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!
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.
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.
This is what Reddit was like in the golden era, ~2010-2014ish
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.
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
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.
You are the only
personlegend who, with this command, has allowed me to download a video from a shitty website that “breaks” the movies/series into small pieces. THANK YOUEDIT: Movie, not Film
Spotdl for downloading Spotify music. It’s amazing also
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!
Last time I tried downloading a yt video with it and it didn’t work. Been using yt-dlp now and it’s magic.
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.
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.
Use firefox with arkenfox, then you wont have to enable DRM to stream videos
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.
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!
A r/piracy post that is actually useful? A sign of the times
@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.
can you download the full paywall hidden videos from manyvids with this? If not, is there a way to do that?
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.
Thanks for tutorial
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.
Information is Ammunition
There is also yt-dlg, one of the frontends for youtube-dl or yt-dlp.
