Any help on downloading this graduation stream?

[darksnake747]

Family and friends want me to save this video - https://video.ibm.com/recorded/133584206 - but nothing seems to be working for me. I don't download too many vods and vids like this; but typically when I do, I just plug the m3u8 into VLC and convert it. That just seems to fail without any information.

I tried yt-dlp (new to that) and can't really get passed a 403 error.

I gotta call it a night now, but will probably try again tomorrow. Anyone have a simple solution to save this video locally? Thanks for any guidance.

[2nHxWW6GkN1l916N3ayz8HQoi]

Grab the m3u8 of the main playlist (the one that points to all video resolutions and all audios). That URL is gonna contain the query parameter

&cdnHost=__host__

You will have to replace it with

&cdnHost=uhsakamai-a.akamaihd.net

If it's not working for that value, let the video load random fragments and check the base URL of one. You'll have to use that one. After, with the URL of the main playlist properly modified, you can use yt-dlp or N_m3u8 or whatever. Don't forget to put the full URL between quotes " ".

[darksnake747]

Ah, that makes sense. It did work and I now have a 6+ GB video file; however, I don't seem to have any audio and I can't skip ahead at all. It shows the total time of the video as 00:00, but it should be like 2 hours and 20 minutes. I did get a lot of 501 gateway timeout errors in the download, but it said "retry 1/10" and the retry seemed to work fine.

yt-dlp did say this at the end of the download process: "Possible MPEG-TS in MP4 container or malformed AAC timestamps. Install ffmpeg to fix this automatically."

So, I installed that and was going to try the download process again, but now that link isn't working. I pulled new link from stream detector like I did initially and changed the CDN parameter value, but yt-dlp is just giving me errors that the chunk files don't exist. Not sure what would have changed. You can still view the video on the site.

Regardless, I am running the video file I did get directly through ffmpeg to see if that fixes anything, but honestly, I'm just swinging blindly with that move.

Thank you so much for your help so far. Any thoughts or tips on this as it is now would be great; but I'll see what happens after ffmpeg wraps up. Thanks again!

[darksnake747]

So, that gave me the video file at nearly half the size, but I have the ability to navigate the video now - timestamps, fast forward, etc.

However, still no sound. Any thoughts on that?

I've read about cases where it needs downloaded separately and combined. But, I don't know what I am looking for with that. I should have some time later to research it a bit. Any guidance would be awesome. Thanks again.

[white_snake]

You only got video because you probably used the .m3u8 url specific for video, not the .m3u8 that contains all the streams. They're usually more easily distinguishable, but in this case you can tell one from the other from a number, like follows. This is part of the general .m3u8 playlist url:

/auditorium/recorded/133584206/playlist.m3u8

and this is part of the m3u8 url specific for the 1080p stream, which is probably the one you picked:

/auditorium/recorded/133584206/2/playlist.m3u8

Just run again the command like you did before but with the right m3u8 url and yt-dlp will also detect the audio stream and automatically mux all the streams into a single file.

[darksnake747]

I think you are dead on @white_snake (love the name, btw).

In looking at the urls on the stream detector, I do see one that would match what you are saying here. But now, yt-dlp will not download the video at all. Here's what I am running.

yt-dlp "https://a92ccb75-lp-omega.ums.services.video.ibm.com/playlist/auditorium/recorded/133584206/playlist.m3u8?token=3810945_1714963169409&appType=7&appVersion=1&ts=1714963169&chunkingType=rfc&segmentType=mp4&geo=US&sgn=c2a7d6ea241e8c14c2232ae8d2bfd43936cca9d0&cdnHost=uhsakamai-a.akamaihd.net"

...and it seems like it is gonna work, but then I get an error. Here's what I see at the end of the log:

[hlsnative] Downloading m3u8 manifest
[hlsnative] Total fragments: 1427
[download] Destination: playlist [playlist.m3u8？token=3810945_1714963169409&appType=7&appVersion=1&ts=1714963169&chunkingType=rfc&segmentType=mp4&geo=US&sgn=c2a7d6ea241e8c14c2232ae8d2bfd43936cca9d0&cdnHost=uhsakamai-a.akamaihd].f6147.mp4
ERROR: Unable to download video: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'playlist [playlist.m3u8？token=3810945_1714963169409&appType=7&appVersion=1&ts=1714963169&chunkingType=rfc&segmentType=mp4&geo=US&sgn=c2a7d6ea241e8c14c2232ae8d2bfd43936cca9d0&cdnHost=uhsakamai-a.akamaihd].f6147.mp4.ytdl'

Googling the crap out of that and not finding anything helpful yet. Any thoughts? Thanks all!

EDIT:
WAIT - I think I am an idiot, haha. I think I figured it out. I realized I moved the program and long story short, I was trying to download to a location that lacked the access permissions for. Moved everything back and it seems to be working. Silly mistake; sorry. I'll let you all know if this worked or not. Thanks again.

