Why are embedded video download plugins so universally shite?

[touchingcloth]

I'm trying to download some free Portuguese language tuition videos so that I can convert them into MP3s and listen to them when I'm going about my day, but having tried the thousands of plugins that should be able to download the video I can say they are all shit, bar none.

I'm having the same problem as I used to have when trying to download things from iPlayer or 4OD - the plugins will often not see that the page has an embedded video at all, or else will decide that there are actually THOUSANDS of embedded 200kB videos rather than one single file.

Why is this, and is anyone aware of a plugin that works universally?

[Robot DeNiro]

They see thousands of tiny videos because the video you want has copy protection specifically designed to stop you doing what you're trying to do.

I use a program called JDownloader to get YouTube videos. It's possible it might work on other sites, but maybe quite unlikely.

There's a program called Get_iPlayer that can, well I'm sure you can guess what it does.

[touchingcloth]

I use Get_iPlayer, and there are loads of sites that will let you rip YouTube videos specifically, but I'm yet to find a tool that will download from arbitrary niche sites. The one I'm trying to download is from a set of online classroom lessons published during COVID for non-native school kids in Portugal, so the chances of someone having created a bespoke download site for that are, well, it's your turn to imagine now.

If the plugins see videos as millions of separate files, how do those YouTube download sites work, and why hasn't anyone made a plugin that does the same thing for arbitrary sites? ANSWER ME

[Robot DeNiro]

I think YouTube videos don't have the same sort of protection on, so that's why those downloaders work.  If you PM me a link I'll see if JDownloader will work, it's more sophisticated than most others I've tried

[touchingcloth]

I think YouTube videos don't have the same sort of protection on, so that's why those downloaders work.  If you PM me a link I'll see if JDownloader will work, it's more sophisticated than most others I've tried

I've DMd you, thanks for the offer!

[JesusAndYourBush]

If you use the Developer Tools section of Chrome or Firefox (other browsers probably have it too but those are the 2 I'm familiar with) and spoof as different devices you can often get a site to stream the video in a less complex way (because the device needs it that way) that allows you to grab the file.

While using Developer Tools you can sometimes get a link to the .m3u8 file which when pasted into VLC (Open Network Stream) can allow VLC to stream and download the video.

[touchingcloth]

No dice on any of those, but pretending to be a shitty old Android phone is a great tip to know for future reference.

These videos are hosted by the Portuguese equivalent of the BBC, so I guess it makes sense that even though they have no real piracy value that they would just apply the same DRM they do for their iPlayer equivalent cos that's just how they host video. Unlike the entertainment videos, though, there's not a chance that these will end up on a torrent site or Reddit thread as pirated content.

[steveh]

It's not an anti-piracy / DRM thing. HLS and MPEG-DASH are protocols designed to send videos in chunks so the stream can a) adapt to the available bandwidth and b) be served by over ordinary HTTP so you don't run into firewall issues like with some earlier streaming protocols. Cryptographic DRM is used in addition to them if a provider wants to better protect their video.

yt-dlp says it supports downloading from RTP.