Kenny McCormack wrote:
In article ,
Kenny McCormack wrote:
...
A little more investigation has shown that although methods 1 and 2 had,
indeed, stopped working, this method (shown below does [still] work). So,
there is definitely *something* about this video...

Anyway, this works:

$ youtube-dl --restrict-filenames -f mp4 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9kn8_oztsA'

So, all is well.

I'm guessing that what's wrong is that the JSON for this file is messed up
(probably, non-existent!). Usually, when I use youtube-dl, I use either
the -g or -j option, which gets information from the JSON data associated
with the video. I think the JSON is also accessed (and thus, needed) if
you access the video "the normal way" - i.e., in a browser.

So, it looks like if you use youtube-dl to directly download the video, it
works - and I'm guessing that's what most/all of the snotty posters on this
thread did, causing them to conclude that nothing was amiss.

However, if you use either -g or -j or try to play the video in a browser, boom!


I think a few of us used a browser first. It's
less work.

Testing with Youtube-dl is just for bar-bet fun.
For example, discovering that there's a 3GB version sitting
in there for no particularly good reason. (A talking
head video ? With a 3GB download ?)

Every time I go to use youtube-dl, it needs to be updated,
and this is a "tax" to be paid on the approach. It's
standard operating procedure to be updating it.

It's not the fault of the developers and just the nature of
the (purposely lamed) websites that makes it necessary. I also
use YTdl for the local TV news website where the videos don't
play properly (most videos have a malfunctioning wrapper). The
downloader is great, in that it supports a large number of sites.

That particular sample from Youtube, you could carry most
of the intelligence in it, in the audio-only track, so it
doesn't need a lot of bytes to capture the essence. If you
could find a voice to transcript app, you could make the
content even smaller.

Paul