- Rewrite channel_ctoken_v5 with correct protobuf field numbers per tab
(videos=15, shorts=10, streams=14) based on Invidious source
- Replace broken pbj=1 endpoint with youtubei browse API for shorts/streams
- Add shortsLockupViewModel parser to extract video data from new YT format
- Fix channel metadata not loading (get_metadata now uses browse API)
- Fix metadata caching: skip caching when channel_name is absent
- Show actual item count instead of UU playlist count for shorts/streams
- Format view counts with spaced suffixes (7.1 K, 1.2 M, 3 B)
- Add PODCAST content type support in lockupViewModel extraction
- Extract thumbnails and episode count from thumbnail overlay badges
- Migrate playlist page fetching from pbj=1 to innertube API (youtubei/v1/browse)
- Support new pageHeaderRenderer format in playlist metadata extraction
- Fix subscriber count extraction when YouTube returns handle instead of count
- Hide "None subscribers" in template when data is unavailable
Videos without hq720.jpg thumbnails caused mass 404 errors.
Now preserves the actual thumbnail URL from YouTube's API response,
falls back to hqdefault.jpg only when no thumbnail is provided.
Also picks highest quality thumbnail from API (thumbnails[-1])
and adds progressive fallback for subscription/download functions.
Major Features:
- HD video thumbnails (hq720.jpg) with automatic fallback to lower qualities
- HD channel avatars (240x240 instead of 88x88)
- YouTube 2024+ lockupViewModel support for channel playlists
- youtubei/v1/browse API integration for channel playlist tabs
- yt-dlp integration for multi-language audio and subtitles
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed undefined `abort` import in playlist.py
- Fixed undefined functions in proto.py (encode_varint, bytes_to_hex, succinct_encode)
- Fixed missing `traceback` import in proto_debug.py
- Fixed blurry playlist thumbnails using default.jpg instead of HD versions
- Fixed channel playlists page using deprecated pbj=1 format
Improvements:
- Automatic thumbnail fallback system (hq720 → sddefault → hqdefault → mqdefault → default)
- JavaScript thumbnail_fallback() handler for 404 errors
- Better thumbnail quality across all pages (watch, channel, playlist, subscriptions)
- Consistent HD avatar display for all channel items
- Settings system automatically adds new settings without breaking user config
Files Modified:
- youtube/watch.py - HD thumbnails for related videos and playlist items
- youtube/channel.py - HD thumbnails for channel playlists, youtubei API integration
- youtube/playlist.py - HD thumbnails, fixed abort import
- youtube/util.py - HD thumbnail URLs, avatar HD upgrade, prefix_url improvements
- youtube/comments.py - HD video thumbnail
- youtube/subscriptions.py - HD thumbnails, fixed abort import
- youtube/yt_data_extract/common.py - lockupViewModel support, extract_lockup_view_model_info()
- youtube/yt_data_extract/everything_else.py - HD playlist thumbnails
- youtube/proto.py - Fixed undefined function references
- youtube/proto_debug.py - Added traceback import
- youtube/static/js/common.js - thumbnail_fallback() handler
- youtube/templates/*.html - Added onerror handlers for thumbnail fallback
- youtube/version.py - Bump to v0.4.0
Technical Details:
- All thumbnail URLs now use hq720.jpg (1280x720) when available
- Fallback handled client-side via JavaScript onerror handler
- Server-side avatar upgrade via regex in util.prefix_url()
- lockupViewModel parser extracts contentType, metadata, and first_video_id
- Channel playlist tabs now use youtubei/v1/browse instead of deprecated pbj=1
- Settings version system ensures backward compatibility
Cause is that some pages have the onResponseReceivedEndpoints key
at the top level with useless stuff in it, and the extract_items
function was searching in that instead of the 'contents' key.
Change to use if blocks instead of elif blocks in the
extract_items function.
Add channel tabs to the channel template and script
Update continuation token to request different tabs
Add support for 'reelItemRenderer' format required to extract shorts
Adds support for AV1-encoded videos, which includes any videos
above 1080p. These weren't getting included because they did
not have a quality entry in the format table at the top of
watch_extraction.py. So get the quality from the quality
labels of the format if it's not there.
Because YouTube often includes BOTH AV1 and H.264 (AVC) for each
quality, after these are included, there will be way too many
quality options and the code needs to choose which one to use.
The choice is somewhat hard: AV1 is encoded in fewer bytes than
H.264 and is patent-free, however, it has less hardware support,
so might be more difficult to play. For instance, on my system,
AV1 does not work on 1080p, but H.264 does. Adds a setting about
which to prefer, set to H.264 as the default.
Also adds support for the lower quality mp4 audio quality, which
now gets used at 144p to save network bandwidth. For similar
reasons, this was not getting included because it did not
have an audio_bitrate entry in the table. Prefer bitrate
instead for the quality.
Signed-off-by: Jesús <heckyel@hyperbola.info>
YouTube reverted the changes they made that prompted f9f5d5ba.
In case they change their minds again, this adds support for both
formats.
The liberal_update and conservative_update functions needed to be
modified to handle the cases of empty lists, so that
a successfully extracted 'music_list': [{'Author':...},...] will
not be overwritten by 'music_list': [] in the calls to
liberal_dict_update.
Signed-off-by: Jesús <heckyel@hyperbola.info>
watch_comment api periodically gives the error "Top level
comments mweb servlet is turned down."
The continuation items for the new api are in a different
arrangement in the json, so changes were necessary to the
extract_items function.
Signed-off-by: Jesús <heckyel@hyperbola.info>
Also moves some microformat extraction from
_extract_watch_info_mobile to extract_watch_info where it belongs.
_extract_watch_info_mobile is really only for stuff visible on the
page, and thus specialized for either mobile or desktop.
Signed-off-by: Jesús <heckyel@hyperbola.info>
for instance, urls that start with // become https://
adjustment required in comments.py because the url was left as a
relative url in yt_data_extract by mistake and was using URL_ORIGIN
prefix as fix.
see #31
[something]Continuation renderers, all of which are junk
except one. Check the items in each one until the one which
contains the items being sought is found.
The usage in extract_comments_info needed to be changed to
specify the items being sought. It was unspecified before which
is strictly incorrect since extract_items by default looks for
video/playlist/channel thumbnail items. It was relying on this
special case for continuations. But now that wouldn't work
anymore.
By checking first if it's in item_types rather than checking if it can be dug into first.
For example: this allows extracting things like sectionListRenderer
Change usage of multi_deep_get to multi_get where possible
Remove checking of type from calls to get functions (because it's very unlikely Youtube suddenly changes the type without changing the name of the variable or anything, and it takes up unnecessary space)
Remove all default=None arguments from get functions, since those are superflous.
Remove list_types constant since it's no longer in use.
For example, "354 subscribers" wasn't being extracted correctly be extract_approx_int.
Make extract_approx_int and extract_int only extract integers that are words.
So e.g. 342 will not be extracted from internetuser342
