Go to your favorite streaming site
Simple press F12
Go to Network
Select XHR (XMLHttpRequest)
Filter URLs for m3u8
- If you find more than one, just test them out, you will soon find the trick on your own :)
Copy the URL
Open a terminal and type yt-dlp <your-copied-link>

Do it Ethically

Some may call us pirates, which I find really cool

But the true evil Pirates/criminals are the ones that keep the power to themselves and don't share it with others

Information is the only true power, and it should be free(free as in free speech) for all.

Share your own tips & tricks in the comments if you want!

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[–] Soltros@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This doesn't have to do with the topic at hand, but it's just so cool being able to directly reference sites and ways to download on Lemmy, rather than dancing around the topic on Reddit.

[–] SeanTheLawn@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is what Reddit was like in the golden era, ~2010-2014ish

[–] Captain_Wtv@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

It changed after they banned r/megalinks. I remember the day. The piracy sub purged content around that time. Then 2-3 years later the sports streaming subs went down.

[–] dustojnikhummer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Until copyright owners start banging on providers of those who host these instances sadly. Give it a few years and we will be back there

[–] roxy@lemmy.fmhy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

My fellow crewmen, yt-dlp is great but you don't need it if you have vlc installed on your pc, you could just open Convert / Save function (Ctrl + R for shortcut), click the "Network" tab", paste the hls (m3u8) or dash (mpd) link and save it as you normally would.

tab

[–] NOOBMASTER@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I have VideoDownloadHelper addon for Firefox, and most of the time it works. There are some exceptions of course, where it cannot download the video. But I love finding out new ways to do it, in case the old ways fail one day. Good post, man!

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Last time I tried downloading a yt video with it and it didn't work. Been using yt-dlp now and it's magic.

[–] equalszero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks!

It's a must have add on, but it's still just an add on, we should know the basics of what's happening behind the scenes to sail the 7 seas.

The reason I posted that is to inspire some of you in creating fancy scripts that can easily do more than just downloading one video.

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Spotdl for downloading Spotify music. It's amazing also

[–] Audalin@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Alternatively, ffmpeg -protocol_whitelist file,crypto,data,https,tls,tcp -stats -i <URL.m3u8> -codec copy <FILE.mp4>.

Also, some m3u8's are just files containing redirects to other m3u8's in various resolutions. You might want to extract the one you need and download that.

[–] casta@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You are the only ~~person~~ legend who, with this command, has allowed me to download a video from a shitty website that "breaks" the movies/series into small pieces. THANK YOU

EDIT: Movie, not Film

[–] lukas@lemmy.haigner.me 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This works only for websites that don't use DRM, such as Widevine. But there're guides to decrypt the videos anyways. Tough luck with Widevine L1 tho.

[–] equalszero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Use firefox with arkenfox, then you wont have to enable DRM to stream videos

[–] lukas@lemmy.haigner.me 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's not how it works. They can choose to fall back to unprotected videos, sure. But key players support DRM already, so why care about the rest? Netflix serves you 4K video only if your browser supports DRM. Heck, even YouTube requires DRM to watch movies.

[–] dbemol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

A r/piracy post that is actually useful? A sign of the times

[–] QuestioningEspecialy@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Xtreme Download Manager lets you do this with ease (and more) and can check for the latest yt-dlp version before downloading on its own.

MPC-HC lets you play and download YouTube videos using yt-dlp.

[–] anonynorbi@lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you for this awesome information! I agree with the statement about sharing the power and that information should be free (as in speech) for all. Let's make internet a better place!

[–] Prollol@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

@The person who said one can use VLC to download m3u8 links, I tried this multiple times already, but sadly the resulting files were never complete. Either the video was cut off or the audio missing or the like. I used VLC on Windows.

[–] PCChipsM922U@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

There is also yt-dlg, one of the frontends for youtube-dl or yt-dlp.

https://github.com/yt-dlg/yt-dlg

[–] IIOrochiII@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for tutorial

[–] deepfake@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there any way to save this post for later?

[–] Maximilious@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

In kbin if you updoot it, it will show up in your profile. Not sure if there's another way in kbin atm as I'm still learning

[+] dark@lemmy.one 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] ruffletuss@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

yt-dlp is legit. It's a fork of the yt-dl project, adding in a few extra features. yt-dl itself is used in a number of open-source projects like NewPipe.

yt-dlp is also an open-source project, with its source code available on GitHub for everyone to scrutinise. If it had malware bundled in it, it would have been easily identified by users.

You can try a GUI for yt-dlp here. I only use the command-line version so I won't be of much help with it, but lmk if you run into any trouble.

You could alternatively use Jdownloader2. It's an amazing all-in-one downloader. Just copy the link of the YouTube video, and it'll automatically pick up the video you'd like to download. You can change the quality of the video to download and even download the subtitles, thumbnail and description too. For music, you can choose to only keep the audio track in the m4a, opus or ogg format. Here's a video guide to get it installed and running.

[–] hydra2023@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

+1 for JDownloader, such a good program, been using it for 10+ years

[–] ondoyant@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you can download it from all linux package managers i've tried. not sure if linux counts as malware or not.

[–] Protowalker@beehaw.org -1 points 1 year ago

Linux is definitely malware. I installed it and I haven't been able to use my computer since

[–] Astaroth@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Edit: It seems yt-dlp was at some point moved from AUR to Extra. I was half expecting it to happen eventually since youtube-dl stopped working about a year ago, but I never noticed it happening.

Either way, as it's a package on extra instead of AUR there's a lot less of a security concern for anyone worried about that.

Original comment:

~~I have yt-dlp from the AUR (Arch User Repository). youtube-dl package also exists, and it's on extra, but it stopped working about half a year ago~~

[–] mrestof@fosstodon.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@Astaroth, why do you use yt-dlp from aur if it is also in extra repository?

[–] Astaroth@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

like I said only the original youtube-dl package is in extra but it stopped working a while back.

since then I've been using the youtube-dl fork yt-dlp that OP mentioned, but it's in aur atm since it hasn't gotten as recognized as it's a fork (I assume)

Basically yt-dlp is a fork of youtube-dl, and unlike youtube-dl it's in aur instead of extra.

At least last I checked all youtube-dl forks are in aur, but you have to use yt-dlp (or maybe one of the other forks) since youtube-dl doesn't work anymore.

[–] Holzkohlen@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You are wrong. https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/yt-dlp/ yt-dlp is in the extra repository (has been for a long time now) as they said. No need to install it from the AUR

[–] Astaroth@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting. I'm pretty sure it was on AUR when I installed quite a while back, but looks like it's in Extra now yeah.

It does make sense though since youtube-dl hasn't been working for about a year.

I should've checked before commenting

[–] Holzkohlen@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Don't sweat it bro

[–] Captain_Shoe@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any website? Including all the streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, etc?

[–] samwise@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

https://cdm-project.com/

They have a lot of good tools and guides for getting setup to pull drm encrypted streams. You’ll need access to an android device that has root to be able to pull drm keys from. It took me a bit to figure out how to get it setup. They had to remove the all in one setup page so the software is outdated but I followed this (https://web.archive.org/web/20230315101847/https://cdm-project.com/cdm-tools/how-to) and just searched for the latest versions of the software they reference and got it working to download off disney+ and wowpresentsplus

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