Downloading from Youtube stopped working this weekend

[S.Carter]

Hi, Sometime this weekend Youtube stopped working for me.  I immediately get the following errors:

• Short content 1555
• Short content 1555
• Could not get information from media 'Cake Chat becomes a Boxing Bloodbath! | Gmod TTT - YouTube' from file '/var/folders/k2/t03lw0rx6t5c5719r9py002h0000gn/T/vdh-69248BeDUJ0XRztL4.tmp'. The file might be corrupted.
• Failed aggregating "Cake Chat becomes a Boxing Bloodbath! | Gmod TTT - YouTube"

Here's a video that worked OK last week and now gives the above errors:

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

Mac OS 12.5.1

Firefox 104.0.1

VDH 7.6.0

CoApp 1.6.3

Same thing on another Mac, all same versions.

Same thing on a Windows 10 machine, Same Firefox/VDH/CoApp versions.

Is this working for anyone else, has Youtube broken something?

[Wild Willy]

Seems to be working fine for me. The Short Content errors are something I see on every
single stinking download I ever do from YouTube. I don't know why they are generated.
My downloads complete without error every time. I ignore those. I just delete them from
the error log & give them no more thought.

As for the video, I visited your page & switched resolution to 1920x1080 @ 60fps. That
made a new variant appear on the VDH menu. I downloaded that. I was getting a little
under 700,000 bytes per second download service. That's better than some downloads I've
gotten from YouTube but it's still a tiny fraction of my available bandwidth. That's how
it is with YouTube. They simply refuse to use the bandwidth that's available. They
adjust their download speed so that the download takes about half the duration of the
clip, regardless of the resolution. Low res clips get pitiful download speeds. I have
seen 4K clips getting speeds in the 6 million BPS range, but that still ends up taking
about half the duration of the clip to complete. It's quite abominable.

In any case, my download did eventually complete & I had a file that played perfectly
fine in VLC with both video & audio from beginning to end. I didn't sit & watch it, just
sampled it at 1-minute intervals, plus I let the last 20 seconds or so play to make sure
it was all there.

I'm on Windows 7, Firefox 104.0.1 64-bit, licensed VDH 7.6.3a6 beta, CoApp 1.6.3.
Perhaps the beta will work better for you.

[S.Carter]

Hmm very strange.  I just tried the beta with no success.  I download several YT videos a day and suddenly none are working on any of my platforms.  The speed isn't terribly important to me as I set it and forget it, once it finishes it sets of a small chain of automatons to rename and put it in the right places for Plex to pick up.

Tomorrow I will try this from a different IP (work or tethered from my phone) and see if that solves it.  If not, I might just nuke my laptop and start with a fresh OS to see if that has any effect.

[Wild Willy]

There were a bunch of reports a year or more ago about how downloads from YouTube did not
work when you were actually signed in on any Google property, this forum being one, GMail
being another, and of course YouTube. But I haven't seen any reports of this in a long
time until recently & I actually tried this just a few days ago. My download while I was
logged in worked just the same as my download when I was not logged in. I did that in
response to another user who discovered that his problems went away when he logged off of
YouTube/any Google property. Maybe this being logged in thing affects Mac but not
Windows. But then, that other user was using Windows, too. It all seems very mysterious
to me. Still, you might try logging off of Google. Or if you aren't logged in when you
try your download from YouTube, maybe you should try logging in. If you get the
impression I'm catching at straws & guessing out the wazoo, you would be correct.

[Wild Willy]

While we're into wild-ass guesses, here's another one. Try every resolution of the clip.
Download whatever variants VDH offers by default. Then go through each resolution on the
gear menu in turn & see if you can get that resolution to download. Maybe some
resolutions will work & some won't. And if that turns up some that work, that only
deepens the mystery. I wish YouTube just used plain vanilla HLS with m3u8 manifests,
like normal sites. I never have these problems on the Metropolitan Opera web site.

[S.Carter]

It appears the sign in issue is in play here!  I just got to work and tried it out on my PC here, initially got the same problem.  Signed out for the heck of it and bam, immediately started working like normal!

At lunch I will try this out on my Macbook and see if signing out also solves there as well, and try a different google account to see if it is account specific or not.

Previously I had tried all resolution hits it comes back with, they all do the same thing.

