Version 7.3.5 now has support for downloading videos from YouTube that are available in DASH streaming.

All major locales have been updated: German, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, ...

Video DownloadHelper 7.3.4 now includes support for downloading Facebook videos !

When browsing a Facebook timeline or opening a Facebook video post, Video DownloadHelper offers several variants for each detected video. There should be one or two simple-streamed variants (companion app is optional) and one to many ADP options (audio and video streams are transparently downloaded and aggregated locally, this requires the use of the companion app). In general, the best quality is only available through an ADP option.

Changes from 7.3.1:

• Feature: support for downloading Facebook videos
• Feature: configurable file naming when using gallery download
• Fix: initiate download or open panel from keyboard hot key:
  • Start default action on the first hit: (Windows/Linux) ALT+DOWN, (Mac) CMD+SHIFT+DOWN
  • Open add-on main panel: (Windows/Linux) ALT+UP, (Mac) CMD+SHIFT+UP
• Fix: actions Open Media (to play the downloaded video with the local default application) and Open Directory (to open the folder containing the downloaded file) are available again, through the 1.2.4 update of the companion app
• Fix: proper smart naming name picking when mode Get name from URL is chosen

Video DownloadHelper 7.3.1 brings a number of improvements and fixes that have been requested or reported by our users.

Some of those fixes are located in the add-on itself, some had to be made in the companion application (the external application that is to be installed along with the extension in order to provide the necessary capabilities removed from Firefox Quantum v57). As a consequence, Video DownloadHelper 7.3.1 will request you to update the companion app to version 1.2.2.

We understand that updating this companion application is a bit tedious if you compare to how smoothly the add-on updates, and we try to keep this requirement as seldom as possible. But in this case, we had no other choice. We apologize in advance.

Changes from 7.3.0

Fix: gallery downloads failure through CoApp 1.2.2 requirement

Changes from 7.2.2

Fix: SaveAs dialogs closing unexpectedly when request CoApp downloads
Fix: downloads of big (>2GB) files failing with error invalid typed array length
Fix: YouTube file names are now taken in priority from the video metadata and not the page title that produces a "- Youtube" trailing
Fix: requesting a Download & Convert operation from a DASH streaming to an audio-only format caused the action to be stalled at 50%
Improvement: in order to minimize the impact of Video DownloadHelper to the user experience, whenever the extension opens a tab and the user closes it, the original tab is restored
Improvement: DASH downloads are now of much better quality with an improved management of video synchronisation frames
Improvement: videos from Tumblr now display a proper thumbnail
Fix: some running downloads did appear amongst other detected videos and not in the in the running section
Improvement: SaveAs dialogs now sorts file names in a case-insensitive way
CoApp: Converter is now based on ffmpeg 4.0
CoApp: Comodo IceDragon browser support
CoApp: include libbz2 library that is missing by default in Fedora and some other Linux distributions
CoApp: include libnuma library that is missing by default in GenToo and some other Linux distributions
CoApp: on Fedora and some other Linux distributions, the companion app manifests are now correctly installed to directory /usr/lib64

Video DownloadHelper 7.3.0 brings a number of improvements and fixes that have been requested or reported by our users.

Some of those fixes are located in the add-on itself, some had to be made in the companion application (the external application that is to be installed along with the extension in order to provide the necessary capabilities removed from Firefox Quantum v57). As a consequence, Video DownloadHelper 7.3.0 will request you to update the companion app to version 1.2.1.

We understand that updating this companion application is a bit tedious if you compare to how smoothly the add-on updates, and we try to keep this requirement as seldom as possible. But in this case, we had no other choice. We apologize in advance.

