has anyone else been having problems with Youtube downloaders lately?

  • 🐕 I am attempting to get the site runnning as fast as possible. If you are experiencing slow page load times, please report it.
skykiii

skykiii

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Jun 17, 2018
I have a few I use. Some are websites, others are browser extensions (one for each browser). But lately every single one has had the same problem: My choices now are limited to either downloading in 360p or having to pay for a "Pro" version of the downloader.

Up until about a week ago I could still download 720p at the very least but it seems that is not a thing anymore.

Is something going on? Do you guys know downloaders that still work?
 
  • Feels
Reactions: Kiwi & Cow
Whenever yt-dlp starts acting up I just to yt-dlp -U then try again
I'm sure at some point they'll figure out an effective blocking mechanism but until then it's been the most consistent and easiest method of locally archiving.

Edit: Looks like r.i.p. -f 22
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Anti Alien Alarm
¨¨¨ said:
Internet Download Manager used to work flawlessly on YouTube for me until about a week ago when I started to get "403 Forbidden" whenever I attempt to download anything
Click to expand...
I've been getting "403 Forbidden" with yt-dlp a lot more since YouTube's recent attempts at blocking ads, but only over Tor. It used to work pretty well before then. So far I've been able to get around it by resetting Tor two or three times.
Haven't encountered any noticeable problems downloading on my home connection yet.

I expect any addresses used for mass downloading videos (public download websites, public Invidious instances, shared VPNs, Tor, etc.) to be heavily cockblocked going forward.

skykiii said:
My choices now are limited to either downloading in 360p or having to pay for a "Pro" version of the downloader.

Up until about a week ago I could still download 720p at the very least but it seems that is not a thing anymore.
Click to expand...
YouTube encodes videos in a few different ways.
It offers a few options that are audio+video, but mostly separates audio and video into different files and combines them when you watch.

Here's an example. I used yt-dlp to list the available formats for a video. Notice the options listed as "audio only" and "video only" under the RESOLUTION, VCODEC and ACODEC columns. Only option 18 has both audio and video, and it's only 360p:
Code: 
[info] Available formats for 1ruVOnSxW58:
ID      EXT   RESOLUTION FPS CH │   FILESIZE  TBR PROTO │ VCODEC       VBR ACODEC      ABR ASR MORE INFO
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
sb2     mhtml 48x27        0    │                 mhtml │ images                               storyboard
sb1     mhtml 80x45        0    │                 mhtml │ images                               storyboard
sb0     mhtml 160x90       0    │                 mhtml │ images                               storyboard
249-drc webm  audio only      2 │   15.44MiB  51k https │ audio only       opus        51k 48k [en] low, DRC, webm_dash
250-drc webm  audio only      2 │   19.07MiB  63k https │ audio only       opus        63k 48k [en] low, DRC, webm_dash
140-drc m4a   audio only      2 │   39.46MiB 129k https │ audio only       mp4a.40.2  129k 44k [en] medium, DRC, m4a_dash
251-drc webm  audio only      2 │   32.83MiB 108k https │ audio only       opus       108k 48k [en] medium, DRC, webm_dash
140     m4a   audio only      2 │   39.46MiB 129k https │ audio only       mp4a.40.2  129k 44k [en] medium, m4a_dash
251     webm  audio only      2 │   32.48MiB 107k https │ audio only       opus       107k 48k [en] medium, webm_dash
160     mp4   256x144     30    │   16.59MiB  54k https │ avc1.4d400c  54k video only          144p, mp4_dash
134     mp4   640x360     30    │   58.35MiB 191k https │ avc1.4d401e 191k video only          360p, mp4_dash
18      mp4   640x360     30  2 │ ≈ 99.74MiB 320k https │ avc1.42001E      mp4a.40.2       44k [en] 360p
136     mp4   1280x720    30    │  131.68MiB 432k https │ avc1.64001f 432k video only          720p, mp4_dash
137     mp4   1920x1080   30    │  215.08MiB 706k https │ avc1.640028 706k video only          1080p, mp4_dash

If you watch this video on YouTube in one of the non-360p formats, what YouTube is doing is playing one of the video-only formats and one of the audio-only formats together at the same time.

