5 ms·

Would this hypothetically be able to download arbitrary videos from youtube without the constant yt-dlp arms race?

by defen 7mo ago

dataviz1000 7mo ago
> yt-dlp arms race I don't know anything about yt-dlp. It would probably help people who want to go to a concert and have a chance to beat the scalpers cornering the market on an event in 30 seconds hitting the marketplace services with 20,000 requests. I can try to see if can bypass yt-dlp. But that is always a cat and mouse game.
- defen 7mo ago
  To clarify - yt-dlp is a command line tool for downloading youtube videos, but it's in a constant arms race with the youtube website because they are constantly changing things in a way that blocks yt-dlp.
  - dexterdog 7mo ago
    I wouldn't call it an arms race. I don't update my client that often and I rarely have problems downloading any video with it.
dawnerd 7mo ago
Don’t know how this could be more stable than ytdlp. When issues come up they’re fixed really quickly.
- varenc 7mo ago
  yt-dlp was very recently broken for ~2 days for any Youtube videos that required cookies: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/16212 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/16212 Here is what actually fixed it: https://github.com/yt-dlp/ejs/pull/53/changes https://github.com/yt-dlp/ejs/pull/53/changes yt-dlp is relatively stable, but still occasionally breaks for long periods. I get the sense YouTube is becoming increasingly adversarial to yt-dlp as well. I don't know the details, but it doesn't seem like yt-dlp is running the entire YouTube JS+DOM environment. Something like a real headless browser seems like it would break less often, but be much heavier weight. And Youtube might have all sorts of other mitigations against this approach.
  - toomuchtodo 7mo ago
    I think having a hook to an LLM endpoint to enable yt-dlp to attempt to self resolve until an official fix is available would be a useful enhancement.
  - coro_1 7mo ago
    > I get the sense YouTube is becoming increasingly adversarial to yt-dlp as well. I rarely use yt-dlp anymore. Before I just updated. Now when I do that, it usually becomes complex and full of questions.
  - 22c 7mo ago
    > yt-dlp is running the entire YouTube JS+DOM environment IIRC they maintain a minimal execution environment that is able to run just the JS needed to pass a few checks but this breaks too often enough that they're planning to make Node.js or another JS interpreter a hard requirement (possibly already happened).
    - defrost 7mo ago
      Pretty much - yt-dlp currently requires Deno to "solve" youtube challenges. * https://deno.com/ https://deno.com/ * there may well be other JS interpreters that are accepted, can be used - but solving JS challenges is required for much, if not all, YT content.
  - zipping1549 7mo ago
    > const url = (${generate(expression)})("https://youtube.com/watch?v=yt-dlp-wins https://youtube.com/watch?v=yt-dlp-wins", "s", sig); I'm pretty sure yt-dlp is filled with these kinds of gold.
phantomathkg 7mo ago
If it can save all the video/audio fragment and call ffmpeg to join them together. Maybe?

Would this hypothetically be able to download arbitrary videos from youtube without the constant yt-dlp arms race?

by defen 7mo ago

Would this hypothetically be able to download arbitrary videos from youtube without the constant yt-dlp arms race?

> yt-dlp arms race I don't know anything about yt-dlp. It would probably help people who want to go to a concert and have a chance to beat the scalpers cornering the market on an event in 30 seconds hitting the marketplace services with 20,000 requests. I can try to see if can bypass yt-dlp. But that is always a cat and mouse game.

defen 7mo ago
To clarify - yt-dlp is a command line tool for downloading youtube videos, but it's in a constant arms race with the youtube website because they are constantly changing things in a way that blocks yt-dlp.
- dexterdog 7mo ago
  I wouldn't call it an arms race. I don't update my client that often and I rarely have problems downloading any video with it.

dawnerd 7mo ago

Don’t know how this could be more stable than ytdlp. When issues come up they’re fixed really quickly.

varenc 7mo ago
yt-dlp was very recently broken for ~2 days for any Youtube videos that required cookies: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/16212 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/16212 Here is what actually fixed it: https://github.com/yt-dlp/ejs/pull/53/changes https://github.com/yt-dlp/ejs/pull/53/changes yt-dlp is relatively stable, but still occasionally breaks for long periods. I get the sense YouTube is becoming increasingly adversarial to yt-dlp as well. I don't know the details, but it doesn't seem like yt-dlp is running the entire YouTube JS+DOM environment. Something like a real headless browser seems like it would break less often, but be much heavier weight. And Youtube might have all sorts of other mitigations against this approach.
- toomuchtodo 7mo ago
  I think having a hook to an LLM endpoint to enable yt-dlp to attempt to self resolve until an official fix is available would be a useful enhancement.
- coro_1 7mo ago
  > I get the sense YouTube is becoming increasingly adversarial to yt-dlp as well. I rarely use yt-dlp anymore. Before I just updated. Now when I do that, it usually becomes complex and full of questions.
- 22c 7mo ago
  > yt-dlp is running the entire YouTube JS+DOM environment IIRC they maintain a minimal execution environment that is able to run just the JS needed to pass a few checks but this breaks too often enough that they're planning to make Node.js or another JS interpreter a hard requirement (possibly already happened).
  - defrost 7mo ago
    Pretty much - yt-dlp currently requires Deno to "solve" youtube challenges. * https://deno.com/ https://deno.com/ * there may well be other JS interpreters that are accepted, can be used - but solving JS challenges is required for much, if not all, YT content.
- zipping1549 7mo ago
  > const url = (${generate(expression)})("https://youtube.com/watch?v=yt-dlp-wins https://youtube.com/watch?v=yt-dlp-wins", "s", sig); I'm pretty sure yt-dlp is filled with these kinds of gold.

phantomathkg 7mo ago

If it can save all the video/audio fragment and call ffmpeg to join them together. Maybe?