- cross-posted to:
- refold@dataterm.digital
Getting started
To do this properly, you need to understand how those websites work.
For the shake of simplicity fellow “pirates”, they utilize m3u wiki link
m3u899% of the time.
You will also need yt-dlp install it if you don’t have already
Example on utilizing this knowledge
- 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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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!
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.
VideoDownloadHelper is really cool. I use it in chrome to download music and vids. Every 500th download it congratulates you and asks for a donation or some positive review.
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.
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.
A r/piracy post that is actually useful? A sign of the times
Adding to topic:
If you want an android specific tool. Use seal from fdroid
seal is so good. i use syncthing to sync my music library, seal downloads from my phone and yt-dlp from my pc. works perfectly ;)
Ha same here 🍻
JDownloader has handled just about everything I’ve thrown at it
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.
Any website? Including all the streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, etc?
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
I always heard rooting an android device wipes the DRM keys - is it not true then?
Long time root user here, I use a lot of extensions with it such as Xposed and Frida. Even though there are tools with which you can manipulate DRM, I have never heard of one that can completely remove them and successfully play a DRM-protected content. The closest one to what you mentioned used to be able to remove the DRM library from the system but couldn’t play anything on Netflix.
Interesting! I do something similar except I just scour the media F12 tab until I find what I’m looking for
There fancier ways to do this, it’s just an intro. What exactly are you usually looking for?
F12 and searching that mass of incoherence for “maxdefault” (iirc) is how I grab YouTube thumbnails.
Glad to see the call for ethical piracy in this thread. As pirates, we should be more understanding of the fact that information should be shared without any red tape so to speak.
Yeah I try to avoid pirating from independent creators if I think they actually deserve to be supported.
yeah yt-dlp is really good.
I wrote a terminal interface for personal use, so that it could read my list of links, extract the titles, and download the videos with proper filename that I want.
I also have a keyboardmaestro macro that automatically detects youtube links from my clipboard and inserts them into my download list. I’ve been using this approach for 2 - 3 years.
If I like a video, I’d actually go back to YouTube, give them an upvote and leave a comment.
Im going to assume this would also pull hard subs but has anyone tested it to know if it will also pull normal subs?
Information is Ammunition
Thanks! I will have to test it on some obscure local websites on which most of the downloaders not work.
I’d recommend trying gogoanime etc first, then sail the deep waters :)
I meant more like news sites with all their proprietary players so not really high seas, just difficult to obtain usually.
For news sites I usually first try video downloadhelper addon, then figure what’s happening with dev tools. Usually their proprietary players are way worse, but I don’t really mess with news sites.
I use downloadhelper too and it works on most but I will give this one a try on those it did not. Thank you again!
But for
blob:urlsyou need an extension.