Beginner dev looks at how YouTube sends videos | Hacker News Reader

Beginner dev looks at how YouTube sends videos

vincentsg.dev

150 pointsvsgherzi58 comments

The end of the post talks about hiring him, and honestly, if anyone’s hiring, here’s one heck of a bargain: Someone who’s just starting out but who’s already shown he’s perfectly capable of figuring stuff out by himself.

Definitely shows good intuition. Even if not doing the actual figuring out, still finds a possible solution and reverse engineers it. Forget 10x developer, this is the 10% of developers.

Open to any ideas how this level of intuition can be imparted at scale...

It's a style of thinking. It can be taught, but mostly by example.

Looks like they graduated college.

>Oh... that's ALOT of parameters

If they would just learn that "a lot" is two words.

Given that their resume says Coding Ninjas tutor and Coding Ninjas is one of the worst websites out there for coding challenges and tutorials, while using incorrect syntax for Python and C++ (probably to lazily port problems from one language to another), this makes sense.

I'll probably get downvoted for my comment because of all the "touchy feelys" around here, but a lot of people can do what OP did sans college. What makes them extra hireable? Because they had a hacker news story catch some action on a holiday weekend?

If I was a hiring manager, I would certainly appreciate this attitude. However, I would value as well a person who would use an already made tool for doing the job (such as yt-dlp). Only problem is that the second type wouldn't write a blog post about it and get traction on HN :D

Yeah but you'd be mad to value them equally.

> However, I would value as well a person who would use an already made tool for doing the job (such as yt-dlp).

Agree, but I think this is the easier of the two skills to teach. So for a junior, I would hire the former if the company has the capacity to mentor them.

To most employers it’s more that he can pass two Leetcode mediums and one Leetcode hard in tight time constraints. Just to make sure he’s good, make him do multiple rounds. The Leetcode grinder is quite representative of what software engineering is like in the real world.

I really dont want to work at whatever company you're at.

idk, hard to believe that with spellcheckers being built into every text editor, the post is riddled with errors. Very sloppy or almost intentional.

>>> I quickly threw together an ugly frontend and posted it to digital ocean under an express server and prepped another project to repair my broken discord bot.

That is quite some versatile lingo for a beginner dev.

The original post doesn't mention "beginner", so I'm not sure why OP (link poster) decided to editorialize it as such.

Pretty sure this is a self-submission, based on the user's comments elsewhere in the thread.

Also their username and the email in their profile is similar to the domain name. Yes, I think the submitter is the author.

OP describes themselves as a "new developer":

>Big shoutout to the invidious project and tyrrrz's blog they did basically all of the heavy lifting for this new developer!

To be fair, we could all probably benefit from regarding ourselves as beginners [1]

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

To be fair there are a lot of people who are familiar with tech stuff and have just never actually learnt any sort of "dev" properly before who I would consider as beginner.

These people also tend up pick things up very quickly at the beginning and are able to use the right lingo after a few months of learning -- anyone who has done a few months of a bootcamp can talk/write like that even if they don't have a deep understanding of what they are talking about.

I don’t know how to program but I know what all of that stuff means

The author mentions

> After all I’ve been a full stack dev for a little bit (just graduated college!)

I'm guessing they differentiate being a dev (professionally or looking for work) from a student perhaps?

Has the bar lowered? Because I'd consider this lingo pretty accessible and 101 for a beginner anno domini 2024.

Nice write-up! For a better maintainable version, I would recommend `yt-dlp --dump-json` instead. This will give you hundreds of other supported sites for free.

Super early on in my carrier. Just wanted to download an mp3 from my favorite artist without weird ads or tracking

I'd recommend you to have a look at yt-dlp [0] and NewPipe extractor [1]

[0] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp [1] https://teamnewpipe.github.io/documentation/

You got the knack, bud, and that's all it takes. Plenty of people have finished CS degrees without acquiring the knack. But that's really all it takes. If you've got it, it's just a matter of time before you're knocking people's socks off.

i find it interesting how some HN threads are super supportive like this one and others tear people apart for overstating their expertise, getting overleveled job titles as a "senior" developer while missing some esoteric/deep knowledge. we're all on our meandering paths somehow.

It's useful to remember that this is a community of individuals, each with their own opinions and experiences.

There's a line of "real curiosity about interesting aspects of computer software" and no-substance snake oil.

So, in one case, it's "low substance but good effort", in the other it's "low substance and low effort"

After spending enough years mentoring juniors, you pick up on it pretty fast whether someone is worth your time. Ask for a specific solution, and you'll get it from me once. Ask for understanding the generalized case, and I'll happily sit around explaining things to you all day long.

Even asking for a specific solution is fine if it's followed up by thoughtful probing questions on the general patterns. But there's just no room for hand holding in this industry.

Well written article... nitpick - your article date [1] as of posting this comment is DEC 31 2024...

> fullstack dev versus youtube - DEC 31 2024

[1] https://vincentsg.dev/blog/

Also the coffee in the image is yellow, which is really weird.

sure thing, who doesn't

Thanks for posting and well done. Small suggestion for your writing style: use less ALL CAPS / BOOM! / WOW! styles and embrace less dramatic wording: it would make your site read more professionally and be easier to digest. Good luck.

I enjoyed the writing style.

Same here, it felt authentic -- a really fun read.

Their tone reflects their excitement, it's authentic and great.

No. What you get is this kind of communication in work email and all over slack.

Boom, wow, a dozen random emojis and even the author has no clue what these emojis suppose to mean.

It’s a blog, not a research paper.

This is cool. I wish I could do this sort of thing, however when I come up again something like this I assume it's already been done and go look for the solution. In this case I'd likely have just used yt-dlp. However, had that project been dmca'd, by disreputable organisatios I'd likely have remained stuck, so kudos.

