The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

ytarchive is also great for downloading livestreams.

Unfortunately, it's not as up-to-date as yt-dlp so it can be fragile against blocks. I'm hoping that yt-dlp adds some functionality for downloading portions of a livestream (i.e. not downloading from the start, 120 hours ago).

Not sure if this applies to livestreams but look into the --download-sections arg?

yt-dlp --download-sections "*05:00-05:10" <YouTube URL>

Doesn’t work for livestreams as far as I know. There’s an open PR: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/6498

Huh, last/only time I used yt-dlp on a livestream it downloaded exactly from when I ran it, didn't get anything in the past at all (which was a shame for me personally at the time, as I would have liked the earlier stuff too).

Maybe that was a difference in the stream itself though, since I've experienced both past-seekable and live-only live streams on YouTube.

turning off the DVR is just a UI change. ytarchive can still grab the past parts of the broadcast just fine. What's really funny is it will even download censored segments which sometimes happens in music broadcasts like A State Of Trance or Group Therapy. You can also force enable seeking with a userscript if you wish.

The problem with this DVR feature is that if your connection is stuttering it will buffer you backwards a bit. Streamers like to disable this because they want to keep the time to deliver as low as possible so chat is more interactive and engaging, especially on youtube where your viewership might not qualify for the CCV metrics if the stream is not in a foreground tab. Best to leave it off if that is important for you.

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/485020-ytbetter-enable-rew...

--live-from-start