help me solve 403 error for downloading selfhosted aes128 encrypted video

[jihan]

I read all the post i found useful related to my issue but i still cant solve this download issue HTTP Error 403: Forbidden

tried all tools: N_m3u8DL, yt-dlp, hlsdl, ffmpeg all 403 issue

tried with updated cookie.txt, somehow cloudflare still blocking the downloads causing the 403

the website is selfhosted & the player is embed protected on a website


To run the video

Example Video: https://imcvideo.com/e/hh5wa7viiujp?s1.imcvideo.com/i/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp

note: the embed video wont work directly you need to pass a referrer 

to run the video download header editor extension (firefox) then set the referer like this > https://i.postimg.cc/nhBr19D9/Screenshot-2025-02-13-194451.png

now run the video it will redirect to https://imcvideo.com/dl & load the video 

debugger locked, so you need to manually start > unpause the debugger option then f8 button

when the video loads

when the video loads it also load some m3u8

https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/index-v1-a1.m3u8?t=ZVXI7_zkSaba69RScPE_erwhZjYZIawnarA6GIJp7Bc&s=1739446603&e=43200&v=121386&i=0.3&sp=1000 
https://imcvideo.com/dl?op=getipvtt&length=298 
https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/master.m3u8?t=ZVXI7_zkSaba69RScPE_erwhZjYZIawnarA6GIJp7Bc&s=1739446603&e=43200&v=121386&i=0.3&sp=1000 
https://imcvideo.com/dl?op=getipvtt&length=298.35 
https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/master.m3u8?t=LwSfGWAxwFgAova6LlSeVyCRzLUCfbHof6PRFOHZOQ4&s=1739446602&e=43200&v=121380&i=0.3&sp=1 
https://imcvideo.com/srt/empty.srt

the index-v1-a1.m3u8 response:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:10
#EXT-X-ALLOW-CACHE:YES
#EXT-X-PLAYLIST-TYPE:VOD
#EXT-X-KEY:METHOD=AES-128,URI="https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/encryption.key?t=HQvXqexxDkQT3dtB0G8yGPzCIbeW9YSVyl7eIxwxlNw&s=1739454426&e=43200&v=121634&i=0.3&sp=1000"
#EXT-X-VERSION:3
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:1
#EXTINF:10.000,
https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/seg-1-v1-a1.ts?t=HQvXqexxDkQT3dtB0G8yGPzCIbeW9YSVyl7eIxwxlNw&s=1739454426&e=43200&v=121634&i=0.3&sp=1000
#EXTINF:10.000,
https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/seg-2-v1-a1.ts?t=HQvXqexxDkQT3dtB0G8yGPzCIbeW9YSVyl7eIxwxlNw&s=1739454426&e=43200&v=121634&i=0.3&sp=1000
#EXTINF:10.000,
https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/seg-3-v1-a1.ts?t=HQvXqexxDkQT3dtB0G8yGPzCIbeW9YSVyl7eIxwxlNw&s=1739454426&e=43200&v=121634&i=0.3&sp=1000
#EXTINF:10.000,
https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/seg-4-v1-a1.ts?t=HQvXqexxDkQT3dtB0G8yGPzCIbeW9YSVyl7eIxwxlNw&s=1739454426&e=43200&v=121634&i=0.3&sp=1000
#EXTINF:10.000,
https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/seg-5-v1-a1.ts?t=HQvXqexxDkQT3dtB0G8yGPzCIbeW9YSVyl7eIxwxlNw&s=1739454426&e=43200&v=121634&i=0.3&sp=1000
#EXTINF:10.000,
https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/seg-6-v1-a1.ts?t=HQvXqexxDkQT3dtB0G8yGPzCIbeW9YSVyl7eIxwxlNw&s=1739454426&e=43200&v=121634&i=0.3&sp=1000
#EXTINF:10.000,
https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/seg-7-v1-a1.ts?t=HQvXqexxDkQT3dtB0G8yGPzCIbeW9YSVyl7eIxwxlNw&s=1739454426&e=43200&v=121634&i=0.3&sp=1000
#EXTINF:10.000,
https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/seg-8-v1-a1.ts?t=HQvXqexxDkQT3dtB0G8yGPzCIbeW9YSVyl7eIxwxlNw&s=1739454426&e=43200&v=121634&i=0.3&sp=1000

master.m3u8 response:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=224656,RESOLUTION=1312x720,FRAME-RATE=60.000,CODECS="avc1.640028,mp4a.40.2",VIDEO-RANGE=SDR
https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/index-v1-a1.m3u8?t=HQvXqexxDkQT3dtB0G8yGPzCIbeW9YSVyl7eIxwxlNw&s=1739454426&e=43200&v=121634&i=0.3&sp=1000

i tried with updated cookie, changed user agent, added referrer still 403 error, note: the website blocks vpn ip so i tried local no luck

i wish someone please help me solve this

some of the command i tried(tried more wasted 3 hours:( ) :

yt-dlp --no-part --restrict-filenames -N 4 --user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:135.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/135.0" --cookies cookies.txt --add-header "Referer: https://imarketing.courses/" --add-header "Origin: https://imcvideo.com/" --hls-prefer-ffmpeg "https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/index-v1-a1.m3u8"

yt-dlp --no-part --restrict-filenames -N 4 --user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:135.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/135.0" --add-header "Cookie:cf_clearance=removed" --referer "https://imcvideo.com/dl" "https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/index-v1-a1.m3u8"