I tried a YouTube shorts video I saw yesterday that for some reason failed to download with yt dlp (also tried with newpipe) to see if this would behave differently.

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

Something is squirly with this YouTube video. Can someone else give it a try?

try remove the url and just `yt-dlp JQgKhZZyBYg`

that worked. strangely enough.

---snip--- yt-dlp.exe --restrict-filenames --trim-filenames 30 --format "bestvideoext=mp4+bestaudioext=m4a/mp4" -i "JQgKhZZyBYg"

Monday, January 1, 2024 10:46:45 AM [youtube] Extracting URL: JQgKhZZyBYg [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading webpage [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading ios player API JSON [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading android player API JSON [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading m3u8 information [info] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading 1 format(s): 22 [download] Resuming download at byte 130048 [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10462009 more expected. Retrying (1/10)... [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10052978 more expected. Retrying (2/10)... [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10373389 more expected. Retrying (3/10)... [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10107360 more expected. Retrying (4/10)... [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10307771 more expected. Retrying (5/10)... [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10202520 more expected. Retrying (6/10)... [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10455655 more expected. Retrying (7/10)... [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 9968301 more expected. Retrying (8/10)... [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10027086 more expected. Retrying (9/10)... [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10392472 more expected. Retrying (10/10)... [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10022086 more expected. Giving up after 10 retries

Monday, January 1, 2024 10:46:51 AM

--- snip ---

yt-dlp.exe "JQgKhZZyBYg"

Monday, January 1, 2024 10:48:03 AM [youtube] Extracting URL: JQgKhZZyBYg [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading webpage [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading ios player API JSON [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading android player API JSON [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading m3u8 information [info] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading 1 format(s): 247+251 [download] Destination: Jet crashes at Thunder Over Michigan air show at Willow Run Airport [JQgKhZZyBYg].f247.webm [download] 100% of 8.37MiB in 00:00:00 at 17.44MiB/s [download] Destination: Jet crashes at Thunder Over Michigan air show at Willow Run Airport [JQgKhZZyBYg].f251.webm [download] 100% of 599.52KiB in 00:00:00 at 3.53MiB/s [Merger] Merging formats into "Jet crashes at Thunder Over Michigan air show at Willow Run Airport [JQgKhZZyBYg].webm" Deleting original file Jet crashes at Thunder Over Michigan air show at Willow Run Airport [JQgKhZZyBYg].f247.webm (pass -k to keep) Deleting original file Jet crashes at Thunder Over Michigan air show at Willow Run Airport [JQgKhZZyBYg].f251.webm (pass -k to keep) Monday, January 1, 2024 10:48:07 AM

Huh, also failed with YouTube Downloader latest version. It got the thumbnail and the list of streams but couldn't download it. WTF?

my guess YouTube either purposefully or accidentally failed to serve an mp4 for this because looks like webm download works

> date; yt-dlp.exe --restrict-filenames --trim-filenames 30 --format "bestvideoext=mp4+bestaudioext=m4a/mp4" -i "JQgKhZZyBYg"; date;

    Monday, January 1, 2024 10:53:15 AM
    [youtube] Extracting URL: JQgKhZZyBYg
    [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading webpage
    [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading ios player API JSON
    [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading android player API JSON
    [youtube] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading m3u8 information
    [info] JQgKhZZyBYg: Downloading 1 format(s): 22
    [download] Destination: Jet_crashes_at_Thunder_Over_Mi.mp4
    [download]   0.9% of   13.42MiB at    2.62MiB/s ETA 00:05[download] Got error: 138391 bytes read, 10282680 more expected. Retrying (1/10)...
    [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10230994 more expected. Retrying (2/10)...
    [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10302760 more expected. Retrying (3/10)...
    [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 9963536 more expected. Retrying (4/10)...
    [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10084597 more expected. Retrying (5/10)...
    [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10318710 more expected. Retrying (6/10)...
    [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10071239 more expected. Retrying (7/10)...
    [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10341419 more expected. Retrying (8/10)...
    [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10356985 more expected. Retrying (9/10)...
    [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10212427 more expected. Retrying (10/10)...
    [download] Got error: 0 bytes read, 10277275 more expected. Giving up after 10 retries

    Monday, January 1, 2024 10:53:20 AM

You are right -- thank you -- when I selected the WEBM stream it worked fine.

Here's the technical details -- it looks accidental, like their encoder just screwed up on that one stream:

https://github.com/Tyrrrz/YoutubeExplode/issues/759

This rules. Pull back the curtain and vanquish the black magic. We should all know how this stuff works, if only to protect ourselves.

Now that is how you spend new year. Also beginner dev ? Dont be so modest mate.

There is basically nothing a beginner could learn with that is completely novel.

We can probably assume this gentlemen already knew about yt-dl and it's derivatives; that wasn't the point of the exercise.

Here's my favorite site for downloading YouTube videos. https://github.com/micahlt/vesper

It's made by a friend of mine, I thought he had a writeup about it, but I can't find it.

What does the author mean that he "created a fetch request in node using the android example"? He means he made the request using Node and impersonated an Android client?

Yes

Is "fullstack developer" just "web developer"?

i picked a random video and noticed that the audio (mp3) download was the same filesize as the video (mp4) download. this seems wrong. some thing to do in the encoding?

Maybe it's sending the same bitstream for both?

He's just downloading both the aac audio and h264 video stream, and then renaming the resulting mp4 file to .mp3

Is there a way to do this clientside?

yt-dlp is the project you want

uhh the blog is wrongly dated 31st Dec 2024 instead of 2023.

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