[Wild Willy]

Is this stupid or what? Signing in should, if anything, make it work better. This whole
signing in issue is ludicrous. It worked the same for me, signed in or not. But then,
I'm on Windows 7 & that may be so old, Google hasn't bothered to write the crippling code
for it. Only the new releases are crippled. Stupid beyond measure.

Here's a thought. I do something that is just about as stupid before every time I visit
YouTube. It seems that ordinary settings in Firefox are not enough to stop YouTube from
playing their ads & then automatically launching the video when you visit a page. So I
go into about:config & change one preference. The preference is named
media.autoplay.blocking_policy. I normally have it set to 1, but I change it to 2 before
I visit YouTube, and change it back to 1 when I leave. I also have
media.autoplay.default permanently set to 5. I'm not sure exactly what effect this
second preference has but it may be relevant. All of this does not stop YouTube from
showing the ad. It just doesn't play. After a few seconds, it automatically cycles to
the next ad, which sits there without playing for a few seconds before finally going to
the video on the page. That video then sits there, not playing. These preferences do
not completely block all ads. If you make the mistake of actually sitting & watching a
video in the player on a YouTube page, your playback will be periodically interrupted by
ads. The ad will appear but not play. If you want to continue watching your video, you
have to click Play on the ad & wait for it to reach the point where it shows you the Skip
Ad button, which of course you click. Then your video will resume. Which is just one
more reason to download YouTube content with VDH & never watch it on the site. Downloads
never include the ads.

In any case, maybe these more advanced Firefox preferences allow you to get successful
downloads when you are signed in. Another test you can try.

[S.Carter]

OK, I think I have found a satisfactory workaround here.  I'm typically be downloading 2-10 videos at a time from my subscriptions, once a day.

1. Go to YT subscriptions page and open any videos to be downloaded in new tabs.

2. Close the subscriptions tab, then bookmark all tabs to a new temporary folder on the bookmarks bar.

3. Open a private browsing window and from there go to the bookmarks folder and open all in tabs.

4. Being a private window I'm automatically not signed in, and can download away as normal.

5. Delete the bookmark folder and close the private window when complete.

Ads are slightly annoying but no more than usual, I can live with them.  I don't even need to sign out/in again, the private window sort of bypasses those two steps in one.

[Wild Willy]

Interesting. Are you simply signing into YouTube with your free Google ID or do you have
a paid subscription at some level to YouTube? At your step 4, do the YouTube pages not
show your avatar, thus confirming that session is not signed in? What happens if you add
a step 2.5 to your process & explicitly sign out? And maybe even a step 2.6 to close all
browser windows? My intuition is this. Being not signed in when you're in the private
window may not be enough. You're still signed in somewhere else. Plus, if you've got a
paid YouTube subscription, that's something that's different from my situation. I just
have a regular old free Google ID, something that shows me as signed in on YouTube
whenever I happen to be signed in on, for example, this forum, which I must say I don't
routinely do. I'm not signed in now. I'm E-mailing this post to the thread, which saves
me from having to sign in.

It also occurs to me to mention this thread to you:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/39_tUWjISN8

And somehow, I've avoided mentioning this thread so far. That's not like me.

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

[S.Carter]

I just have a free account, no red or premium or whatever they call it now (I used to, but it's been a couple years now).

Correct, on step 4, as soon as I load a google/youtube page in the private window it shows the "sign in" button rather than my profile image, so I'm basically signed out in that window only.  Adding the 2.5 would be redundant, and then I'd have to add a 5.5 to sign back in on my normal window.

I tested this yesterday and it worked well, I completely caught up with all my pending video downloads.  I'll continue using this method, and test a standard signed-in attempt now and then to see if anything changes for the better.  Should that happen I'll return to update this.

Thanks for the tip on the quoting, I didn't notice the little ellipsis til now and when I clicked it the quoted post popped up!  Deleted that this time ;)

[Wild Willy]

OK. We have the same type of account. But I have to say I hardly ever log in when I'm
on YouTube. I think I do that only when I stumble upon one of those rare things that
happens to have a restriction on it. You'd think that would be because it's adult
content or something like that. But it's usually for a reason that eludes me. So I'm
curious. Why do you want to be logged in on YouTube? I assumed you had a premium
account but since you don't, I'm wondering what makes you want to be logged in there?
Just being nosy. Feel free to tell me to buzz off if you don't want to answer.