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
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
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>
Comment reply protobuf now requires the channel id of the uploader
of the video. Otherwise the endpoint returns 500.
Instead of making the protobuf ourselves and passing this data
around through query parameters, just use the ctoken provided to us
but modify the max_replies field from 10 to 250.
Fixes#53
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.
Use extract_str function since it's not always 'simpleText'
Make sure we don't output an empty error message if we don't
know what it is.
channel.py: Don't check if error message is empty, check if it's
None
