Hacker News Reader

Comment by EvanAnderson | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the first rule of youtube-dl is not to talk about youtube-dl. I keep expecting Google (and all the other sites it works on) to start taking active measures to disable it. At some point YouTube is going to require an EME module to play even "free" videos.

View on HN

12 years ago i built google video downloader as a way to help me learn C#. it took about a month after the release for google to defeat my basic scraping. I did a few iterations to circumvent their changes, and then they changed tact, and erased the project from google. they only let it back into the search results after i stopped maintaining it.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/gvdownloader/files/stats/ti...

Google Do Evil I guess.

Last time I talked to Youtubers about this, they acknowledged that there are several important things that youtube-dl can do which the official YT API cannot; the biggest feature is that youtube-dl can archive Creative Commons-licensed footage.

Youtube does occasionally attempt to break CLI tools. get-flash-videos has been beaten down hard by JS-powered authentication, but youtube-dl emulates the JS player. Ads are still broken in youtube-dl, although strangely nobody seems to want to fix them!

I think command line utilities will usually be the last to receive active counter measures as they are generally considered to be used only by geeks which constitute a negligible percent of consumers.

Youtube-dl has lots of GUI frontends and is embedded in easy to use Android apps.

I don't use the Play Store but a friend recently asked me for a youtube-dl frontend for Android (using other words), care to name some?

Well, should we be listing the related Apps here?

> the first rule of youtube-dl is not to talk about youtube-dl

There are ~40 hits for "youtube-dl" in Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=youtube-dl&c=apps

But I agree that people might have mixed feelings on pointing to the ones that work better.

I made another search, through DuckDuckGo, and got a hit that's not among those ~40 and looks good: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aviddapp.o...

Am I hurting them by linking, or any of you for adding feedback?

Problem is, just because something is "in the Play Store" doesn't mean it is harmless. It could, for example, contain trackers. So, yes, we should discuss and link them.

Ark tube is a good front-end for youtube-dl https://forum.xda-developers.com/general/paid-software/app-a...

Not the GP, but NewPipe is the one I'm familiar with. It's available on F-Droid.

I use NewPipe, but my friend does not sideload apps or use F-Droid, that's why I'm asking for Play Store options.

It's unlikely that you will find a long standing play store app with youtube-dl built in.

The Play Store doesn't allow YouTube downloaders, so I doubt you'll find any good ones there. The moment one gets popular, it's taken down.

It's a bit hacky and out of reach to most casual users, but you can get YouTube-DL to work with Termux.

I have it set so that whenever I use the Termux share intent from another app, it use the shared URL and calls YouTube-DL with some parameters I want.

~/bin/termux-url-opener

    #!/bin/bash
    url=$1
    youtube-dl $url

~/.config/youtube-dl/config

    # Default Output Directory and Pattern
    -o /data/data/com.termux/files/home/storage/downloads/%(extractor_key)s/%(uploader)s/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s

This is the classic cat-and-mouse game. We are pretty good at it by now.

I don't know. Netflix is doing a pretty good job shutting down VPN proxying.

Yes, I know there are some providers that still work... Shhhh!

However, it's a lot easier for Netflix to blacklist an IP (or an entire IP range) than it is for a provider to setup a whole new proxy - likely connected via a residential ISP.

VPN connections are relatively easier to block.

But they're not doing a good job in blacklisting debit card providers (providers that let you generate your own unique debit card number and start a free trial on this new card, resulting in using the service for free) or banning shared accounts (i.e. 4 people meet on the internet only for the purposes of buying one account).

Are we?

When was the last widely available iOS jailbreak available? The last Xbox One one? PS4? Android bootloaders?

Youtube is a different beast, of course, but that's why the powers that be pushed EME down our throat (and maybe it doesn't yet but it WILL require protected media paths and stuff in the future). Once EME is reasonably well done and prevalent -- we'll have to download youtube through the analog hole.

Not everyone has fast enough bandwidth to watch live videos.

Many people rely on downloaders to actually watch the video.

But they don't download the ads, so I doubt they matter very much as far as google is concerned

FWIW, youtube-dl can download from a ton of sites...

https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html

You can actually download the ads with YouTube-dl... I believe it's YouTube only and still named as 'experimental', but theoretically it could be a default to appease the big G.

But surely they arrive as separate files, and not interspersed in the main video. So it's implausible they'd ever be watched.

Yes they would most likely arrive as separate files. Though YouTube-dl could force their main codebase to merge the videos. Regardless from looking around it doesn’t look like ads are downloaded.

Do you know where to find this or if this is definitely true? I tried looking around before and YouTube-dl didn’t have any ad downloading ability. I just tried looking now and at first glance it doesn’t look like it does. Nothing in the changelog for past year either.

It can download ads. It is a command line option.

In my case a vast majority of use is just to be able to pipe the original stream to mpv/vlc in order to reduce the cpu usage. In the past there was a clear benefit, maybe less so these days.