Changes from 7.2.2

• Fix: SaveAs dialogs closing unexpectedly when request CoApp downloads
  
• Fix: downloads of big (>2GB) files failing with error invalid typed array length
  
• Fix: YouTube file names are now taken in priority from the video metadata and not the page title that produces a "- Youtube" trailing
  
• Fix: requesting a Download & Convert operation from a DASH streaming to an audio-only format caused the action to be stalled at 50%
  
• Improvement: in order to minimize the impact of Video DownloadHelper to the user experience, whenever the extension opens a tab and the user closes it, the original tab is restored
  
• Improvement: DASH downloads are now of much better quality with an improved management of video synchronisation frames
  
• Improvement: videos from Tumblr now display a proper thumbnail
  
• Fix: some running downloads did appear amongst other detected videos and not in the in the running section
  
• Improvement: SaveAs dialogs now sorts file names in a case-insensitive way
  
• CoApp: Converter is now based on ffmpeg 4.0
  
• CoApp: Comodo IceDragon browser support
  
• CoApp: include libbz2 library that is missing by default in Fedora and some other Linux distributions
  
• CoApp: include libnuma library that is missing by default in GenToo and some other Linux distributions
  
• CoApp: on Fedora and some other Linux distributions, the companion app manifests are now correctly installed to directory /usr/lib64

Features
-------------

YouTube bulk download: it is now possible to mouse-select a part of a YouTube page and request the download of all the videos that are linked from from the selected section. This is feature was existing in VDH6 but was limited to unsigned videos. You can also now launch a Download & Convert bulk operation, allowing for instance to retrieve a large number of MP3 files in a few clicks. Try it: from a YouTube page, try CTRL-A to select all the page, then click the Video DownloadHelper toolbar button.

Smartnaming is back: you can now again specify for given sites where in the page to get the video file name from, or choose an obfuscated file name for discretion. Unlike VDH6, the new Smartnaming allows full XPath expressions to generate accurate video names. Try it: from a page containing a video, right-click and pick Video DownloadHelper > Smart Naming Rule

Conversion rules: it is possible again to define per-domain and/or per extension conversion rules, so that downloaded files are automatically converted in background. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Conversion Rules in the dropdown menu

Variant preferences editing: as with VDH6, you can now reorder the variant qualities you want to appear at the top of the list. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Video Qualities in the dropdown menu. Use Drag & Drop to reorder the variant preferences

VDH commands from Firefox Tools menu: this is an opt-in feature, it has to be enabled from VDH settings > Appearance

Fixes
-------

Fixed aggregating YouTube videos that could, in certain cases failed with error Invalid data
Fixed clicking through YouTube playlist could show previous video title in the download menu
Fixed handling misformed MP2T frames on some HLS streams
Updated locales

Features
-------------

YouTube bulk download: it is now possible to mouse-select a part of a YouTube page and request the download of all the videos that are linked from from the selected section. This is feature was existing in VDH6 but was limited to unsigned videos. You can also now launch a Download & Convert bulk operation, allowing for instance to retrieve a large number of MP3 files in a few clicks. Try it: from a YouTube page, try CTRL-A to select all the page, then click the Video DownloadHelper toolbar button.

Smartnaming is back: you can now again specify for given sites where in the page to get the video file name from, or choose an obfuscated file name for discretion. Unlike VDH6, the new Smartnaming allows full XPath expressions to generate accurate video names. Try it: from a page containing a video, right-click and pick Video DownloadHelper > Smart Naming Rule

Conversion rules: it is possible again to define per-domain and/or per extension conversion rules, so that downloaded files are automatically converted in background. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Conversion Rules in the dropdown menu

Variant preferences editing: as with VDH6, you can now reorder the variant qualities you want to appear at the top of the list. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Video Qualities in the dropdown menu. Use Drag & Drop to reorder the variant preferences

VDH commands from Firefox Tools menu: this is an opt-in feature, it has to be enabled from VDH settings > Appearance

Fixes
-------

Fixed aggregating YouTube videos that could, in certain cases failed with error Invalid data
Fixed clicking through YouTube playlist could show previous video title in the download menu
Fixed handling misformed MP2T frames on some HLS streams
Updated locales

Features
-------------

YouTube bulk download: it is now possible to mouse-select a part of a YouTube page and request the download of all the videos that are linked from from the selected section. This is feature was existing in VDH6 but was limited to unsigned videos. You can also now launch a Download & Convert bulk operation, allowing for instance to retrieve a large number of MP3 files in a few clicks. Try it: from a YouTube page, try CTRL-A to select all the page, then click the Video DownloadHelper toolbar button.

