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Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

(github.com)
798 points bertman | 25 comments | 12 Nov 25 10:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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embedding-shape ◴[12 Nov 25 14:06 UTC] No.45900337[source]▶
Seems its already in Arch's repositories, and seems to work, just add another flag to the invocation:

    yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser firefox --remote-components ejs:github -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best" 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXX'
It is downloading a solver at runtime, took maybe half a second in total, downloads are starting way faster than before it seems to me.

    [youtube] [jsc:deno] Solving JS challenges using deno
    [youtube] [jsc:deno] Downloading challenge solver lib script from  https://github.com/yt-dlp/ejs/releases/download/0.3.1/yt.solver.lib.min.js
It would be great if we could download the solver manually with a separate command, before running the download command, as I'm probably not alone in running yt-dlp in a restricted environment, and being able to package it up together with the solver before runtime would let me avoid lessening the restrictions for that environment. Not a huge issue though, happy in general the start of downloads seems much faster now.
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WD-42 ◴[12 Nov 25 14:59 UTC] No.45901047[source]▶
Glad to hear it’s faster now!

YouTube barely works in a full-on browser these days, props to the team that keeps it accessible via a Python script!

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1. gilfoy ◴[12 Nov 25 15:42 UTC] No.45901546[source]▶
I use YouTube daily in safari and edge, this is complete hyperbole.
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2. phplovesong ◴[12 Nov 25 15:46 UTC] No.45901585[source]▶
Youtube is pretty unusable, as they throttle videos, and links sometimes dont work. It has gone downhill fast in recent years.
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3. ConceptJunkie ◴[12 Nov 25 15:52 UTC] No.45901660[source]▶
I have no problems with YouTube at all. Perhaps it's because I pay for Premium (primarily to get YouTube music).

Regardless, Google services getting worse over time is becoming a law rather than a tendency.

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4. shermantanktop ◴[12 Nov 25 16:06 UTC] No.45901854[source]▶
No idea what you are talking about. I don’t have premium and use in both logged in and logged out.
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5. komali2 ◴[12 Nov 25 16:15 UTC] No.45901960[source]▶
I run it in firefox. Today a video kept freezing when I scrolled down to load the comments. Sometimes I bizarrely have to scroll super far down to get past recommended videos to see the comments, which sometimes crashes the tab.

On mobile (Firefox) I frequently have issues with videos freezing or videos crashing when I try to replay a section.

I freely admit to holding google software to a higher standard than e.g. random FOSS tools I use or saas from startups, however I also believe google has the talent, time, and money to where their software should basically be the best on Earth, and it's kinda shocking how often it's not and in what ways it's not. And YouTube is how old now?

The fact alone that I still can't toggle off Google maps "we found a faster route, tap ok to not change the route you change" thing...

6. zimpenfish ◴[12 Nov 25 16:15 UTC] No.45901961[source]▶
As a counter-anecdote, I use YouTube daily in Safari and it will not infrequently hang for tens of seconds when trying to load a video, occasionally play the sound without the video, reasonably frequently put the video over most of the page with no way to get to the controls, etc.

(This may be because I have a whole swathe of adblockers, etc., plus I do a lot of `yt-dlp`ing from the same IP which may have me on a naughty list.)

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7. nancyminusone ◴[12 Nov 25 16:29 UTC] No.45902127{3}[source]▶
If I'm logged out, I get "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" about once a week from both home and the office.
8. cons0le ◴[12 Nov 25 16:32 UTC] No.45902182{3}[source]▶
I don't get the value ad of youtube music. Everything's already on youtube and they let you make playlists, and they have playlists of the top charts already.

What else does youtube music get you? I can play on my phone with the screen off with yt vanced ( and I would never pay just for that feature, because I remember when it was free and they took it away )

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9. sebra ◴[12 Nov 25 16:36 UTC] No.45902225[source]▶
I have the same issue. I think it's because I'm adblocking because if I try in chrome with no adblocker it loads the ads instantly.

But eh either 5s of black screen or 60s of ads. I tried watching a 15 min yt video without adblock and it had 5 ad breaks with some unskippable ads.

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10. anonym29 ◴[12 Nov 25 16:42 UTC] No.45902311{3}[source]▶
Quick, everyone start sending unwanted junk mail to this guy's house, he'll pay you to stop!
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11. embedding-shape ◴[12 Nov 25 16:42 UTC] No.45902316[source]▶
That's a bit like complaining no cars have trouble because your Fiat doesn't have a problem. There are more browser engines out there than the ones you use, some in direct competition with Google themselves, maybe people using those engines are experiencing issues? Jumping to calling out "hyperbole!" sounds like hyperbole itself, since you don't actually have broad experience enough to say if that's true or not.

FWIW, when I use Chromium (logged out/in) on Linux, everything works fine. If I use Firefox (logged in), it works worse. If I change the user-agent to Chromium in Firefox, I get faster buffering than when I use the default user-agent. Make of that what you will.

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12. ranger_danger ◴[12 Nov 25 16:56 UTC] No.45902513[source]▶
No issues here for me with uBO, logged in or not, no premium
13. weaksauce ◴[12 Nov 25 17:05 UTC] No.45902638{4}[source]▶
> I can play on my phone with the screen off with yt vanced

there's a lot of iphone/ipad users out there.