And by not everyone you can very well mean Youtube itself. I'm in Hungary, sometimes I watch gameplay videos that are only enjoyable in at least 720p and Youtube can't keep up with the bandwidth. I have a 1 gbit connection. And Youtube won't buffer the whole video if you pause it. youtube-dl is really a must in this situation.

I'm not familiar with the situation in hungary but isn't it more likely that your ISP is throttling or otherwise artificially limiting the connection to Youtube, Netflix and other services with bandwith-heavy content.

Well, they don't throttle torrent in any noticeable way (torrenting with 10-20 MB/s or even more is not uncommon). And torrenting is pretty active in Hungary. They also provide ipv6 addresses too, I really can't say anything bad about my ISP. But it could very well be them who do the throttling to Youtube, I can't any way verify that.

Try running it through a VPN. I recommend NordVPN these days. Had good luck with Torguard in the past as well.

Could not agree more, especially as it’s a tool I use multiple times a day and I don’t think it’s ever failed me.

But it's just like WGET[1], and last time I checked, WGET is not a crime. I even have a funny sticker on my laptop that says that.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget

That would be sad, but I'll ditch Youtube for good if they'll introduce this garbage.

YouTube has the network effect just like every other big provider. You can’t ditch it unless the content you want to see has decided to move elsewhere.

Important and desirable media is almost always available from more than one source. If not, then Sometimes, it's as simple as asking the producer to upload to your preferred streaming endpoint.

What constitutes "important and desirable media" is extremely personal and subjective, and the producer will not always be available to respond to your request.

Here's an example of something that is very important and desirable to me but doesn't exist anywhere else on the internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd_p2B8ReqE

I agree with you overall, but the album actually does exist here: https://yadi.sk/d/SMKn5Af43LitRc. At 320 kbps, it's a little higher quality than YouTube.

By the way, Diamond Harbour is fantastic. What other music do you love?

Well I’ll be. I’ve got a vinyl copy now so I’m in good standing quality wise.

You should check out the Growing Bin web store - there are some fascinating musical rarities and curios there. There’s some great stuff on Jamie Tiller’s label Music From Memory. His mixes (available on Soundcloud) are also excellent, as are those on the Red Light Radio Soundcloud. I could go on...

Do you not realize that you've linked to a YouTube video of a recording of a vinyl record?

In your case, the vinyl record is the other source. Not to mention the other one provided by the other respondent. And a vinyl record is a great source to have -- it will last a lot longer than any other digital link to a stream of a record, if cared for properly.

Your comment made me think of a web portal for uploading videos, so the content creator uploads once, and selects what content platforms he wishes to share it with.

The people behinnd the portal could have a sign-up page so that any platforms that wish to host a non-exclusive copy can sign up in order for uploaders to be able to select them as well. This could potentially cause the portal hosters (internet archive?) to suffer a lot of upload, but then there are no legal troubles whatsoever (assuming the uploader had the copyrights) in preserving or migrating content.

The big networks might refuse to sign up (to prevent such a portal and hence competing content networks from getting a foot in the door regarding network effect), or make it hard to have the single portal entity mediate the uploading to them in the name of the content owner, but in a sense it is not more cat-and-mouse game, but a differently placed one: at upload instead of download.

Tunecore does a similar thing for music: https://www.tunecore.com/sell-your-music-online

You upload your music, and they put it on the various services for a fee. Including YouTube if you select it.

This would be indeed nice. Which means, obviously, that they would be immediately buried in lawsuits. Sure, they would be in the right, which would make them happy after they're broke.

(Cynic, who me?)

I don't think pewdiepie uploads elsewhere, and his videos are important and desirable for 63 million people.

It is possible that this is true only insofar that they are readily available. If Youtube becomes difficult for his fans to access for some reason, they may find that they can live without his content.

You must have a pretty narrow definition of 'important and desirable', almost all of the content I consume on Youtube is not available elsewhere afaik.

>Important and desirable media is almost always available from more than one source

We don't watch "important and desirable media" in YouTube (and most of us, not anywhere else, there). What we do watch is not really available elsewhere (e.g. certain vloggers, tutorial videos, etc).

This is not feasible for the majority of users.

I follow ~360 YT channels, I desire them very much and they are not uploading it anywhere else.

Why don't you try asking them?

Nonetheless, I am sure that you could live without any of the content hosted on those YouTube channels. The word "content" is a fair terminology in this context since if any media is so pigeonholed as to demand being streamed and served from YouTube, it must not be that artistic, thoughtful, or useful to most viewers. YouTube doesn't optimize for utility, art, usefulness, tact, expression, or value. It optimizes for addiction.

That’s the same reasoning of ‘just ask people to use iMessage/Telegram/Signal’. Most people, whether they are producers or persons you want to talk with don’t want to deal with learning an extra platform. Don’t get me wrong, I love Telegram and YouTube not being the only player would make for a healthier market, but it just doesn’t work that way. I mean, how many people do you know that are not on WhatsApp? Its so ubiquitous market penetration is something like 90%+..

