7 ms·

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 m

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.

userbinator 8y ago
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.
- majewsky 8y ago
  > 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.
  - deno 8y ago
    All Netflix-exclusive shows are available up to 4K on torrent networks: https://thepiratebay.org/search/house%20of%20cards%202160p/0/99/0 https://thepiratebay.org/search/house%20of%20cards%202160p/0... https://thepiratebay.org/search/orange%20is%20the%20new%20black%202160p/0/99/0 https://thepiratebay.org/search/orange%20is%20the%20new%20bl... https://1337x.to/search/ozark+2160p/1/ 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 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/55763
    - realusername 8y ago
      > 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...
  - mijamo 8y ago
    Well Netflix's content is pirated just as much as any other content, so I guess it was cracked in some way?
  - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
    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.
    - gsich 8y ago
      Only Windows with Edge can play 4k. Chrome is 720p.
      - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
        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-linux-and-unsupported-browsers/ https://www.ghacks.net/2018/02/12/watch-netflix-in-1080p-on-...
      - glenneroo 8y ago
        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?
        gsich 8y ago
        >Have you tried Netflix on Edge? I don't have Netflix
  - turbo_fart_box 8y ago
    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-DotStone/dp/B075XKS4QX/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1530797553&sr=8-3&keywords=1x2+hdmi+splitter+hdcp+2.2+ultra+hd https://www.amazon.com/HDMI-Splitter-Supports-Pass-through-D...
    - gsich 8y ago
      Where does it say "strip"? >-Support HDR & HDCP 2.2 Pass-through Which is not stripping away anything.
      - tekromancr 8y ago
        It is passthrough, but it just so happens that the hdcp protection doesn't quite make it through on many of these devices.
      - userbinator 8y ago
        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-flashlight-app-with-hidden-tethering-mode/ https://www.wired.com/2010/07/apple-approves-pulls-flashligh...
cllckkrr 8y ago
This is the classic cat-and-mouse game. We are pretty good at it by now.
- Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
  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.
  - pavs 8y ago
    VPN connections are relatively easier to block.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - self_awareness 8y ago
    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).
- beagle3 8y ago
  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.
shmerl 8y ago
That would be sad, but I'll ditch Youtube for good if they'll introduce this garbage.
- orev 8y ago
  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.
  - AndrewUnmuted 8y ago
    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.
    - huckyaus 8y ago
      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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd_p2B8ReqE
      - allenz 8y ago
        I agree with you overall, but the album actually does exist here: https://yadi.sk/d/SMKn5Af43LitRc 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?
        huckyaus 8y ago
        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...
weq 8y ago
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/timeline?dates=2005-04-06+to+2018-07-05 https://sourceforge.net/projects/gvdownloader/files/stats/ti...
- ezoe 8y ago
  Google Do Evil I guess.
mrmondo 8y ago
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.
RachelF 8y ago
Not everyone has fast enough bandwidth to watch live videos. Many people rely on downloaders to actually watch the video.
- naibafo 8y ago
  But they don't download the ads, so I doubt they matter very much as far as google is concerned
  - moviuro 8y ago
    FWIW, youtube-dl can download from a ton of sites... https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html
  - zacmps 8y ago
    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.
    - savoytruffle 8y ago
      But surely they arrive as separate files, and not interspersed in the main video. So it's implausible they'd ever be watched.
      - skinnymuch 8y ago
        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.
    - skinnymuch 8y ago
      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.
placebo 8y ago
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.
- self_awareness 8y ago
  Youtube-dl has lots of GUI frontends and is embedded in easy to use Android apps.
  - severine 8y ago
    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?
    - nnain 8y ago
      Well, should we be listing the related Apps here? > the first rule of youtube-dl is not to talk about youtube-dl
      - severine 8y ago
        There are ~40 hits for "youtube-dl" in Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=youtube-dl&c=apps 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.one https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aviddapp.o... Am I hurting them by linking, or any of you for adding feedback?
        Fnoord 8y ago
        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.
myWindoonn 8y ago
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!
octosphere 8y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget
hmd_imputer 8y ago
I am actually surprised that many people didn't know about this handy tool

userbinator 8y ago

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.

