YT videos get special download-resistent treatment but not others

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 29 points – 10 months ago

For example, this invidious instance offers a download option for a YoutTube video, as that instance does for all YT videos:

~~https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=lU4vv7qCQvg~~ (see update)

Exceptionally, if you opt to download it it merely opens a player to watch realtime. While other downloads from the same invidious instance have no issues. Why is this one getting different treatment?

update Apparently it’s an instance-specific problem with that particular video:

works → https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=lU4vv7qCQvg

broken → https://iv.ggtyler.dev/watch?v=lU4vv7qCQvg

I’ve seen other instances where this particular video download is broken. AFAIK, invidious.fdn.fr is the only place where it works as expected.

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I tried downloading from the link provided and it started downloading the file for me.

Thanks for pointing that out. It works for me too. I just happened to select a different instance where it actually works. Here’s the instance where it’s broken:

https://iv.ggtyler.dev/watch?v=lU4vv7qCQvg

Try right clicking and "save as"? On mobile Safari it pops up with view and download as options.

That’s is how I got around it in the past. For some reason that was not an option where I needed it (perhaps the browser I was using was locked down in some way). In any case, I’m wondering why the variation in behavior. Is this a bug in Invidious?

Still downloading the file for me.

Edit: Tried it in chromium out of curiousity and I was able to reproduce your issue. Not sure why it works normally in firefox.

Ungoogled Chromium indeed reproduces the issue. But so does the public library, which likely was Firefox in Windows. So i guess it might be hasty to conclude that it’s browser specific, particularly when other videos on the same instance behave differently in the same browser.