I don't know, because I am not on Whatsapp and it's never come up with any of my friends. Nobody thinks any less of me for this, and nobody has ever asked me to get Whatsapp. Perhaps my friends are nicer than others' here, but what ever happened to respecting people's choices?

We live on the internet, a place of infinite possibilities and uses. To suggest that it is natural, convenient, and appropriate to pigeonhole our services in this manner is thoroughly antithetical.

And this is why we should encourage content creators to cross publish their videos on peertube/steemit etc.

Or we should regulate them, maybe Trump would consider it. It certainly would not cause any sort of economic harm to regulate companies that sit on cash reserves in the hundred billions.

The only way to make the content move elsewhere is to have enough people move elsewhere so that the content needs to move to meet an audience.

Or you know, reduce your perceived need for said content.

More often that not, that's the choice I make. You make it too hard or intrusive for me to see your content and I stop taking part.

And it's funny, a lot of the time when I do this, I'll see a news article pop up a week/month/year later that said content provider is adjusting its policies, seemingly indicating that others are independently making the same choices.

This has happened several times, most notably when I cancelled our Dish junk right before the big "cord cutter" boom. Stop participating if you do not like it. You will survive.

Seconded.

YouTube while it may contain a lot of video of content is really actually pretty poor product IMO. Lots of buffering, lots of ads, the apps have terrible UX as does the website and now that google is becoming less and less trustful (some would say always were but just becoming more evil with more data) I welcome video content hosted elsewhere. I really like Vimeo not just for the performance and video quality but I also find the interface quite good to use, it would probably need some adjustments if it were to take on the amount of content YouTube has.

I am actually surprised that many people didn't know about this handy tool

While I agree with you in principle (and have used a very similar setup for many years), I don't think HN is pro-DRM/IP enough to worry.

At some point YouTube is going to require an EME module to play even "free" videos.

...which will be cracked within days if not hours.

> which will be cracked within days if not hours.

Netflix requires an EME module since quite some time, and I'm not aware of any successful cracks.

All Netflix-exclusive shows are available up to 4K on torrent networks:

https://thepiratebay.org/search/house%20of%20cards%202160p/0...

https://thepiratebay.org/search/orange%20is%20the%20new%20bl...

https://1337x.to/search/ozark+2160p/1/

What’s left to steal?

Meanwhile the majority of Netflix customers is limited to 720p video like it’s 2001. [1]

[1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/55763

> Google Chrome up to 720p

  Internet Explorer up to 1080p

  Microsoft Edge up to 4K*

  Mozilla Firefox up to 720p

  Opera up to 720p

  Windows 8 app up to 1080p

  Windows 10 app up to 4K*

(from your link). And people wonder why I still use torrents...

Well Netflix's content is pirated just as much as any other content, so I guess it was cracked in some way?

Depends what we mean by 'crack'.

A few years ago I was surprised to see that Netflix in Chrome on Linux didn't prevent screen-capture. If I recall correctly, On Windows, it won't let you screenshot Netflix - you get a black box instead.

Failing that, it's possible to record high-quality analogue output from, say, a Playstation 3. Failing that, it's always possible to point a camera at a screen.

Piracy of video isn't something that technologies like EME can hope to eliminate entirely, they can only raise the bar. For Netflix, that's acceptable. They compete with BitTorrent piracy and win on convenience.

Only Windows with Edge can play 4k. Chrome is 720p.

Fair point.

Apparently it's possible to trick Netflix into 1080P on Chrome, in at least some cases - https://www.ghacks.net/2018/02/12/watch-netflix-in-1080p-on-...

Have you tried Netflix on Edge? Maybe it's just anecdotal, but I've tried multiple i7 (3xxx, 5xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx series) and Ryzen 1700/1700x systems (GPU: NVIDIA 960M, 970, 1050, 2 different 1070 TIs) and ALL of them lag horribly while using Edge. Loading Netflix is slow. Selecting a profile takes several seconds. The entire browser locks up. I generally find a show using Firefox, then open Edge and search manually to get my 1080p playback. I'm wondering if it's just a bug but it's been like this on 4 different computers so far. Netflix the App itself is also incredibly laggy on Windows 10, not sure if the issues are somehow related to one another. Am I the only one who has this?

>Have you tried Netflix on Edge?

I don't have Netflix

You can strip HDCP from HDMI 2.2 [0] and then just capture that stream. Very easy to do. Anything that can be seen on your screen can be captured and shared.

0. https://www.amazon.com/HDMI-Splitter-Supports-Pass-through-D...

Where does it say "strip"?

>-Support HDR & HDCP 2.2 Pass-through

Which is not stripping away anything.

It is passthrough, but it just so happens that the hdcp protection doesn't quite make it through on many of these devices.

Like flashlight apps containing hidden tethering proxies[1], these products would quickly be taken down if they advertised their real functionality.

Those who remember the old analogue "video stabilisers" used for stripping Macrovision copy protection signals will find this similar.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2010/07/apple-approves-pulls-flashligh...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com