I suspect what they will eventually do is dynamically splice ads directly into the source video when serving it, so it's just there in the mp4 data along with the video you actually want to watch.
If they do end up doing it, I'd love to write this, it would be a lot of fun.
Otherwise you could probably fingerprint ad spots and submit them into a shared database. Like musicbrainz. For dynamic blocking of static content. Acoustic ID is probably enough and it would work with podcasts too!
I hate ads so much, I would totally volunteer to make this my hobby.
Advertisement simply sucks and is offensive. There is nothing to respect about any of it. People will always find ways around.
You can do this with ffmpeg.
video_part0076.ts
video_part0077.ts
video_part0078.ts
ad_part0001.ts
ad_part0002.ts
video_part0079.ts
video_part0080.tsI guess they could prevent that if they randomize the part names (with some m:1 mapping on the server side). As long as you have control of your CDN, this would even not mess with caching.
Since the YouTube marks ads, I guess pulling the playlist twice won't really be needed. YouTube's player should somehow know when the ad starts and when it ends after all.
My friend asked me to write a userscript that simulates pressing the "Skip ad" button, so he won't stain his mouse with grease while eating.
Checking if there is a "Skip ad" button every quarter of a second and invoking its click() method eliminated the video ads completely. As it turns out, the button existed alongside the 5 second countdown, just wasn't visible.
I don't know if it still works the same way today, but it felt good to accidentally make an effective adblock with five lines of code.
No. Video files on streaming services like YouTube are served as a bunch of chunks listed in a text playlist. So all they need to do is just to add a bunch of lines in the middle of a playlist.