of things at the same time, I usually manage to figure out a
way to do it with ffmpeg instead.

So let's clear this up. I accept I'm wrong. But I want to understand what you did say.
And you did say it. That there is something you leave to the operating system paging
algorithm, which is not a good idea on Windows. Maybe Linux is more intelligent. But
the Windows paging algorithm is apparently not the smartest.

[mig]

I probably said what i did in my previous message: when downloading hls streams, an increasing list of media pointers are kept in memory, for the OS to store. But it is not supposed to take too much space.

Of course, if your computer runs with little memory, like 8GB, you may reach the system limits running several operations at once. The system starts swapping between disk and memory and gets very slow.

[mig]

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 3:27:31 PM UTC+2 Wild Willy wrote:

Alt+DownArrow launches my default action. That has always worked & it still works. But
I think it was between 7.7.0a1 & 7.7.0a2, Alt+UpArrow quit working. It had always
worked, going back to just plain VDH 7, the first one. But suddenly, this week, that has
disappeared. I've cycled the browser. I've even deleted & redefined the 2 available
shortcuts. Alt+DownArrow works, Alt+UpArrow does nothing.

I don't understand what you expect Alt+ArrowUp to do. It is supposed to open the VDH popup as if you had clicked the toolbar button.

 

[...] No no. This code walkthrough says you should change this to be more accepting,
more flexible.

You are totally right. The variants management inherits from several VDH major versions and is now largely inadequate. It will be replaced with a simpler and more efficient user interface in the next few months.

 

[Rafael Moreira]

Is there a more current version, even if it's beta, for us to test?

 

 

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[mig]

VDH/Firefox 8.0.0.0a2 has been published and 8.0.0.0 submitted to Mozilla for review.

[Wild Willy]

VDH 8.0.0.0a2 beta is now live. For this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FcERjMlsAI

VDH now recognizes & correctly downloads the 3840x1574 variant. I did have to reset the
video qualities. (I wish you would call them resolutions.) I also ended up reloading
the extension, but that might have been a quirk of the order in which I tried things.

OK. Not the moov atom. Media pointers. That's kind of mysterious. Pointers to what?
And yeah, I have merely the tiny amount of RAM of only 8G. What would be, in your
estimation, "enough" RAM?

I expect Alt+UpArrow to open the VDH menu, just as you say. For me, it does nothing at
all. I have no conflicting software anywhere on my system, including none within
Firefox, that uses that key combination.

[mig]

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 4:29:58 PM UTC+2 Wild Willy wrote:

OK. Not the moov atom. Media pointers. That's kind of mysterious. Pointers to what?

This is not something that can be explained shortly. The mp4 specs will help you understand the details of how streams are mapped into a media.

 

And yeah, I have merely the tiny amount of RAM of only 8G. What would be, in your
estimation, "enough" RAM?

Now, 8GB is the very minimum for running modern OS and apps. 16GB would be way more comfortable.

 

I expect Alt+UpArrow to open the VDH menu, just as you say. For me, it does nothing at
all. I have no conflicting software anywhere on my system, including none within
Firefox, that uses that key combination.

It works for me on Firefox/Linux and Edge/Windows10, but not on Firefox/Windows10. Strange.

 

[mig]

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 4:22:33 PM UTC+2 Rafael Moreira wrote:

Is there a more current version, even if it's beta, for us to test? 

8.0.0.0a2 from https://downloadhelper.net/firefox/betas  or wait for Mozilla to approve public 8.0.0.0.

[Wild Willy]

OK. The pointers thing is an internal data structure issue related to mp4. That's
enough to keep me quiet. As for enough RAM, the annoying announcement about Windows 7
that came with Firefox 115.0 has pushed me even further toward looking into a hardware
upgrade. I had already sort of figured out my 7.5+-year-old hardware was beginning to be
not good enough for me. I guess an operating system update (I don't feel like that part
of it will be an upgrade) is in the cards as well. I'm looking into it.

> but not on Firefox/Windows10. Strange.

Now I'm encouraged. I'll quit harping on it.

Now about my other questions . . .

[D Baldwin (DB)]

8.0.0.0a2 worked for about two hours and then stopped working again.. Cleared caches and cookies, reloaded beta version (s).  Firefox at 115.0.1.