N_m3u8DL-RE "https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/index-v1-a1.m3u8" --header "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/132.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" --header "Cookie: cf_clearance=removed" --header "ref_url: imarketing.courses" --save-name "master"

ffmpeg -user_agent "User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/132.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" -headers "Cookie: cf_clearance=removed" -referer "https://imarketing.courses/" -i "https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/master.m3u8?t=X1TFH8cvsTSZzRB1LupQyYCeEIorRa6ELNJEHxotDw0&s=1739445544&e=43200&v=121370&i=0.3&sp=1000" -c copy "master.ts"

all 403 forbidden issue

[2nHxWW6GkN1l916N3ayz8HQoi]

This is a weird one. If it fails, make sure you're using your own user agent and language header values. Key URL is most likely a one time request since you can only download it once

N_m3u8DL-RE "https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/index-v1-a1.m3u8?t=ZVXI7_zkSaba69RScPE_erwhZjYZIawnarA6GIJp7Bc&s=1739446603&e=43200&v=121386&i=0.3&sp=1000" -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:135.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/135.0" -H "Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5" --custom-hls-key 648485FAAC66E968CBDDF4F74DB62CFC -M format=mkv

https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/908457cd-a07a-44f1-a8ad-3e44a57f0b80

[jihan]

Thanks mate, do you know how to request 1080p stream of the file? the file hosted Res is 1080p high bitrate showing me 720p crap.

[Frieren]

xvideosharing kind of site with cloudflare

it will require javascript evaluation to get pass cloudflare

https://imcvideo.com/dl?op=embed&file_code=hh5wa7viiujp (with Referer header set as "https://imcvideo.com/")

hh5wa7viiujp_x = UHD quality
hh5wa7viiujp_h = HD quality
hh5wa7viiujp_n = Normal quality
hh5wa7viiujp_l = Low quality

download page blocked by admin:
https://imcvideo.com/d/hh5wa7viiujp

[2nHxWW6GkN1l916N3ayz8HQoi]

xvideosharing kind of site with cloudflare

it will require javascript evaluation to get pass cloudflare

On their html page you have an eval js code block. When you run it in node js to get rid of the obfuscation, you get another expanded js code. There you have this

{
    sources: [{
        file: "https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/master.m3u8?t=g-cu5emF-SPXywAxND63jBD-KGog6qdq2SlvcZxa4Eo&s=1739470213&e=43200&v=122177&i=0.3&sp=1"
    }],
    withCredentials: true,
    image: "https://s1.imcvideo.com/i/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp.jpg",
    width: "100%",
    height: "100%",
    stretching: "uniform",
    duration: "298.35",
    fullscreenOrientationLock: "none",
    preload: 'metadata',
    androidhls: "true",
    tracks: [{
        file: "/dl?op=getipvtt&length=298.35",
        label: "xxx",
        kind: "captions",
        "default": true
    }, {
        file: "/srt/empty.srt",
        label: "Upload captions",
        kind: "captions"
    }],
    captions: {
        userFontScale: 1,
        color: '#FFFFFF',
        backgroundColor: '#303030',
        fontFamily: "Tahoma",
        backgroundOpacity: 30,
        fontOpacity: '50',
    },
    'qualityLabels': {
        "224": "Normal"
    },
    abouttext: "Imarketing Courses",
    aboutlink: "https://imarketing.courses",
    cast: {},
    playbackRateControls: true,
    playbackRates: [1, 1.25, 1.5, 2]
}

Is it possible for 1080 to exist if it's not present there? Or is it hidden

[jihan]

i checked all the links with quality _x _n _l _h

only _n is working others throwing 404 not found means disabled only 720 enable by default

another thing i found without those quality selector the link is throwing 403 error which means if my browser can fetch the original without quality selector, i can get the original file stream

Normal 720p link: "https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp_n/master.m3u8?t=g-cu5emF-SPXywAxND63jBD-KGog6qdq2SlvcZxa4Eo&s=1739470213&e=43200&v=122177& i=0.3&sp=1"

Orginal (maybe 1080p) link: "https://s1.imcvideo.com/hls2/03/00010/hh5wa7viiujp/master.m3u8?t=g-cu5emF-SPXywAxND63jBD-KGog6qdq2SlvcZxa4Eo&s=1739470213&e=43200&v=122177& i=0.3&sp=1" this link 403 error because cant match user agent, need to pass via a browser agent (where it runs & give cf_clearance cookie)

i guess