Download Flash and Video download problem

[Davesnothere]

Here's a modified build of Download Flash and Video v2.02 for Pale Moon v27 (beta 2 or newer):
http://www.mediafire.com/file/oax82s2if ... MOD%29.zip
..and yes, it works with other sites, besides YouTube!

Big thanks to GMforker for posting the necessary instructions!:
viewtopic.php?f=56&t=13363#p95022
--
For Pale Moon v26 or older, use the modified v1.80 build instead:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=10849&start=40#p78672
--
EDIT:
BTW; I won't be posting modified builds anymore:
viewtopic.php?f=56&t=13363&p=95030#p95028

INTRODUCTION :

This post is an attempt to summarize what has been happening lately with extensions which were written to let us download YouTube and similar video clip streams, and will mention mostly examples of extensions (and versions of them) which WILL allow themselves to be installed, and which DO show all of their required UI elements after installation.

Recently, I have again been testing various extensions for Video Downloading (from YouTube), and have again found this and a few other relevant threads in the Pale Moon forum.

OBSERVATIONS :

Regardless of the version of Pale Moon (though I am testing back and forth with Pale Moon 25.8.0 and 27.0.3 and also with SeaMonkey 2.39, to see what commonalities of solution can be found), one observation which I have reached agrees with a post upthread which states that Video Download Helper 4.9.24 requires that the user choose (in YouTube Settings) the desired resolution, then reload the page, and VDH 4.9.24 will then see that particular resolution, and it then can usually capture and download the clip.

I also have noticed and agree that some of this family of extensions will not notice and offer all possible clips which a YouTube page may have available (or not notice any), and that VDH 4.9.24 sometimes will offer and download some YT clips that everything else so far will not, subject to the above-stated procedure.

Most versions Flash Video Downloader seem to be in that category.

Or, some of this family of extensions will notice and offer some downloads of a clip, but will fail to do so when we follow thru, yielding either a file of zero bytes, or no file at all in the local destination folder, and sometimes a history entry for that attempt, and other times not - and in such a case, VDH 4.9.24 often will have success in both offering and downloading some of them, again subject to the above-stated procedure.

The above observations seem to hold true for PM 25.8.0 (and usually for SeaMonkey 2.39), though PM 27.x will not accept Jetpack-based extensions, which removes newer versions of VDH and FVD (and some other similar purposed extensions) from 'the race'.

PM 27.x also seems to break the older VDH 4.9.24, but for other reasons - it installs but does not work properly.

BOTTOM LINE :

The point which I have reached is that I wish to find (first for PM 25.8.0) an extension which will offer and download the video clips from many YouTube pages for which other extensions are either missing the clips completely or offering them with no result, without my having to do the extra steps which VDH 4.9.24 requires.

This is even more important if I choose to go to PM 27+, as VDH 4.9.24 installs but fails there, and newer VDH editions cannot be installed due to being Jetpack, IIRC.

And BTW, although I can install it, even the patched versions of Download Flash & Video fail to either see the clips (or fail to complete the downloads - I forget which) on many YouTube pages, so it is not a candidate, based on my own tests of it.

Thank You everyone for reading and thinking about all of this.

[JustOff]

1. VDH license states: "You are free to use Video DownloadHelper with any of the applications or services offered by Mozilla". So actually you have no rights to use it with Pale Moon.
2. Latest VDH 6.2.0 works well with upcoming Pale Moon 27.1 (via Moon Tester Tool).

If you want to use VDH ask the author to support Pale Moon officially (according PMkit documentation draft).

[Davesnothere]

....Latest VDH 6.2.0 works well with upcoming Pale Moon 27.1 (via Moon Tester Tool)....

Thanks for the heads up.

So VDH 6.2.0 works with PM 27.1 ?

This is encouraging.

However, that said, will it see the many YT clips which its predecessor sees (and its competitors do not), and without the extra steps which I outlined above ?

Here is an example of a YT page which can be used to test it (and any other candidate extensions with any versions of Pale Moon), since I have no access to PM 27.1 builds yet :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uz-CJ3B0Iw

In my own tests with PM 25.8.0, Flash Video Downloader 13.2.3 activates but cannot detect any downloads at that page, while VDH 4.9.24 sees and succeeds in downloading a usable complete 360p resolution MP4 file of about 275 MB in size.

Thanks.

