Find & download videos from Developer Tools

All hardware and software related discussion topics here. Advice, discussion and opinions on either topic are welcome.
User avatar
Night457
Global Moderator
Posts: 5228
Likes:
Joined: Sat Dec 28, 2019 3:44 pm

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!
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Post Reply