Most video downloaders can't combine them for you, so they only offer you the full audio+video options which from what I've seen are usually only 360p and 720p.

Some other tools like yt-dlp are able to combine them. I made a YouTube archiving guide in the YouTube thread that lists some tools if you want to try some other options.
ETA: If you're on desktop I suggest trying Tartube. It's able to combine files for you.
ETA: If you're on Android NewPipe appears to combine them as well. I just tried it out and it worked.
 
Last edited:
  • Informative
Reactions: Jang Joo and Kiwi & Cow
Unless you're using a smartphone, there's no reason to use anything other than yt-dlp. NewPipe has integrations with another app that will let you download youtube videos on your smartphone.
 
If you're on android just get Seal off f-droid. It's just a yt-dlp wrapper with a UI.

dlp itself has been having problems in the last 48h though but that's normal for the dlp arms race, hopefully we get the usual patch to fix it within a day or two.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Hard Toothbrush and GNU Abyss
Wock Sipper said:
Yeah my go-to has downgraded to 360p
Click to expand...
Mine is 480p but I noticed that too
My guess is that Youtube has a two pronged approach: They are trying to eliminate alternative sites like invidious, but that still leaves downloaders. Once both are unusable, users will have to go to their ad-ridden shithole site.
Catboy Ranch said:
There's a download button if you go pull the video up on an invidious server
Click to expand...
It varies instance by instance but I have been using that more and more lately.
 
Faceless Whore said:
I've been getting "403 Forbidden" with yt-dlp a lot more since YouTube's recent attempts at blocking ads, but only over Tor. It used to work pretty well before then. So far I've been able to get around it by resetting Tor two or three times.
Click to expand...
Are you single handedly why tor has been performing terribly, just use clearnet why are you trying to sneaky deaky it
 
I use tuberipper when I'm feeling exceptionally lazy. Lately I've noticed that, during peak hours for India, it fails to work and throws error messages. How do I know it's India? Simple. The recent download section stops being anything besides gaudy hindi bullcrap. Fucking Pajeet motherfuckers ruining everything ever.
 
4K Video Downloader has become garbage recently, have to restart playlist downloads multiple times. I use Downie on my Mac and it still works fine, but I havnt really tried to mass download through it yet. My backup is YT-DLP using an Alfred workflow. A bit worried with the new youtube ad changes, but I already have my favorite content stored on my media server ready to go if they start bugging me.
 
I was quite annoyed to find out tubi disabled ytdlp usage a little while back
 
Bumping this because I ran into a weirdly specific issue.

So Tartube usually works fine, but for some reason any time I download Linkara's video on Secret Wars II (posted like three days ago).... I get the video but no audio. It comes out completely silent.

This is the only video that has done this so far.

Does anyone know why? Is it something with Tartube or is the video itself doing something funky?
 
skykiii said:
Bumping this because I ran into a weirdly specific issue.

So Tartube usually works fine, but for some reason any time I download Linkara's video on Secret Wars II (posted like three days ago).... I get the video but no audio. It comes out completely silent.

This is the only video that has done this so far.

Does anyone know why? Is it something with Tartube or is the video itself doing something funky?
Click to expand...
Downloading audio only (yt-dlp -x) works for me (version 2024.07.09).
Haven't tried downloading the full video but if it doesn't download with audio you can just combine it afterwards with ffmpeg.
 
YouTube is starting to split all video and audio across all videos. So probably in a few months or weeks even, you won't be able to download 360p videos with audio in them anymore. They already removed 720p videos with audio in them this month. They just making the site more and more obnoxious to use for everyone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back