majewsky 8y ago
> 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.
- deno 8y ago
  All Netflix-exclusive shows are available up to 4K on torrent networks: https://thepiratebay.org/search/house%20of%20cards%202160p/0/99/0 https://thepiratebay.org/search/house%20of%20cards%202160p/0... https://thepiratebay.org/search/orange%20is%20the%20new%20black%202160p/0/99/0 https://thepiratebay.org/search/orange%20is%20the%20new%20bl... https://1337x.to/search/ozark+2160p/1/ 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 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/55763
  - realusername 8y ago
    > 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...
- mijamo 8y ago
  Well Netflix's content is pirated just as much as any other content, so I guess it was cracked in some way?
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  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.
  - gsich 8y ago
    Only Windows with Edge can play 4k. Chrome is 720p.
    - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
      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-linux-and-unsupported-browsers/ https://www.ghacks.net/2018/02/12/watch-netflix-in-1080p-on-...
    - glenneroo 8y ago
      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?
      - gsich 8y ago
        >Have you tried Netflix on Edge? I don't have Netflix
- turbo_fart_box 8y ago
  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-DotStone/dp/B075XKS4QX/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1530797553&sr=8-3&keywords=1x2+hdmi+splitter+hdcp+2.2+ultra+hd https://www.amazon.com/HDMI-Splitter-Supports-Pass-through-D...
  - gsich 8y ago
    Where does it say "strip"? >-Support HDR & HDCP 2.2 Pass-through Which is not stripping away anything.
    - tekromancr 8y ago
      It is passthrough, but it just so happens that the hdcp protection doesn't quite make it through on many of these devices.
    - userbinator 8y ago
      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-flashlight-app-with-hidden-tethering-mode/ https://www.wired.com/2010/07/apple-approves-pulls-flashligh...

cllckkrr 8y ago

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

Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
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.
- pavs 8y ago
  VPN connections are relatively easier to block.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- self_awareness 8y ago
  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).
beagle3 8y ago
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.

shmerl 8y ago

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

orev 8y ago
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.
- AndrewUnmuted 8y ago
  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.
  - huckyaus 8y ago
    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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd_p2B8ReqE
    - allenz 8y ago
      I agree with you overall, but the album actually does exist here: https://yadi.sk/d/SMKn5Af43LitRc 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?
      - huckyaus 8y ago
        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...

weq 8y ago

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/timeline?dates=2005-04-06+to+2018-07-05 https://sourceforge.net/projects/gvdownloader/files/stats/ti...

ezoe 8y ago
Google Do Evil I guess.

mrmondo 8y ago

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.

RachelF 8y ago

Not everyone has fast enough bandwidth to watch live videos. Many people rely on downloaders to actually watch the video.

naibafo 8y ago
But they don't download the ads, so I doubt they matter very much as far as google is concerned
- moviuro 8y ago
  FWIW, youtube-dl can download from a ton of sites... https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html
- zacmps 8y ago
  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.
  - savoytruffle 8y ago
    But surely they arrive as separate files, and not interspersed in the main video. So it's implausible they'd ever be watched.
    - skinnymuch 8y ago
      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.
  - skinnymuch 8y ago
    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.

placebo 8y ago

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.

self_awareness 8y ago
Youtube-dl has lots of GUI frontends and is embedded in easy to use Android apps.
- severine 8y ago
  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?
  - nnain 8y ago
    Well, should we be listing the related Apps here? > the first rule of youtube-dl is not to talk about youtube-dl
    - severine 8y ago
      There are ~40 hits for "youtube-dl" in Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=youtube-dl&c=apps 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.one https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aviddapp.o... Am I hurting them by linking, or any of you for adding feedback?
      - Fnoord 8y ago
        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.

myWindoonn 8y ago

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!

octosphere 8y ago

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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget

hmd_imputer 8y ago

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