Adding wood to the Fire, Video DownloadHelper is broken.

[Joseph Yang]

 So I've seen multiple posts already about how it's broken today after the update. I'm here to say I'm another one of those people so no need to respond if you don't feel like it. But here is my data point.

Operating system: Windows 11 version 23H2

Video Download Helper Version: 8.1.4.0

Vdhcoapp version: 2.0.10 windows x86_64 installer

Browsers tested:  Firefox version 121.0.1 (64-bit) & Chrome 120.0.6099.201 (64-bit)

Antivirus Status: Antivirus, firewall, network threat prevention etc. all OFF.

Issue: Long time user of VDH and I've downloaded from the same sites since from the beginning of time for the last 5-10 years with no issue. Today I had no issue until a few hours ago and then suddenly I had "getinfo" errors when downloading. After that it seems like the update automatically proceeded and from then on some videos will download like normal from the same site and some will not. The videos that do not download normally will load up in the queue and will maybe download a few megabytes, but then the download will stop (the progress bar also does not move from 0%). I know the app did not freeze because other videos will proceed to download while this is happening. 

My trouble shooting steps: I have uninstalled Firefox and refreshed the browser along with reinstalling both the companion app and video download helper multiple times. Occasionally after a fresh install  (or 3) or restarting Firefox a few times (typically 3 or more times) the video will download like normal.

Additionally, I've also confirmed that this issue is present on google chrome as well with the exact same behavior where the download does not proceed past a few mb. Sometimes closing the browser and reopening it will solve the issue, but that's with a success ratio of 1 out of 3 times or more. Which is the same as Firefox.

Hopefully this can be resolved quickly, and I wish the best of luck to the VDH team.

[jcv...@gmail.com]

Hi,

Thanks for this details feedback.

Do you have a video that reproduces this issue so that we can test it?

jerome

[Joseph Yang]

Lol, at risk of getting banned, I'm just gonna say it's a hit or a miss on "the hub" 

[Wild Willy]

Adding WOOD to the fire? And you thought you were being completely safe for work . . .

No banning will happen as long as we do things like refer to one of our preferred sites
like po rn hub like that.

For the record, I am running Windows 11 Pro 64-bit version 23H2 build 22631.3007, Firefox
121.0.1 64-bit, VDH 8.1.3.0a1 beta (supposed to be the same as the general availability
release), CoApp 2.0.11.

In the past, I have had no problems downloading content from there with VDH. Today, I've
got problems. I picked a page at random & without launching playback, VDH showed me a
Side Download at 1920x1080. It started but never finished. It claimed to finish but I
had a useless small file. So I reloaded the extension, reloaded the web page, & tried to
do the same Side Download again. Same result. Then I reloaded the extension again,
reloaded the page again, & this time, I launched playback & let it run for maybe 5
seconds before stopping it. The same Side Download actually got a playable file this
time. Problem is it was only 15 seconds of a 15 minute video. After my results below,
I'm not sure it was even the first 15 seconds of the video.

Time for Plan B. And everybody knows what that is:

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

The Network Monitor showed me 2 HLS manifests, files with .m3u8 in their names & in the
Type column the value application/vnd.apple.mpegurl. But looking at the Response column
in the right half, it was obvious that the first one was a master manifest & the second
one was a stream manifest. See attached image #01, which is censored to be safe for
work. So I ignored the second one & ran ffprobe on the first one. Those results are in
attached file ffprobe.txt. Looks pretty ordinary but I note the presence of the hated
timed_ID3 data. I'm pretty sure they never had timed_ID3 data before. Still, Side
Downloads use ffmpeg & ffmpeg has always simply ignored timed_ID3 data, so that should
not have been a problem for VDH. In the ffprobe report near the bottom, the "Unsupported
codec" messages indicate ffprobe is ignoring the timed_ID3 data. In any case, my
experience with trying to get content off that site with ffmpeg has been that it would
give me 403 Forbidden errors. Very unusual. VDH would work but ffmpeg would fail. So I
didn't hold out much hope that this was going to work today. I'm too much of a
pessimist. The proof is in attached file PH Test mp4 Log.txt. As you can see, the
download went swimmingly, in fact, with a well above average download speed. I ended up
with the full 15:07 that ffmpeg reported it had downloaded. The mp4 played just fine in
VLC, video & audio for the entire 15:07. In case anybody might want to try to replicate
my results, I am attaching the URL of the web page on the site in image #02. This is the
safe-for-work way of dealing with these things. Safe-for-work meaning this is how you
foil the bluenosed Google bots & don't end up with your post marked for abuse or simply
deleted.

I don't see anything about this HLS master manifest that should have tripped up VDH. It
should have done a successful Side Download on the first try. What I did as Plan B is
the equivalent of a VDH Side Download. They should both have worked exactly the same.
But VDH failed & manual ffmpeg succeeded. This is clearly something for the VDH folks to
investigate. Which gives me the perfect opportunity to point out once again that I don't
work for VDH. I'm just another user, like most of us posting in this forum. So when I
say investigate, I mean I've done all I can & I can't do any of the further investigation
that I say is required here.

[Wild Willy]

To JRRColumbus.  I have deleted your post.  The Google bots marked it as abuse because you failed to apply the approach I did for posting URLs.  READ my post above.  READ it.  Also look at the images.  If you refuse to follow community standards, you will not succeed in getting your posts to remain visible.  If you persist in violating community standards, you will be banned.  Smarten up.

[Sean Lynch]

i have similar problems with d/l of a few mb worth of data then sometimes taking hours to get a couple hundred mb to finish.
that was, before bitdefender decided to delete all the mp4's i had d/l saying they were corrupted too.

looking forward to a quick update to VDH on Firefox.

On Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 11:46:36 PM UTC-8 jcv...@gmail.com wrote:

[Wild Willy]

This is all quite interesting. I've seen people on here saying that Bitdefender, AVG,
Kaspersky, maybe others I've forgotten, have all flagged CoApp executables as viruses.
They are not, of course. I am running the antivirus that came built into Windows 11. It
hasn't made a single complaint about anything to do with VDH & the CoApp. I used to use
Comodo on Windows 7. Whenever I got something new, it would always pop up a complaint
nag saying, basically, "I don't know what this is. Do you?" Invariably, I just clicked
the button that said let this run & it wouldn't flag that item again. I have seen the
W11 antivirus pop up a complaint nag of that nature, on a couple of things not related to
VDH, & I have been able to respond to tell it this is harmless, let it run. That seems
not to be the way other antivirus programs work. Either that or there's some setting in
the antivirus program that would make it work that way but people haven't flipped that
switch. False positives are pretty much a way of life. People shouldn't be so up in
arms about the CoApp. If it were a virus, so many people are using it that it would
easily have shut down the Internet by now. It would be front page news & the lead on CNN
& all the nightly network news shows. Until this is resolved between the VDH folks & the
antivirus provider community, you should just tell your antivirus to make an exception
for the CoApp.

[Sean Lynch]

but we have to draw the line somewhere. i draw it at the antivirus that i paid for, not the one that came free with my operating system. each one has it's pluses and minuses. but when there is a positive it should be looked into and determined what should be done about  it. 

Virustotal(dot)com gives a single error to vdhcoapp(dot)exe. not a bad score but it gives you something to examine. it gives you the info you can use to  track it down. is it the same error my software is seeing, IDK. But it's a common enough place to start looking into it. which i hope you will do.

Thanks!

[Wild Willy]

Me? I will not look into anything. I don't work for VDH. I'm just another user, like
most people posting here. Jérôme, who does work for VDH, has posted that they are
looking into it. What I am trying to say is that in the meantime, you should just tell
your antivirus program to make an exception for the CoApp. What I'm getting at is you
can either avoid using VDH until this gets resolved, or you can do something more
practical to continue using VDH now. Antivirus programs aren't sacrosanct. They aren't
perfect. They're just software, like Windows, like Linux, like VDH, like VLC, like
Firefox. Antivirus programs can have bugs, same as any other software. They no more know
everything about every program in existence than VDH works on every web site.. So your
antivirus threw up a complaint about a program whose prior versions you have been using
for years without a problem. Are you suddenly going to assume that program you've used
for years is now bad? Maybe download it again being more careful to make sure you're
downloading it from the real source. But completely stop using it until your antivirus
gives it a stamp of approval? I think you know where I'm headed with this.

[jcv...@gmail.com]

It is a complicated issue: I would say this is not our fault, this is not a bug we can fix, the antiviruses are mistaken.

They should solve the problem, the good way would be the to report the issue to them.

jerome

[Wild Willy]

I have often said that one data point is insufficient to draw conclusions. It occurred
to me that I should try again. Indeed, I have had no problem downloading 3 additional
randomly chosen items from that site whose URLs are in the attached image. Not only
that, but I went back to the one I failed to download the other day and it worked today.
Just to be clear, I did Side Download on all 4 of these items just now. Not Quick Side
Download, not Download, not Quick Download. Side Download. VDH had no problem
downloading them all.

I think we have to say that on po rn hub VDH sometimes works & sometimes doesn't. Plus
if it doesn't work on something, try it again later or another day. That's usually what
you'd expect to be told by somebody who is just trying to get rid of you. But I just did
exactly that: I tried it again another day . . . and it worked when it didn't before.

I can't explain it.

[procrasty8]

I don't understand what you mean when you say you are using "Side Download". Would you be willing to explain that? I use the VDH icon on the browser bar, and I see Quick Download, and Download there, among other things. If I right click on the video I get choices of what to download, but that looks like it's just a "quick download" option because it doesn't ask me where I want to save it.

[Wild Willy]

If you are using a version of VDH prior to 8.x, you will not see Side functions. This is
true with CoApp versions 1.x AND 2.x. The Side functions are actually in the CoApp
versions 2.x but you can't access them from older versions of VDH.

[Wild Willy]

The attached images might clarify things.

[Joseph Yang]

Yeah well said, I'm not sure it's a antivirus problem as I uninstalled bitdefender antivirus and the issue was still apparent. And like you the same videos would sometimes work and sometimes not work indicating a different issue from antivirus being the main problem. It may be part of it, but it's just weird when the same video doesn't work on one day and then 24 hours later it may work. I do believe this is a VDH issue as it all suddenly became a problem for many users at the same time. My question is why isn't there a way to download previous versions of the coapp and VDH so that the community can test the issue and also it can be a layover until this current versions bugs are worked out. Yes... I had automatic updates on and I regret it now.

[Joseph Yang]

Not sure if this is totally an antivirus issue, as I've uninstalled the antivirus and reinstalled VDH and the Coapp and the issue is till present. 

[Joseph Yang]

Also as of 1/19/24 with VDH 8.1.5.0 and  CdhCoApp 2.0.10 on Chrome Version 120.0.6099.225 (Official Build) (64-bit) the issue is still present even with the last update. I've also experimented and tried switching the download processor between the browser and the Coapp, both have the same issue mentioned above with no changes

On Saturday, January 13, 2024 at 12:32:43 AM UTC-8 jcv...@gmail.com wrote:

[jcv...@gmail.com]

If you really need to rollback versions are here:
Extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/versions/
CoApp: https://www.downloadhelper.net/install-coapp-v1
jerome