[JustOff]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uz-CJ3B0Iw

Pale Moon 27.1.0 + VDH 6.2.0 (forced install):

palemoon_2017-02-04_18-17-41.png

But I strongly advise you to contact the VDH authors and ask for official Pale Moon support.

[Davesnothere]

Pale Moon 27.1.0 + VDH 6.2.0 (forced install):
palemoon_2017-02-04_18-17-41.png
But I strongly advise you to contact the VDH authors and ask for official Pale Moon support.

Thanks for following up, and for the screengrab.

OK, I just went to another PC where I have PM 27.0.3 installed, and tried to install VDH 6.2.0, and it failed with the Jetpack/SDK incompatibility message.

Then I added your extension and used it to try adding VDH 6.2.0 again, and it failed similarly.

Does this mean that PM 27.1 is putting back compatibility for Jetpack/SDK extensions ?

EDIT :

BTW, were you successful in downloading and playing the file, and if yes, then also what size and spec was the file ?

[JustOff]

Does this mean that PM 27.1 is putting back compatibility for Jetpack/SDK extensions ?

Yes. You can try Pale Moon unstable build to check it yourself.

[Tomaso]

Does this mean that PM 27.1 is putting back compatibility for Jetpack/SDK extensions ?

Yes. You can try Pale Moon unstable build to check it yourself.

Great!
Any chance of converting Ghostery v5?:
v5.4.4.1 was the last build that worked with PM26:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... 1.1-signed
..but perhaps a newer v5 build can be converted for PM27?

[JustOff]

Off-topic:

Any chance of converting Ghostery v5?:

While Ghostery is offtopic here, but yes, 5.x-6.x will work with Pale Moon 27.1 too. Although I wouldn't recommend to use it for many reasons.

[Tomaso]

yes, 5.x-6.x will work with Pale Moon 27.1 too.[/offtopic]

Well, I certainly wouldn't be interested in using v6.
From what I've read, the entire thing is online based, and it acts worse than a tracker by itself now.
The only version I've been using is v5.4.4.1, where even that "Ghostrank" stuff was disabled by default.
Last time I checked, v5 was still able to fetch library updates!

[Davesnothere]

Does this mean that PM 27.1 is putting back compatibility for Jetpack/SDK extensions ?

Yes. You can try Pale Moon unstable build to check it yourself.

Thanks !

I'm doing that right now, with the portable edition of what seems to be a PM 27.2.something build, and it accepted VDH 6.2.0 by using your tiny but very well-conceived extension.

Has there been a formal announcement that the next PM release will be supporting Jetpack/SDK ?

If there was one, I missed it.

Surely other folks will be pleased to know too.

[JustOff]

Has there been a formal announcement that the next PM release will be supporting Jetpack/SDK ?

Made multiple changes to the jetpack modules to cater to PMkit extensions.

[Davesnothere]

Has there been a formal announcement that the next PM release will be supporting Jetpack/SDK ?

Made multiple changes to the jetpack modules to cater to PMkit extensions.

Ahhhh....

Even when I wear my programmer's hat, PMkit has not been not part of my vocabulary.

And really, for the large number of folks who have expressed unhappiness at PM 27.0.x dropping Jetpack/SDK extension support, I would have hoped for a more individualized announcement from the boss - instead of listing with 2 dozen other things the relevant line which you cleverly quoted in your link.

But maybe he's waiting until the next PM release is closer to ready to do that, and if so, then fair enough.

Clearly, yourself and the other developers are on top of it, and a couple of things which you said about it on your own GitHub page (which I had not visited before) were much more obvious to me, as to the intent of Jetpack/SDK extension support in the next PM release.

That all said, I am not as pleased with the design of the new Video Download helper (6.2.0) as I had hoped.

It has a jungle of settings compared to its 4.9.24 predecessor and most current competitors, it uses a different side-program (LIBAV) for stream conversion than the FFMPEG which any other video downloading extensions which offer such functionality use, and it forces the extra step of conversion on some streams which its predecessor and some current competitors do not, including (for example) the clip which I linked upthread.

That particular clip is offered natively at 360p by YouTube when using VDH 4.9.24 (and earlier Pale Moon or on other Moz-based browsers), and in that case downloads in less than 5 minutes, but when using VDH 6.2.0, the added conversion took me an extra 1.5 HOURS before I could have the resultant MP4 file, and pretty much maxxed my CPU out for the entire period.

Please understand that this is not something which I see as a Pale Moon issue, and I fully expect that with recent FireFox (which I refuse to use), that VDH 6.2.0 would behave in the same way.

