Find & download videos from Developer Tools

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Night457
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Find & download videos from Developer Tools

Post by Night457 »   2 likes

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!
**********************************************************************************

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!
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pillowbaker
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Re: Find & download videos from Developer Tools

Post by pillowbaker »   1 likes

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.
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Night457
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Re: Find & download videos from Developer Tools

Post by Night457 »   0 likes

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.
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Night457
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Re: Find & download videos from Developer Tools

Post by Night457 »   0 likes

pillowbaker wrote: Tue Oct 25, 2022 8:22 pm 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
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Re: Find & download videos from Developer Tools

Post by pafin »   1 likes

yt-dlp in combination with ffmpeg just rules everything. you dont need more .
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Night457
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Re: Find & download videos from Developer Tools

Post by Night457 »   0 likes

pafin wrote: Sun Jan 08, 2023 6:56 pm 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 ...
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Nasuada
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Re: Find & download videos from Developer Tools

Post by Nasuada »   0 likes

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 :)
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goku33
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Re: Find & download videos from Developer Tools

Post by goku33 »   0 likes

pafin wrote: Sun Jan 08, 2023 6:56 pm yt-dlp in combination with ffmpeg just rules everything. you dont need more .
Unless you get a site with some nasty widevine DRM :D (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
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