Posted on 11/20/2013 6:41:58 PM PST by ducttape45
I have been experiencing a most perplexing problem with Mozilla Firefox lately and I'm hoping that maybe someone here will have the answer I'm looking for.
I have an addon/extension called "Download Youtube Videos as MP4s." Basically, it allows me to download Youtube videos in either an FLV or MP4 format. This comes in quite handy for saving data/information regarding political matters.
Lately, however, something, somewhere, somehow, has been messing that up. If I click on the download button, instead of getting a "Save As" context menu, the webpage goes blank, a very long URL is displayed in the address bar, and that's it. Nothing downloads. I've even tried different downloaders and none of them worked. The only way I've been able to get around this is create a new profile and transfer all of my data. This method resets everything and I can continue on.
However, this has happened to me TWICE now, and it is most upsetting. Has anyone else encountered this problem? I find it hard to believe that I'm the only one but I haven't found anything on the Internet that addresses this problem because I don't know how to term the problem so that a search engine picks it up.
If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. Thanks.
I’m willing to go another route if this plugin continues to bug out on me. But the last time this happened to me none of the video plugins would work, so I’m thinking it might be a deeper problem than just a particular video download plugin.
Interesting suggestion. I’ll try that if the plugin bugs out on me again.
No commercials ever come on. After I would click the appropriate download, all I would get was a blank screen.
I checked out that video and there is no 1080p listed for it. It only goes as high as 720p.
Yeah, I know, I was tired last night.......... D:
I just updated the extension to the latest version (1.7.15), and now it no longer shows a 1080p version for the video in question. Neither does the FLV 480p choice appear.
On the extension download page, the author notes:
* 480p and 1080p are no longer available as standalone videos downloaded from youtube.com. YouTube switched to adaptive streams and uses separate files for video and audio, which need to be merged to get a video file. This is more complicated and requires more advanced tools (ffmpeg), so I haven't added them yet.
Is Youtube causing all the heachaches then?
For prior subscribers such as I, it's become a nightmare trying to figure out which account I need to switch to in order to receive feedback on comments I post. As of right now, I don't get any and there's no provision for me to do so.........
Google rules so now you've got to live with it..........
No, the Google takeover has...........
Just do an internet search on Youtube and Google problems and there are millions of complaints out there........
That appears to be the case. They have evidently introduced some sort of new download mode for 1080p (and 4k, if some posts are to believed), and the various extensions and downloader utilities have been tripping over it. E.g., before the most recent update, the one I was using was showing 1080p but erroring out if you tried to use it. It still can't download 1080p, but at least it no longer claims it can.
A google for youtube download 1080p shows some interesting results, such as this recent Reddit discussion.
Yes.
I did, and my PC gave me that blue screen. Scared me to death so my computer man took it off. But I would love to use Chrome
It turns out that that YouTube video does have a 1080p version, as do many others. If you bring up the page and clck the gear icon in the player window, you will see a 1080p format listed. However, it turns out to be DASH format (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP). That means the video and audio are separate streams and have to be downloaded separately and combined client-side. YouTube is in the process of converting over to the use of DASH. So, over time, more and more videos will have this issue.
The current crop of browser extensions are unable to perform the step of combining the video and audio. Hence, the problems. The current "fix" is to omit listing formats that are available only in DASH.
I did some googling around on this, and I found youtube-dl, a handy open-source command-line utility for video downloading. For instance, you can ask it to list the formats available for a particular YouTube (the -F option tells it to just list the available formats without downloading):
$ youtube-dl -F http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1v1sghSeA [youtube] Setting language [youtube] cG1v1sghSeA: Downloading video webpage [youtube] cG1v1sghSeA: Downloading video info webpage [youtube] cG1v1sghSeA: Extracting video information Available formats: 22 : mp4 [720x1280] 18 : mp4 [360x640] 43 : webm [360x640] 5 : flv [240x400] 36 : 3gp [240x320] 17 : 3gp [144x176] 137 : mp4 [1080p] (DASH Video) 136 : mp4 [720p] (DASH Video) 135 : mp4 [480p] (DASH Video) 134 : mp4 [360p] (DASH Video) 133 : mp4 [240p] (DASH Video) 160 : mp4 [192p] (DASH Video) 141 : m4a [256k] (DASH Audio) 140 : m4a [128k] (DASH Audio) 139 : m4a [48k] (DASH Audio)
The best normal format is #22, 720p (you can read about formats at YouTube's Wikipedia page).
But we see that 1080p is available as format 137. However, that's DASH, so that file will be video-only. We also have a choice of three DASH audio formats. We could go with 140 for decent quality, or we might choose to settle for 139, since this video is just an interview. Either way, we will have two files: a big fat 1080p video and a much smaller audio track.
So, we download the video and audio:
$ youtube-dl -f 137 -o video.mp4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1v1sghSeA [youtube] Setting language [youtube] cG1v1sghSeA: Downloading video webpage [youtube] cG1v1sghSeA: Downloading video info webpage [youtube] cG1v1sghSeA: Extracting video information [download] Destination: video.mp4 [download] 100% of 90.22MiB in 00:14 $ youtube-dl -f 140 -o video.m4a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1v1sghSeA [youtube] Setting language [youtube] cG1v1sghSeA: Downloading video webpage [youtube] cG1v1sghSeA: Downloading video info webpage [youtube] cG1v1sghSeA: Extracting video information [download] Destination: video.m4a [download] 100% of 5.51MiB in 00:00 $ ls -l video.* -rw-r--r-- 1 cynwoody cynwoody 5772463 Nov 12 07:54 video.m4a -rw-r--r-- 1 cynwoody cynwoody 94607399 Nov 12 07:51 video.mp4
Once we have the files downloaded, VLC can play them together. Use the Advanced Open dialog to select the video file (video.mp4), check the "Play another media synchronously" option and choose the audio file (video.m4a). This will play the video with sound. You can also check the Streaming/Saving box and direct VLC to save the combined stream to a third file, which will then play with sound when clicked.
Also, it's more than a bit obscure, but you can get VLC to do the combine step from the command line:
$ vlc -I dummy video.mp4 --input-slave video.m4a --sout file/ts:video-combined.mp4 vlc://quit VLC media player 2.1.1 Rincewind (revision 2.1.1-0-g89db9aa) [0x1006249e0] dummy interface: using the dummy interface module... TagLib: MP4: No audio tracks TagLib: MP4: No audio tracks [0x1006250d0] idummy demux: command `quit' $ ls -l video-combined.mp4 -rw-r--r-- 1 cynwoody cynwoody 106098740 Nov 22 15:23 video-combined.mp4
The -I dummy option tells VLC not to show its normal GUI interface, and the vlc://quit reminds it to exit when it finishes the stream-combining operation.
The combined file plays with sound.
Rumor has it that ffmpeg can also do the combining step, perhaps more easily. But I haven't tried it yet.
Ah, this would explain why my temps have been spiking a bit more with YT lately....ty for the explanation. Saved me dragging the machine apart more often than needed, to be sure.
I guess I am also wondering if this problem is caused by a bug in my system or if Youtube/Google caused it.
That’s what I need to find out. If I still have whatever caused the problem on my computer then I either need to find it a eradicate it, or reprogram it.
What’s your feeling?
Thanks for your help.
I guess I am also wondering if this problem is caused by a bug in my system or if Youtube/Google caused it.
That’s what I need to find out. If I still have whatever caused the problem on my computer then I either need to find it a eradicate it, or reprogram it.
What’s your feeling?
Thanks for your help.
So, you probably don't need to do anything except check for updated extensions. Or go for a non-browser solution, such as I outlined above.
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