On Friday, July 7, 2023 at 2:09:31 PM UTC-4 Jay wrote:

Excellent, thank you. 8.0.0.0a2 sees and downloads the video, and it plays back correctly.

[D Baldwin (DB)]

I was able to force it to work by copying the video url and then open a new firefox tab and click paste and go.  Something in the YouTube home screen that is blocking the detection.

[Wild Willy]

To anybody posting here, if you want anybody else to verify your results, you have to
post some URLs. URLs. Give us URLs of YouTube pages on which videos reside, which is
pretty much every YouTube page. But you need to post URLs of things or else nobody will
be able to investigate problems with the videos you're trying to download. That also
applies to Vimeo. I'd like to see URLs of Vimeo content. You say it now works. There's
a ton of older reports in here of it not working. You still haven't posted any URLs of
Vimeo content that works. There have been 2 classes of Vimeo content that have given
people trouble. The one class is content directly on vimeo.com. The other class is
content that is found on other sites but under the covers, the video player on the pages
on the other sites turn out to be sourcing their content from Vimeo. If you don't post
URLs, nobody can verify it. One claim is not enough. If your results can't be
replicated by others, then you are making a scientifically unsubstantiated claim. Offer
URLs. Don't just tell me yes Vimeo. Give me URLs.

[Wild Willy]

I do not work for VDH. I have said this countless times. I am just another user, like
you. DO NOT CLICK THE REPLY TO AUTHOR BUTTON. I have received private E-mails about
this thread. I will not respond to those. Post here via Reply all. In addition, make
sure that your post is addressed to this group AND NO OTHER ADDRESSEE. Do not echo your
posts to any individual. Before you post, remove other destination addresses from the
addressee list. I do not want to see an echo of your post in my E-mail inbox. Send your
post here & NOWHERE ELSE. For additional advice, click this:

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

Within the text of that web page, search for these strings:

stealth quote
short tutorial
using gmail to post here

Each one of those gives you a short discussion. Read each one. In some of the cases,
you will also find links. Click them & read what you find.

Stop sending me E-mails from this group. Post via Reply all.

[Rodrigo Fernandez Franco]

Good afternoon. I apologize in advance for my english (it's not very good).

I'm using the latest beta of the plugin (8.0.0.0a2). So far I had no problems downloading any video but today I found one where the audio downloads fine but not the image: https://openwebinars.net/academia/portada/aprende-kubernetes-openshift-v4/ (it requires the creation of a free account to be able to view it).

[Wild Willy]

It may be free but I'm still not signing up for it.

In cases like yours, there is a typical pattern, something that has been discussed in
this forum on numerous occasions. You should search for "audio without video" within
this forum. In any case, you need to inspect the VDH menu carefully. Scroll it if it
has a scroll bar. You will probably notice that some variants have video resolutions,
like 3840x2160, 1920x1080, & so on. And some do not. The ones that do have resolutions
have video tracks. They may or may not also have audio tracks. The easiest way to
determine that is to download one (or a few) of them & play the file(s) with VLC. The
variants that do not show a resolution are likely audio tracks without video tracks.
Likely. It's not a certainty. But it seems like it might be the case for you. It
appears you have already found at least one such variant & successfully downloaded it.

In such a case, you have to download one of the video without audio variants as one VDH
operation. Then you have to download one of the audio without video variants as another
VDH operation. Once you have the 2 separate tracks as files on your system, you can use
the synchronous playback feature of VLC to play the 2 files as is. If you absolutely
feel like you must have the 2 tracks in a single file, you can create such a file, even
though it is unnecessary. VDH offers a tool to do it. You can do it with ffmpeg.
There's probably any number of tools out there that can merge a video track & an audio
track into a single file.

There's more on these subjects, as well as a lot of other subjects, here:

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

This leads me to suggest an enhancement to VDH. Add an indication on each variant on the
VDH menu specifying whether it is video without audio, audio without video, or video with
audio. Maybe use little images of an ear & an eye to indicate what's in that variant.
If I were any kind of artist, I'd offer samples. But I failed art class in elementary
school. So you're on your own, Michel.