BTW, regarding asking the VDH dev to formalize support for Pale Moon, I want to comment that in the 'successful installation' acknowledgement screen of VDH 6.2.0, the message specifically noted that I was using Pale Moon as a browser, and went on to refer to it as a FireFox variant, IIRC.

That makes it sound like the VDH dev is already supporting Pale Moon, doesn't it ?

Then again, the AMO page for VDH makes no specific mention of such support, and Pale Moon is not listed as a Target Application in the install.rdf file of VDH version 6.2.0, but that said, VDH 4.9.24 also does not list Pale Moon, yet it has worked fine with many versions of Pale Moon prior to 27.

Or are you suggesting that we ask the VDH dev to go as far as to list Pale Moon as a Target Application in the install.rdf file ?

[JustOff]

It has a jungle of settings compared to its 4.9.24 predecessor and most current competitors, it uses a different side-program (LIBAV) for stream conversion than the FFMPEG which any other video downloading extensions which offer such functionality use, and it forces the extra step of conversion on some streams which its predecessor and some current competitors do not, including (for example) the clip which I linked upthread.

That particular clip is offered natively at 360p by YouTube when using VDH 4.9.24 (and earlier Pale Moon or on other Moz-based browsers), and in that case downloads in less than 5 minutes, but when using VDH 6.2.0, the added conversion took me an extra 1.5 HOURS before I could have the resultant MP4 file, and pretty much maxxed my CPU out for the entire period.

Are you really want to ask VDH devs for something after that?

[Davesnothere]

Are you really want to ask VDH devs for something after that?

If I did, it would be a classic example of chutzpah.

But from a purely functional perspective, it would be a logical request.

[Davesnothere]

Has there been a formal announcement that the next PM release will be supporting Jetpack/SDK ?

Made multiple changes to the jetpack modules to cater to PMkit extensions.

I noticed only tonight that you have mentioned around the middle of January during the below-linked thread, that the next PM release plans to be supporting Jetpack/SDK.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=13745

But I guess that folks cannot expect an dedicated announcement about this (in the PM Announcements forum) until it is almost ready for release.

BTW, I think that all of my other (about 12 currently in use with my other Moz-based browsers mentioned earlier) extensions seem to work properly natively with the PM 27.2.a2 unstable build, Portable edition, on Windows Vista SP2, without any tweaking so far, though I did move to a newer version on a couple of them, after seeing the version which I had been using also work OK.

And the build itself seems pretty steady.

So I only have to decide what to do about the video streams, and I do have a couple of other candidate extensions for that, from perhaps 10 which I have recently tested.

Thanks - I appreciate your guidance.

[Davesnothere]

Has there been a formal announcement that the next PM release will be supporting Jetpack/SDK ?

Made multiple changes to the jetpack modules to cater to PMkit extensions.

I noticed only tonight that you have mentioned around the middle of January during the below-linked thread, that the next PM release plans to be supporting Jetpack/SDK....

Pale Moon 27.1.0 has been announced as released, as of Feb 9th, and the Jetpack/SDK support thru PMkit was the first thing mentioned in Moonchild's post.

I hope to test it this weekend, to see whether and how my extensions work.

Also will be checking whether certain websites behave.

[Raava]

I tried it (Linux x86-64) but it won't work.

Test video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1snXPhbhXtE

First it did not show any updated, but after a short while they appear. This is not a behaviour as the other (now non working) video downloader show, so I wanted to give folks the heads up...

[Tomaso]

I tried it (Linux x86-64) but it won't work.

Test video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1snXPhbhXtE

For me, the v2.02 mod works just fine for that video:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=10849&start=80#p95026
..at least under Windows.
But like I've pointed out before, you have to add the extension type to the file name manually.

[thosrtanner]

I found flash video downloader (I use 13.2.4) has 3 spurious tests in it for palemoon which make it use the wrong download manager API (3 different javascript files in modules directory). Fixing those tests to make it go new way for palemoon seems to make it work quite happily.

[Ilperel]

I'm using this one, and there's no problem after I update PM: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... and-video/
Are we using the same one? If the flash video downloader is still not working, maybe you can try other sites temporarily. I searched on Firefox and get these:
https://itube.aimersoft.com/download-vi ... sites.html
http://www.videoconverterfactory.com/ti ... epvid.html
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... oadhelper/
Hope these can be helpful.