Smartnaming is back: you can now again specify for given sites where in the page to get the video file name from, or choose an obfuscated file name for discretion. Unlike VDH6, the new Smartnaming allows full XPath expressions to generate accurate video names. Try it: from a page containing a video, right-click and pick Video DownloadHelper > Smart Naming Rule

Conversion rules: it is possible again to define per-domain and/or per extension conversion rules, so that downloaded files are automatically converted in background. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Conversion Rules in the dropdown menu

Variant preferences editing: as with VDH6, you can now reorder the variant qualities you want to appear at the top of the list. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Video Qualities in the dropdown menu. Use Drag & Drop to reorder the variant preferences

VDH commands from Firefox Tools menu: this is an opt-in feature, it has to be enabled from VDH settings > Appearance

Fixes
-------

Fixed aggregating YouTube videos that could, in certain cases failed with error Invalid data
Fixed clicking through YouTube playlist could show previous video title in the download menu
Fixed handling misformed MP2T frames on some HLS streams
Updated locales

FEATURES

• Added gallery capture: as it was the case with version 6.3.3, it is now possible to capture galleries of images and links embedded into a page. By default, you need to manually analyze the page from the add-on main panel for the potential galleries to be discovered, or you can change the setup to perform the analyze automatically whenever a page is loaded.
• Added right-click download commands: right-clicking into a page gives access to a Video DownloadHelper menu. From there you can request the download of a video playing in the page, or perform some top-level commands like opening the extensions settings or requesting the analyze of the page.
• Added hotkeys: you can now start the default action on the top-most detected video variant in the page by pressing ALT+SHIFT+D. Also keys ALT+SHIFT+Y opens the add-on main panel.
• Blacklist edition: it is now possible to edit the blacklist from the settings, in order to remove an entry that has been erroneously added, or add new ones manually. (Blacklisting allows to ignore some video detections like ads based on their origin domain)
• Settings reset: from the add-on settings, you can now reset changed values to the original settings.
• Display ETA in downloads: when displaying the running downloads section, you can now see the progress percentage and how long it takes to complete.
• Download directory setup user interface: for companion app downloads, you now have a user interface to select the download directory.

FIXES

• Navigating YouTube pages: following a video link within a YouTube page caused the newly detected title and thumbnail to be mis-reported as the previous hit (Thanks Coco for reporting this).
• YouTube videos containing double quote character: the title was then wrongly reported
• Multi-line details values: when using the Details action, property value was displayed on a single line
• Fixed download of encrypted HLS streams using key relative URLs (a zero-day bug)
• No error reported on user download cancellation

Versions 7.x are a complete rewrite of Video DownloadHelper version 6.x to comply with Firefox Quantum requirements of the WebExtensions interface.

Version 7.1.1 fixes a bunch of issues that were introduced with 7.0.0.

At this point, 7.1.1 can detect and download any video that could be handled by version 6.3.3.

Versions 7.x are a complete rewrite of Video DownloadHelper version 6.x to comply with Firefox Quantum requirements of the WebExtensions interface.

Version 7.1.0 fixes a bunch of issues that were introduced with 7.0.0.

At this point, 7.1.0 can detect and download any video that could be handled by version 6.3.3.

Video DownloadHelper 7.0.0 is the first Firefox Quantum compatible version of the add-on.

It is an almost complete rewrite of the extension.

Unfortunately, we have been lacking time and not all features could make it to 7.0.0. Within the next few weeks, most features will be back.

This release is the last one of Video DownloadHelper using the legacy Add-on SDK Firefox API.