[mister_ nex]

delete

[2nHxWW6GkN1l916N3ayz8HQoi]

I think it was better if you used N_m3u8DL-RE from the start. At least that way you could see what tracks you're attempting to download and see if the m3u8 you got contains both video/audio. If not, then it's not the main one.

[pssh]

In Firefox (F12 Dev ops) use this filter:

regexp:133584206/playlist.m3u8

In Chrome based browser (F12 Dev ops) use this filter:

133584206/playlist.m3u8

The "CORRECT" m3u8 should have this in the header:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-VERSION:6
#EXT-X-INDEPENDENT-SEGMENTS

Audio track no 1 (audiogroup-English__US_-0) is AAC LC @149 kb/s
Audio track no 2 (audiogroup-English__US_-1) is AAC LC @256 kb/s

End of long command:
BASH = /
Power Shell (PS) = `
CMD = ^

#N_m3u8DL-RE - You can select the QUALITY of VIDEO/AUDIO - (BASH):

N_m3u8DL-RE -M mp4 -mt /
--save-name 2024.Spring-Ira.A.Fulton.Schools.of.Engineering.Undergraduate.Convocation.1080p /
"https://a9....ae&cdnHost=uhsakamai-a.akamaihd.net"

#N_m3u8DL-RE - Best VIDEO and Best AUDIO will be downloaded (PS):

N_m3u8DL-RE -M mp4 -mt -sv best -sa best `
--save-name 2024.Spring-Ira.A.Fulton.Schools.of.Engineering.Undergraduate.Convocation.1080p `
"https://a9....ae&cdnHost=uhsakamai-a.akamaihd.net"

#N_m3u8DL-RE - Best VIDEO and "BOTH" AUDIO streams will be downloaded (CMD):

N_m3u8DL-RE -M mp4 -mt -sv best -sa all ^
--save-name 2024.Spring-Ira.A.Fulton.Schools.of.Engineering.Undergraduate.Convocation.1080p ^
"https://a9....ae&cdnHost=uhsakamai-a.akamaihd.net"

#YT-DLP - Check what is available:

yt-dlp --allow-u -F --no-warnings "https://a9....ae&cdnHost=uhsakamai-a.akamaihd.net"

#YT-DLP - Download (best AUDIO+Video) (PS):

yt-dlp --allow-u -f '6147+audiogroup-English__US_-1' --no-warnings `
-o '2024.Spring-Ira.A.Fulton.Schools.of.Engineering.Undergraduate.Convocation.%(ext)s' `
"https://a9....ae&cdnHost=uhsakamai-a.akamaihd.net"

[darksnake747]

I used the info from @mister_nex and managed to get the audio by itself. And I did redownload it with yt-dlp and was careful to use the (seemingly) correct m3u8 url as @white_snake mentioned; though it still had the same issues - no audio and needed to be run through ffmpeg to work right.

I could probably take what I have and make something "complete" with it. However, I want to see if this N_m3u8DL-RE solution from @2nHxWW6GkN1l916N3ayz8HQoi and @pssh will do it. So, gonna give that a shot and see what happens. Thanks everyone!

[darksnake747]

Wow! Yeah, the N_m3u8DL-RE tool worked great. Obviously, I think with the right tweaking to yt-dlp (using the right settings maybe), I could have gotten it as well.

Regardless - I now have the video in great quality and audio. Plus I have a great tool to use in the future. Thank you so much everyone!!! I really appreciate the help here!

[jack_666]

Used ffmpeg with the change recommended by pepe. No problem. Stopped the download after a while ... file too large. Nice ceremony though. Star wars theme on the 4 May. May the fourth (force) be with you.


Interesting post, dark snake talking to white snake about python. Ok, got it, the snake inviting to take a bite from the tree of knowledge.

[white_snake]

Wow! Yeah, the N_m3u8DL-RE tool worked great. Obviously, I think with the right tweaking to yt-dlp (using the right settings maybe), I could have gotten it as well.

Regardless - I now have the video in great quality and audio. Plus I have a great tool to use in the future. Thank you so much everyone!!! I really appreciate the help here!

I actually just tried to do it with yt-dlp and the following command worked just fine (used --download-sections to only download part of the video):

yt-dlp --download-sections "*00:00:00-00:00:50" "https://a92ccb29-lp-omega.ums.services.video.ibm.com/playlist/auditorium/recorded/133584206/playlist.m3u8?token=.................=uhsakamai-a.akamaihd.net"

so I'm guessing your problem might be ffmpeg not being available to yt-dlp (i.e. not in PATH or not in yt-dlp's folder) or possibly you didn't let yt-dlp finish the download (because it will first download the video stream and only after that the audio stream, and then attempt muxing).

You can also run the command with the -F flag, which will show you all the available formats, and then manually select them with the -f flag to make sure they're downloaded, example (although yt-dlp should do this automatically for this video):

-f 6147+audiogroup-English__US_-0

Btw, nice username as well.

Interesting post, dark snake talking to white snake about python. Ok, got it, the snake inviting to take a bite from the tree of knowledge.

LMAO