> Everything's already on youtube and they let you make playlists, and they have playlists of the top charts already

I don't use it but ui probably. ads maybe. plenty of people have money and don't want the inconvenience of trying to get around it.

14. dyselon ◴[12 Nov 25 17:06 UTC] No.45902645{4}[source]▶
Heaven forbid someone pay for an online service they use and enjoy.
15. supportengineer ◴[12 Nov 25 17:13 UTC] No.45902729{3}[source]▶
No one ever got a promotion for maintaining software
16. j45 ◴[12 Nov 25 17:17 UTC] No.45902793{4}[source]▶
You can play youtube videos (ad free) as music on any chromecast device including chromecast homes with the microphone turned off.

Also, when playing music you won't be hit with ads.

Your setup can move with you wherever you are, home, travel, in the vehicle. This can be helpful for engaging the audible sensors of small aliens sans screen.

Youtube without ads on every device, anywhere, is quite a different experience.

17. charcircuit ◴[12 Nov 25 17:22 UTC] No.45902859{4}[source]▶
No ads on music, no ads on shorts (shorts are allowed to freely use copyrighted music unlike long form video), background playback, downloading music to your device. These all are big value ads for me.
18. kiwijamo ◴[12 Nov 25 17:46 UTC] No.45903198[source]▶
They limit the buffer to around 30secs or so like all other streaming services but otherwise 95%+ of the time it just plays smoothing with no buffering at all from start to end. YouTube is generally in the top 3 of the video streaming services I use. Even on 4G wireless (which I occassionally use) it works well enough which is impressive as other video steaming services struggle (with the sole exception of Netflix which is probably the only one better than YouTube).
19. darkwater ◴[12 Nov 25 18:05 UTC] No.45903477[source]▶
> That's a bit like complaining no cars have trouble because your Fiat doesn't have a problem.

No. Because even if it might be complicated, any website developer can test their website against a wide array of browsers, in a more or less automated way.

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20. embedding-shape ◴[12 Nov 25 18:11 UTC] No.45903573{3}[source]▶
So you're expecting Google engineers and managers to prioritize adding broad cross-browser support, which adds more work for them, when the same company is also developing a competing browser?

No, Firefox always been a second-rate guest at Google properties, and I'm not expecting it to change soon either. Why would they make it better when status quo means more Chrome users (in their mind)?

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21. badlibrarian ◴[12 Nov 25 18:26 UTC] No.45903844{4}[source]▶
It's not 2003, the browser isn't the battle.

I would expect YouTube managers to pressure the Chrome managers, because YouTube brings in billions of dollars every month. Likewise I would expect the trend to move in favor of YouTube, because the browser loses money at an increasing amount and YouTube generates money at an increasing amount. 70% of YouTube happens on Mobile, and in the US more people are now watching on TVs than phones. Source: Nielsen, the old-school company that has huge influence over ads.

The site pops a literal warning saying "having problems? turn off your ad blocker" so I'm not sure where the mysteries lie here.

They're testing on thousands of devices. And they're probably even testing against ad-blockers on your bro-browser. But they're certainly not motivated to optimize that experience, so you get what you get.

22. jack_pp ◴[12 Nov 25 19:29 UTC] No.45905030{4}[source]▶
You get music discovery, radios, go to album, go to artist
23. raydev ◴[12 Nov 25 20:10 UTC] No.45905763{4}[source]▶
For me, it just comes with Premium, and I buy Premium to support the creators I watch often without having to watch ads. I want them to get paid.
24. Too ◴[12 Nov 25 20:50 UTC] No.45906462{3}[source]▶
When it comes to video it’s not only the browser. It’s also your gpu, your OS and your gpu drivers.

Notably, YouTube these days prioritize AV1 codec even if you don’t have gpu acceleration for it, making lots of systems fall back to CPU decoding and making it completely unusable. Install the h264ify extension to force h264 during content negotiation and get your gpu decoding back.

Even if you can make a matrix of all those combinations, it’s even more complex than that to test in practice. Take my laptop for example, it starts off good and manages the cpu decoding for a while, a few minutes into a video it overheats and throttles, causing stutter.

What YouTube should do on the other hand, and I’m sure they already do, is to collect metrics from all playbacks. That should show black on white how many users struggle with each codec.

I don’t think I’m in any minority here given how many million installations the h264ify extension has. Google simply care more about their bandwidth cost than the user experience.

25. zimpenfish ◴[12 Nov 25 22:43 UTC] No.45907928{3}[source]▶
> I tried watching a 15 min yt video without adblock and it had 5 ad breaks with some unskippable ads.

Yeah - I watch most of my YouTubes on the Apple TV and the ads are a pestilence. Sometimes it'll be 50s pre-roll[1] with multiple 30-50s breaks for a 10m videos.

Luckily there exist[0] many fine technologies that let you view them without ads via something like Infuse with a DLNA server if you're that way inclined.

[0] Currently. YT-DLP is fighting the good fight but I don't know how much longer they'll be able to keep in front. But then I'll just stop watching YouTube, really, because it's a horror show without adblock/circumventions.

[1] The video doesn't appear in your history until the pre-roll has finished which means if you can't be arsed sitting through a 50s pre-roll just that second and - at least on the Apple TV - you've not clicked on the video from your homepage / subscriptions, good luck trying to find it again unless you remember the name + channel etc. (which it also won't properly show you until after the pre-roll!)[2]

[2] I hate YouTube corporate.