YouTube Returning Bot Error

[FlocktimusPrime]

I've started getting an error on YouTube videos:

ERROR: [youtube] BpkLhRubZkw: Sign in to confirm you're not a bot. This helps protect our community. Learn more

[snarfed]

Ruh roh. Sounds like YouTube may have blocked our IP. Lots of details in yt-dlp/yt-dlp#10128 , but I don't see an easy solution there yet.

[snarfed]

Interestingly https://podqueue.fm/ , a much better alternative to huffduff-video, is still happily downloading from YouTube. If this IP block lasts much longer, I may start pointing people there instead.

[snarfed]

Download bandwidth is way down for August, almost certainly due to this, we're on track to do less than half of July's.

[queuebit]

My js bookmarklet now just redirects directly to empty huffduffer form, rather than the error I was seeing before.
Is that expected behavior (in this scenario), while we wait to see how this plays out?

[snarfed]

@queuebit hmm! No, not expected. Is this bookmarklet on huffduffer.com? Or huffduff-video.snarfed.org?

[queuebit]

Yeah, I think that is it.

Sorry, I should have tested again, first.
I just got the error last week and then didn't this week.

[eliasgomezsainz]

For me, the bookmarklet redirects to https://huffduffer.com/add?popup=true&page=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D77Rm8QXpfEw

[cameronj86]

I've been itching for YouTube audio for the past month. Is anyone aware of any self-hosted alternatives to circumvent the IP blocking? Leaning towards podpodge (will require extra steps) or this (one-to-one replacement but Russian support) if Google doesn't stop picking on huffduffer.

[eliasgomezsainz]

@cameronj86 I am researching alternatives and the one that I like more is PodQueue: https://podqueue.fm/r/76FH6D

[FlocktimusPrime]

I've been itching for YouTube audio for the past month. Is anyone aware of any self-hosted alternatives to circumvent the IP blocking? Leaning towards podpodge (will require extra steps) or this (one-to-one replacement but Russian support) if Google doesn't stop picking on huffduffer.

I just installed yt-dlp on my laptop and figured out how to use it in the command line. Then I use QuickShare to send the resulting mp3s to my phone. I move them to a folder that my podcast app uses as a virtual podcast. Before I settled on that solution, I installed a terminal app on my phone and installed yt-dlp on the phone. That saved me the file transfer, but the transcoding performance was much slower.

[cameronj86]

I just installed yt-dlp on my laptop and figured out how to use it in the command line. Then I use QuickShare to send the resulting mp3s to my phone. I move them to a folder that my podcast app uses as a virtual podcast. Before I settled on that solution, I installed a terminal app on my phone and installed yt-dlp on the phone. That saved me the file transfer, but the transcoding performance was much slower.

Nice stuff using yt-dlp. My current solution will likely use it as well. It's a cat and mouse game w/ them versus Google, and it will breaks a few times a year, so definitely keep it up-to-date as much as possible (ie: use backports or a trustworthy repo for Debian-based distros to get the latest releases)

Here's my potential setup for those self-hosting:

1. (One-time) Set podpodge to ingest all files that hit a specified directory.
2. (One-time) Set up podpodge and create an RSS feed for my podcast app a la huffduff. This feed will be updated whenever a new file hits the folder
3. (Every time) Convert video.mp4 to audio.mp3 via yt-dlp
4. (Every time) Trigger script/alias that moves the audio file to a podpodge folder on my server

Here's the blurb on podpodge that seems promising:

Podpodge is a server + client for converting YouTube playlists (or plain audio files in a directory) into audio-only RSS feeds that podcast apps can consume.

[BeKwik]

Here's my YouTube workaround:

1. Insert "pi" after "youtube" in the URL bar. This will take you to Y2Mate and automatically load the video.
2. Choose Audio and Convert. I go with 256kbps quality.
3. When it's done converting, right-click the Download button and Copy Link. (No need to download the file.)
4. Paste the link at https://huffduff-video.snarfed.org
5. Go back to YouTube and copy/paste the title and description.

It's pretty simple and quick. Almost as fast as the bookmarklet was directly from YouTube.

[snarfed]

Usage is way down. huffduff-video is dead, long live...PodQueue and self hosting, I guess.

[snarfed]

OK all. I don't plan to fight the bot detection arms race, so I think the sad conclusion here is that I turn down huffduff-video, point people to PodQueue, and let others who want to self-host do that.

I'll plan to do that soon. It's had a good almost-10-year run (5109b31). So long, and thanks for all the fish, I guess!

[FlocktimusPrime]

It still works on other sites. Are you shutting it down completely?