[How to] Download Video/Audio from Anywhere

What makes you think youtube-dl is a dead project?
It’s still actively maintained.
yt-dlp is nice. it’s like youtube-dl but with some creature comforts and bugfixes.
I’m all for frontends but most of the time they aren’t feature complete. I’ll look into this one thanks.

update: Looked into it, it looks good. Still nowhere near feature complete, but I think this will be good enough for the list. Thanks for the recommendation.

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Regarding why I think youtube-dl is dead (or at least dormant):

As you said yt-dlp fork is more active and updated. I found this GUI while researching both and yes while not fully 100% awesome it’s actually proven to work quite well in my experience. Open source, free-as-in-beer, no bloatware. I’m by no means an expert or claiming it’s the only tool to use, just another one in the toolbox. Cheers.

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Hello all :wave:

I recently found a browser extension for Chrome that allows you to download videos delivered via HTTP streaming (HLS) from almost anywhere. With HLS, the videos are divided into many segments of the same size that are transmitted one after the other. That’s why the trick of finding and downloading the source file via the network tab doesn’t work there.

With this plugin you can record any stream in record time and save it as MP4. I find it quite useful and thought that I this thread is a place where this tool one should be mentioned.

The plugin allows downloads from sites like Pornez or XVideos in best quality and without accounts.

I hope this helps one or the other :smiley:

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Thanks for this I’ll add to the article.
edit: I won’t add this to the article, the method it uses is sketchy and depends on a users computer capabilities to grab it in full quality.
Video Download Helper (in the above article) will do the same and has more capabilities.
Use that instead.

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here’s an app for bypassing mega.co.nz download limit (after you’ve imported a scene to your own account ofc)

megabasterd

step 1. download and extract, run bat to launch. Youll get hit with a warning about missing an API key. I ignore the API warning, never included one, and have never had an issue.

step 2. copy and paste the proxy list from here (it changes every few hours) into the ‘smart proxy’ box in the settings menu and hit save.
8b4f2a482e7191014daa3b21657d0bfa

step 3. copy and paste mega link into the app with file >> new download

c72887a8654c521748ccc86ad5c15a9b

if the bypass ever stops working try updating the app and grabbing a new proxy list from the link.

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This is a bit off the rails for this article but thanks for this.

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Thank you, excellent

@VladTheImplier
Question can a similar approach be used to download scripts that are only streamed over the web?

I recently subscribed to feelxvideos (free 30 days over on handyfeeling) just to check it out but found out they only stream their scripts over the web (i know its not that reputable but was curious). Maybe there is a way thru inspecting elements?

Its very inconsistent even with amazing internet (500mb/s), script sometimes plays even when the video is paused out of no where, and if you open more than 1 tab playing videos seem to break the connection to your device.

Scripts are a more complicated matter.
Technically you might be able to access the script if they send it over http.

They could have a backend process that syncs time and the handy API to prevent giving you the script.

I personally consider that anti-consumer practise but they could do that.

If they send you the script as a blob object, you could use a similar mechanism for non-video software.

Otherwise it might just by a http referer that loads the script.

In the last two cases it would be possible to get the script but because of the openness of the standard its very easy to keep a script from end users.

This is very useful stuff, but it’s important to note that tubeoffline seems to have changed a bit. I tried downloading something from it and was linked to a different website called dirpy. On a similar note, do any of these websites or software work with modelhub, manyvids, or clips4sale?

Thanks for letting me know I’ll check it out

Just letting everyone know, I have added another entry to the list
Live Stream Downloader

Are these Plugins save to use? I am a little bit scared that they could read also user accounts and passworts from the “parsed” webpage or other tabs. I am using firefox.

I only add resources I trust, and the community trusts.
The browser extensions are open source and you can view the code.

Thanks for the quick response! To give some feedback regarding downloader. My favorite tool at the moment is the “Media Downloader” which works quite well. No installer needed and works with a lot of web pages and is easy to use. Currently I try the “Video Download Helper” for videos which are not possible to download with the “Media Downloader” . “Live Stream Downloader” wasn’t easy to use, at least on firefox…maybe the chrome plugin is much better.

There’s another tool called that and it does require an installer: Media Downloader

There’s a couple chrome extensions, the one I recommend is: Live Downloader

There’s also plenty of websites that can be used. There’s lots of options many of which have pros and cons.

If you’d like me to add the one you use, send me a link and I’ll check it out.

I use the the one you mentioned. There exists a portable version for Microsoft Windows here. With the initial start yt-dlp is automatically downloaded.

I see, I did check out the live downloader extension on firefox and it seems to not be as good. Seems to need more work to make it seamless.

have you seen youtube-dl-gui ?
It’s a gui around youtube-dl that I’ve been using for a while and it’s quite good. Only hiccup is that the first video you add makes it stall for a little while for some reason.

Im familiar. In my opinion it’s only so useful since it doesnt allow commandline usage.
I think media downloader is generally better since it also supports aria2. I also know people who use youtube-dlg