910
Google is intentionally throttling YouTube videos, slowing down users with ad blockers (www.windowscentral.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
239 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[+] 123 points 1 year ago (43 children)
[deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 43 child comments
    •
  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago* (24 children)

    If Google really wants to, they can crack down on yt-dlp, and I assume that if enough people are using it, they're likely to do such a crackdown. Like, this works for the moment, but...

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 24 child comments
    •
  • [+] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Hmm, but in this case you would be recording either the ads or the buffering.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Imagine adblock re-rencoding software that picks mp4s clean based on repeated content(ads). The user could select each ad as they happen, mark them as such and let it identify them from there. Imagine sharable or federated caches of these ad records between users.

    Someone who can code, please, imagine it.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    It will happen eventually. All they need to do is start new/rotating keys on wildvine and put the ads at random times right in the stream, then disable fast forward if you use it to skip ads. It'll be a UX hit, so it'll need to be worth it to them.

    In the end, they can't stop us from HDMI capturing and using comskip to detect / remove but there are a million ways to play tag between where we are now and that which don't require people posting videos to pirate bay :)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    can't stop us from HDMI capturing

    Look up HDCP.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    There are HDMI splitter boxes you can get from China that conveniently strip out the HDCP.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    strip out the HDCP

    Interesting, I had figured that was possible in principle but hadn't kept up with what was actually around.

    But still, the HDCP stream is decompressed video, so if you want to save it, you'll have to either put it through yet another layer or lossy compression, or burn a ridiculous amount of disk space compared to the compressed stream that Youtube sent to your computer.

    We'll see how things go. Google in the past has made occasional modest gestures to get in the way of downloading, but they haven't made serious effort to prevent it. Who knows whether that will last.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] [S] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    My ip was blocked a LONG time ago by google for using yt-dlp. Works with VPN but nothing else. Fun times. I think I only pulled a couple of videos off for archival services. On my own channel non-the-less.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    You might try again. I was blocked for a couple weeks after I pulled a bunch of videos from a channel using yt-dlp, and for a while YouTube required an account (which I will not get) from that IP. But a couple weeks later, things were working again.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    This is the way.

    When YouTube wanted to throw me some entertainment and a couple ads, very conveniently, I was down for that.

    Now that it's an all out technology knowledge battle - well, I'm quite good at that.

    So I spend the time I would have laughed at their ad instead working around their bullshit.

    I haven't seen an ad in years, but I still enjoy the same content. 🤷‍♀️

    To me, it seems like they're working really hard, just to fail to serve me ads.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I would but my issue with that is that SponsorBlock doesn't work on downloaded videos.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Skytube has an option for clipping mid-video ads out of downloaded videos, if that helps.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I use SponsorBlock for more than just skipping sponsored segments. It's also useful for skipping intros, "like and subscribe" messages, and other general annoyances in most YouTube videos. Once you get used to it, you can't go without.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    I’m new to yt-dlp. Care to share your flags? I’m a little confused on which ones I actually need.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    I mean, you don't need anything; it'll work with no flags. I have these:

    $ cat ~/.config/yt-dlp/config
--embed-subs
--embed-metadata
--embed-chapters
--embed-thumbnail
--sponsorblock-mark=all
$

    That'll just embed some useful metadata in the file.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Note that subtitles doesn't include automatic subtitles. For that you have to do --write-auto-subs in conjunction

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Also if you just want the audio to listen to (I like to do this with TTRPGs) you can do:

    yt-dlp -x -f bestaudio

    Also works great in a pinch for getting sounds and music for FoundryVTT.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    I'm pretty sure that it defaults to best quality.

    goes looking at man page

       By default, yt-dlp tries to download the best available quality if you don't  pass  any  options.   This  is  generally
   equivalent to using -f bestvideo*+bestaudio/best.  However, if multiple audiostreams is enabled (--audio-multistreams),
   the  default  format changes to -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best.  Similarly, if ffmpeg is unavailable, or if you use yt-dlp
   to stream to stdout (-o -), the default becomes -f best/bestvideo+bestaudio.

    So I think that it should normally pull down the best audio unless you get into some situation where YouTube doesn't offer a format that simultaneously has the combination of highest audio quality with the highest video quality; if it has to do so to get the highest video quality then, it'll sacrifice audio quality.

    EDIT: Hmm. I could have sworn that there was more text about prioritizing relative audio and video quality at one point in the man page, but I don't see anything there now. Maybe it can just always get the best audio quality, regardless of video quality, can pull 'em entirely separately.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)