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

  • m3u8 99% 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!

  • Soltros@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    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.

      • Captain_Wtv@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • dustojnikhummer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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

  • NOOBMASTER@kbin.social
    4·
    1 year ago

    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!

    • equalszero@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • Fedora@lemmy.haigner.meEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.

  • roxy@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.

    tab

  • Audalin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Casta@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      You are the only person legend who, with this command, has allowed me to download a video from a shitty website that “breaks” the movies/series into small pieces. THANK YOU

      EDIT: Movie, not Film

  • Prollol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    @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.

    • adderaline@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      you can download it from all linux package managers i’ve tried. not sure if linux counts as malware or not.

      • Protowalker@beehaw.orgEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        Linux is definitely malware. I installed it and I haven’t been able to use my computer since

    • ruffletuss@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      yt-dlp is legit. It’s a fork of the yt-dl project, adding in a few extra features. yt-dl itself is used in a number of open-source projects like NewPipe.

      yt-dlp is also an open-source project, with its source code available on GitHub for everyone to scrutinise. If it had malware bundled in it, it would have been easily identified by users.

      You can try a GUI for yt-dlp here. I only use the command-line version so I won’t be of much help with it, but lmk if you run into any trouble.

      You could alternatively use Jdownloader2. It’s an amazing all-in-one downloader. Just copy the link of the YouTube video, and it’ll automatically pick up the video you’d like to download. You can change the quality of the video to download and even download the subtitles, thumbnail and description too. For music, you can choose to only keep the audio track in the m4a, opus or ogg format. Here’s a video guide to get it installed and running.