Suddenly, youtube-dl no longer working on this USA site

[pooksahib]

Hi. The site in question is tubitv.com and I've been happily downloading from it using youtube-dl. Now, though, this is what I get when asking for the list of download options:
E:\>yt -F https://tubitv.com/watch/243772/s01_e03_deflate_your_mate
[generic] s01_e03_deflate_your_mate: Requesting header
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
[generic] s01_e03_deflate_your_mate: Downloading webpage
[generic] s01_e03_deflate_your_mate: Extracting information
ERROR: Unsupported URL: https://tubitv.com/watch/243772/s01_e03_deflate_your_mate

Can anyone suggest why the URL is no longer 'supported'? Like I said, I successfully downloaded many other episodes of this series. Thank you.

[El Heggunte]

You can ask the developer themselves:

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues

Anyway, perhaps some change in the tubitv site now makes youtube-dl return that error message...

...and often error messages do not mean what they say

I remember that many months ago something similar happened to Twitter and suddenly youtube-dl became unable to download any video from Jack D0nkey's web site.

[Sviests]

Are you sure the link works? I keep getting "oops, this page doesn't exist" as if such episode was deleted or the link is wrong.

[pooksahib]

Yes, it works (just tested it and it played). You do need to appear as if you're in the USA or Canada, though. I use a VPN.

[Sviests]

Yes, it works (just tested it and it played). You do need to appear as if you're in the USA or Canada, though. I use a VPN.

Already did that,still "oops". Oh well.

[pooksahib]

It can be tricky, I've noticed. Sometimes I have to change location, close down Firefox and reload.

[jagabo]

Use Developer Tools (F12, Network tab, reload page) to find the m3u8 URL. Use that with youtube-dl.

youtube-dl "https://fastly.tubi.video/577bedcc-c20a-45da-8dcf-78defbe71e72/uez4dhug1a.m3u8?token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJleHAiOjE1NjI0NDg1OTAsInBsYXRmb3JtIjoid2ViIn0.fMY8jutH-7HDQksPgGlcyR7o294lTgQEI2L0qS-v4V0"

You may need a fresh URL.

[pooksahib]

Thanks, jagabo. Right now, ALL vids on that site are refusing to play and, as I understand it, you can't get an m3u8 unless the vid is playable on your browser. I'll keep trying...

[pooksahib]

Just made a discovery: with NordVPN you need to disable their CyberSec feature. I see there are 2 m3u8 URLs:
https://fastly.tubi.video/577bedcc-c20a-45da-8dcf-78defbe71e72/uez4dhug1a.m3u8?token=e...BeeQmFqYrbK9lw
and
https://fastly.tubi.video/577bedcc-c20a-45da-8dcf-78defbe71e72/vlw1gmcr/stream.m3u8

Calling the long one with -F gives me the format code for the 1280x720 vid - happy days. Thank you so much, jagabo.

EDIT: tried the same with some other episodes - lots of 'requests' were generated but when I filtered for m3u8, there were none. So I tried the same episode that worked for me ten minutes ago - again, no m3u8 to be seen. This is all too weird...

[jagabo]

Sometimes I have to press the +30 or -30 buttons for a video to start playing.

[pooksahib]

I think I've got it, I was forgetting to 'reload page' after 'Network'. New problem:
"ERROR: m3u8 download detected but ffmpeg or avconv could not be found. Please install one."

I went to videohelp's page for ffmpeg and the version for Windows is portable. I now have ffmpeg in a folder on my E drive. However, that error message is still being generated. What do I need to do to make youtube-dl see that I have ffmpeg? Many thanks.

[pooksahib]

Aha - I added --ffmpeg-location "E:\Free\ffmpeg\bin" to the call and, as I type, my Command Line Box is going crazy. I presume it's downloading...

It was! Excellent, always good to learn something new.

[jagabo]

I just put a copy of ffmpeg.exe in the same folder as youtube-dl.exe.

[pooksahib]

Even easier, I'll give that a try. Thanks again.