Find & download videos from Developer Tools

[Night457]

INTRO, the reason for this post:
You have a number of video downloaders installed but they do not work on all sites. Internet Download Manager (IDM) works great on most sites, but you have gone past your 30-day free trial and you do not want to pay for it. You don't want to download a crack key for IDM that may be a virus and you are not a genius hacker. This tutorial shows how to find a .json video link in Developer Tools so you can use it to download the video for free. This process is still new to ME, so I don't know how many sites it will work on, but I know it works on sites where I was unable to download the video otherwise!
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1) Download and install youtube-dl or its fork yt-dlp and learn how to use it. Start with easy sites like YouTube.
2) Wait until you find a video that you can not download any normal, easy way.
I am doing this one:
https://super16.dk/film/fjorten-aar-og-to-naette
(It fails in youtube-dl if I just try to download that link.)
3) Open the link in a new tab of your browser. Do NOT start playing it yet!

Screenshot (106).png

4) Open Developer Tools (F12) on that page. Click on the Network tab.

Screenshot (107).png

5) NOW start playing the video. (In my sample picture, >Se film is the Play button.) You may need to adjust the size of Developer Tools on your screen to reveal the Play button on the video site.
6) Developer Tools will display a scrolling list of what it detects on the site while the video is playing.

Screenshot (108).png

7) Type 'master.json' (without the quotes) in your filter box. If there is more than one result that shows up, scroll through to the one you want or add more filters like 'm3u8'.

Screenshot (109).png

8) Right click on the link. Select 'Copy > Copy link address'.

Screenshot (110).png

9) I find it easier to see and edit the entire link if I paste it in Notepad first.

Screenshot (111).png

10) Find where it says .json in the link.

Screenshot (112).png

11) Edit the link so that .json is now .mpd instead.

Screenshot (113).png

12) Copy that link by highlighting it and using CTRL+C, and then open command line on your download folder with youtube-dl.exe and ffmpeg.exe in it.
(My download folder is called 'youtubedl' in the sample picture.)
13) Type youtube-dl and paste the link. (Right-click and select Paste, with my OS anyway!) Hit Enter.
14) And away it goes downloading!!

Screenshot (117).png

15) When it is done downloading, find the master-master.mp4 file (or equivalent) in your download folder and rename it. Yay, you are done!

Thank you to reptile12 for the short-version instructions, and to anyone else who has ever helped me with Developer Tools!

[pillowbaker]

YES YES! More step tutorial from Night!

Thank you for helping me with the Inspect option in my browser. Sometimes, jdownloader likes having a go with these links as well.

[Night457]

Jdownloader is one of my very first downloader attempts, and Developer Tools is always my last resource. It is so difficult looking through all that meaningless-to-me scrolling text. I have not yet tried taking the link found in Developer Tools and plugging it into Jdownloader instead of youtube-dl and seeing if that would work as the end downloader.

Please, you Developer Tool experts out there, feel free to add more helpful hints to this thread. You don't need to do a full length tutorial, but ideas and any suggestions would be much appreciated. Elsewhere on FLM there is a description of using Developer Tools to find subtitles, and I have had some success with that also. I am going to have to search that out on FLM sometime and see if I can add another tutorial.

[Night457]

Sometimes, jdownloader likes having a go with these links as well.

I decided to give a try to that "Fucking 14" short that was also at super16.dk. I know that the ordinary site URL defeated all my downloaders, but I found that the .json link from Developer Tools revised to an .mpd worked perfectly in youtube-dl. (Unsurprisingly.) However, it sadly did not work in Jdownloader. So far my only other downloader option is yt-dlp.

[pafin]

yt-dlp in combination with ffmpeg just rules everything. you dont need more .

[Night457]

you dont need more .

Ha ha, yes I do: I need comprehension of what the heck I am doing trying to read Developer Tools results and using the proper syntax in Command Line.

But other than that ...

[Nasuada]

If you using Mac OS X, you can give the Tool „Downie“ a testdrive. A great App to Download Videos from different pages. Most of Videos it will found alone and if not, you can try the manual way over the app. Just as Info

[goku33]

yt-dlp in combination with ffmpeg just rules everything. you dont need more .

Unless you get a site with some nasty widevine DRM (although for a brief moment l3-widvine decrypting software from GitHub worked but many sites changed the decryption codes I think? There’s also mp4decrypt for other stuff.

For mega I recommend megatools

[Night457]

This is another sample Developer Tools download. Skip if you already are a DevTools master.

Prompted by this thread and video link:
https://www.first-loves.com/forums/view ... 57#p112157
https://www.mediadiffusion.eu/productions/creatures

Developer Tools for "Créatures"

Go to the video page but do NOT start the video, press F12 (or Fn+F12 for me because F12 gives me a calculator), go to the Network tab, THEN start Playing the video, in Filter put "master" without the quotes, you will then see the master.json, right-click and select Copy URL, paste that link into a Notepad document.

You will see this: [Code] Edit out the "&query_string_ranges=1" at the end because yt-dlp does not like & (ampersands). Replace json with mpd. Then you will have this (only the end is different, everything else is the same): [Code] Take that into Command Prompt or Terminal with yt-dlp, like this: [Code] Enter and it downloads!
The only hard parts are figuring out the correct FILTER in DevTools and then editing the link correctly.
Sometimes I filter master, index, json, m3uq, or mp4.
Sometimes the link can be used as is, even in JD2.
This is the first time I had to get rid of the &query etc at the end.
I just experiment until it works.

[Night457]

This is another sample Developer Tools download.

Using Developer Tools on WeShort.com with segmented subtitles.

Sample thread with link: La Sposa (2022) [Italy]
(This sample has subtitles.)
All URLs used are from the posted web address (link) for this short.

Use Firefox or Chrome.
Open Web address: [Code] Play Video and enable one of the captions / subtitles. Confirm the subtitle is playing.
Fn+F5 to stop the video and reset the page.
Fn+F12 to open Developer Tools.
Do not play the video.
Go to Network tab.
FIREFOX: Says "Reload the page to see detailed information about Network activity." So Click Reload.
CHROME: Says "Perform a request or hit CTRL + R to record the reload." So hit CTRL+R.
Filter URLS using "master" (without quotes)
Right-click master.m3u8 and select CopyValue > Copy URL
Paste copied URL in Notepad. [Code] Copy URL into your planned yt-dlp command in Notepad: [Code] Right-click & open Command / Terminal (PowerShell) on your yt-dlp folder.
Paste (CTRL+V) the yt-dlp command above and hit ENTER.

The different subtitle languages will download as segments and then combine into VTTs.
Then the MP4 will download.
The VTTs and the MP4 will have the name "master [master]".
Rename them with the same descriptive filename such as [Code] Open each VTT individually in SubtitleEdit and "Save As" for each with format SRT and the appropriate language suffix.
(Such as .en or .fr)
Play the video and choose the subtitle you want.