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
    32·
    2 years 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
        3·
        2 years 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
      9·
      2 years 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

      • ghariksforge@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 years ago

        It’s a lot harder for copyright holders to intimidate the fediverse. First of all, there isn’t a single entity that can do the policing for them. Second, fediverse servers are across the whole world, in jurisdictions other than the US.

        • damipereira@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          2 years ago

          Yeah! If there’s too much attention from US companies the instances related to piracy can just move. I’m wondering what’s the law for US residents who host their website in another country, do they still have to respect US laws?

      • ipkpjersi@lemmy.oneEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        Yep, it’s bound to happen as the instances get larger. For example, it’s why I will mention there are actually awesome leaked playable builds of Gears of War 3 on PC which are super fun to play, but I won’t link directly to them.

  • NOOBMASTER@kbin.social
    26·
    2 years 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
      7·
      2 years 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.

    • deepfake@kbin.social
      3·
      2 years ago

      VideoDownloadHelper is really cool. I use it in chrome to download music and vids. Every 500th download it congratulates you and asks for a donation or some positive review.

  • roxy@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
    24·
    2 years 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
    21·
    2 years 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
      5·
      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

  • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    2 years ago

    There’s a few websites I’ve been to where this methodology doesn’t work, and it’s not because there’s no m3u file or whatever. Some sites will work fine but then the moment I open dev tools the site will freeze. I think the site knows when I open dev tools and makes itself essentially crash.

    • fedev@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      2 years ago

      They mostly use inline JavaScript to determine if the dev tools are open. If open, then they put you in a loop that will only end of the tools are closed. Normally when this happens the debugger will “pause” at the line in question.

      If you know how to use the “unlock origin” extension, you can then block the JavaScript inline function so it won’t run. Then the page will not stop when the dev tools are open.

      You can Google how to block inline JavaScript with ublock origin.

    • techgearwhips@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      Thank you for this. It works, but the download is super slow. I wonder what she’s this? I downloaded the same link on IDM and it was much faster.

        • equalszero@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
          8·
          2 years ago

          The ublcok solution above works fine, but you don’t have to use the dev tools while in the site. Just F12 before going to the site -> performance -> start recording -> close dev tools -> visit site and start watching the video -> close tab and back to dev tools -> capture recording

  • Difficult_Bit_1339@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    10·
    2 years ago

    I thought yt-dlp autmatically parsed the page looking for m3u8 links.

    It’s been a while since I needed it for anything other than Youtube though.

    • clb92@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      I’m pretty sure it does, as part of the generic extractor it falls back to for unsupported websites.

    • Azzu@feddit.deEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I’ve always just copy pasted the URL from the adress bar, much easier and worked every time so far.

  • Archy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    2 years ago

    On Mozilla Firefox if a video is played in an iFrame - you can:

    Right click -> This Frame -> View Frame Info -> Media tab.

    There you can see all pics and videos loading in that iFrame

  • roxy@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
    9·
    2 years 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.

    • samwise@kbin.social
      16·
      2 years ago

      https://cdm-project.com/

      They have a lot of good tools and guides for getting setup to pull drm encrypted streams. You’ll need access to an android device that has root to be able to pull drm keys from. It took me a bit to figure out how to get it setup. They had to remove the all in one setup page so the software is outdated but I followed this (https://web.archive.org/web/20230315101847/https://cdm-project.com/cdm-tools/how-to) and just searched for the latest versions of the software they reference and got it working to download off disney+ and wowpresentsplus

          • burtek@programming.dev
            2·
            2 years ago

            There is a website in my country hosting DRM-protected documentaries. So far I only was able to screenrip that from FF with disabled hardware acceleration using OBS, but that method sucks since I can’t really use PC at the time. I might give this one a try then…

        • roxy@lemmy.fmhy.ml
          2·
          2 years ago

          Long time root user here, I use a lot of extensions with it such as Xposed and Frida. Even though there are tools with which you can manipulate DRM, I have never heard of one that can completely remove them and successfully play a DRM-protected content. The closest one to what you mentioned used to be able to remove the DRM library from the system but couldn’t play anything on Netflix.

  • 5 Card Draw@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
    8·
    2 years ago

    Glad to see the call for ethical piracy in this thread. As pirates, we should be more understanding of the fact that information should be shared without any red tape so to speak.

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      Yeah I try to avoid pirating from independent creators if I think they actually deserve to be supported.