Download playlist video
This has been superceded by youtube-dl, which seems to work on most video sites.
Since I wrote Download streamed video video web sites have upped their game to stop downloading. One of the techniques used is to use a M3U playlist and a complicated set of parameters. Other techniques are to use JavaScript to create a blob and play that, and to use a JavaScript browser app which goes into debug mode if you use the developer tools.
To handle a playlist it is necessary to use the web browser developer
tools. Select the network tab and refresh the relevent web page. Among
the various files downloaded will be a file with a name like
720p.h264.mp4 or index.m3u8. The browser may also start preloading
some of the video segments.
Copy the url. You may be able to play it with ffplay. This will
generate losts of output.
$ ffplay https://video3.xhcdn.com/key=LJjdx9Px03F-Y2Zmcw4-Kw,end=1597942800,limit=3/\
data=81.174.214.218/speed=0/initial_buffer=275184/media=hlsA/010/877/489/\
720p.h264.mp4
If so, you can use ffmpeg to download the segments and copy them to
a new file. Again, lots of output.
$ ffmpeg -i https://video3.xhcdn.com/key=+UoaQySV1FrfRWeeVX6dOA,end=1597939200,limit=3/\
data=81.174.214.218/speed=0/initial_buffer=846704/media=hlsA/013/857/098/\
720p.h264.mp4 -c copy video.mp4
If this doesn’t work, use curl to download the index file.
$ curl "https://19-12.b.cdn13.com/hls/bsd/4000/sd/8000/014/953/848/2160p.h264.mp4/index.m3u8?\
cdn_creation_time=1597773600&cdn_ttl=14400&cdn_cv_data=81.174.214.218&\
cdn_hash=fa429b99fe263a5cdb34180778526c39" -o index.m3u8
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 10992 100 10992 0 0 53882 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 53882
The file will contain a list of urls for the file segments.
#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:8
#EXT-X-ALLOW-CACHE:YES
#EXT-X-PLAYLIST-TYPE:VOD
#EXT-X-VERSION:3
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:1
#EXTINF:4.000,
https://1-384-19-12.b.cdn13.com/hls/bsd/4000/sd/8000/014/953/848/2160p.h264.mp4/seg-1-v1-a1.ts?\
cdn_creation_time=1597773600&cdn_ttl=14400&cdn_cv_data=81.174.214.218&\
cdn_hash=fa429b99fe263a5cdb34180778526c39
#EXTINF:8.000,
https://1-384-19-12.b.cdn13.com/hls/bsd/4000/sd/8000/014/953/848/2160p.h264.mp4/seg-2-v1-a1.ts?\
cdn_creation_time=1597773600&cdn_ttl=14400&cdn_cv_data=81.174.214.218&\
cdn_hash=fa429b99fe263a5cdb34180778526c39
You can then use curl to download the segments.
$ curl "https://1-384-19-12.b.cdn13.com/hls/bsd/4000/sd/8000/014/953/848/2160p.h264.mp4/seg-[1-39]-v1-a1.ts?\
cdn_creation_time=1597773600&cdn_ttl=14400&cdn_cv_data=81.174.214.218&\
cdn_hash=fa429b99fe263a5cdb34180778526c39" -o "seg-#1-v1-a1.ts"
Then use an editor like emacs or your favourite text editor to
remove everything except for the file names from the index file.
#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:8
#EXT-X-ALLOW-CACHE:YES
#EXT-X-PLAYLIST-TYPE:VOD
#EXT-X-VERSION:3
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:1
#EXTINF:4.000,
seg-1-v1-a1.ts
#EXTINF:8.000,
seg-2-v1-a1.ts
Then use ffmpeg to cancatenate all the segments and turn them into one file.
$ ffmpeg -i index.m3u8 -c copy video.mp4
This will produce a lot of output, and the whole thing is a lot of
hassle, but worth it if you particularly want that video. It should be
possible to automate this with a script using sed to edit the index
file and reading through it to find the last segment.