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Joined 6 years ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2020

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  • Nope, it’s very much a YouTube/Google/Alphabet thing. Here’s a short explanation (taken from this page):

    In 2025, YouTube started rolling out a new streaming protocol, known as SABR, which breaks down the video into smaller chunks whose internal URLs dynamically change rather than provide one whole static URL. This is problematic because it prevents downloaders (such as yt-dlp) from being able to download YouTube videos at resolutions higher than 360p due to only detecting format code 18 (which is the only format code available that doesn’t use SABR).[11] So far, this issue has only affected the web client, so one workaround would be to use a different client, such as tv_embedded (where SABR has not yet been rolled out to), so for instance in yt-dlp you could add --extractor-args “youtube:player_client=tv_embedded” to use that client. It is not known how long this workaround will work as intended, as YouTube rolls out SABR to more and more clients.




  • Anything that integrates yt-dlp, honestly. I used to use Freetube exclusively on my PC, but now I find myself downloading every video I want to watch because of Youtube’s stupid SABR requests. Basically, Youtube forces a 5 second pause on the video you’re watching for no good reason, seemingly at random, too, and this seems to affect NewPipe and its forks and yes, Freetube as well. It’s super annoying.






  • I watch quite a bit of anime and a lot of subtitles seem to be in a format that includes advanced features such as stretching/shrinking text, rotation, karaoke effects and what have you. I think the sub format is actually called .ass or .ssa, but don’t quote me on that.

    Anywho, I tried watching some random anime a few years back and was using VLC at the time. VLC detected the subtitles, but couldn’t do anything outside of just displaying them. It couldn’t do the advanced effects. So, I switched to MPV which just worked and have been using it ever since. As I said, this was a few years back and VLC probably can do advanced subtitles at this point, but eh. I’m too used to MPV now.