It does not add nor remove any feature from the previous 6.3.1 version, just ensures the user configuration can be re-used when WebExtensions-based Video DownloadHelper 7.0.0 will be published.

<h3>Fixed missing audio on Vimeo videos</h3>

You may have noticed that for some time, downloaded videos from Vimeo (or from sites hosting their videos on Vimeo) do not have audio.

This is due a change in their streaming technology and they now stream the audio and video parts of the media separately, as YouTube have been doing for several years.

The Video DownloadHelper workaround is the same as with YouTube: use an external video converter to aggregate audio and video streams into a single audio+video file that can be used by your video player.

We are aware of the inconvenience of having to install an external application, but there is no easy alternative here. Note that once the converter is installed, the process is totally transparent and you end up with a fully playable video without any special action.

If you want to avoid using the converter, you can still use Video DownloadHelper to download separately the two streams (but you will have to find a way to play them together). For doing so, open DownloadHelper settings > More > Chunked streaming, check Advanced. In section DASH streaming, parameter When DASH contains both audio and video lets you choose which stream(s) you want to download. Default is Aggregate audio and video, which implies using the converter but you can change it to choose audio or video only.

Video DownloadHelper detects and captures more videos !

A number of YouTube videos are streamed not only in ADP mode (audio and video in separate streams) but each of those streams in DASH mode (plenty of small segments that need download and rework to create a playable media). Previously, Video DownloadHelper ignored those videos, causing a No media found message to be displayed. With version 6.2.0, you are now offered to download those videos in several quality variants.

HLS-streamed videos have been supported since version 5.5.0 but some servers use encryption on those streams, causing Video DownloadHelper to generate a useless 48 bytes file. This new version supports encrypted HLS.

Important fixes

A number of users complained about not having audio when playing HLS videos using Windows Media Player. This is now fixed and you don't have to use alternative players to hear those videos.

In some cases, HLS captures lead to a file containing only audio. This was due to a bug that has been fixed in this version.

Users with very poor networking conditions like an Internet connection going up and down had a hard time downloading videos, particularly big ones. The new version fixes an issue with chunked downloads not using retries properly, and add a configurable delay between retries.

Version 6.2.0 also fixes an issue with pages containing many videos (like a video-oriented tumblr page). If requesting some downloads and scrolling down to make new videos to be detected, you could lose control of the downloads.

Other fixes and improvements

• Clearing errors now have immediate effect on toolbar icon badge
• Fixed bug where in some cases the wrong language could be used in the add-on interface
• Fixed screen region capture when e10s is enabled
• Prevented text selection in main panel. In some conditions, it could be difficult to unselect.
• Fixed minor layout issue in download progress bars
• Fixed image gallery capture when in e10s mode
• Fixed HTML warnings in settings page
• Added Russian and Swedish locales
• Moved to Angular 1.5.9 to better security

• Fixed HLS frame timestamp decoding causing very long videos to accelerate after ~1.5 hours
• Added Vine videos helper
• Added video length to Facebook helper
• Fixed helper after Tumblr changes
• Fixed adding several smartnaming rules to the same domain
• Fixed some video thumbnails using relative URLs
• Added workaround for Firefox e10s bug #1261585 for M3U8 and DASH video manifest files
• Added Icelandic locale
• Moved uk-UA locale to uk
• Other locale updates
• Updated to latest Angular 1.5.8
• Angular libraries patched to ensure safe use

This version handles specifically a few very popular web sites (Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr) in order to display in the add-on download list better titles and/or thumbnails. It is now easier to identify which video to pick if several of them have been detected in the page.

Several fixes and locale updates have been included in the release.

Improved main panel user interface

This release fixes a bug where Video DownloadHelper prevents with some sites using F4F streaming to play videos in the page.

Better YouTube support with aggregating mixed VP9 video with Opus audio to Matroska MKV file.
Note this may require updating the Windows converter.

With the new Masked download feature, you can ensure no downloaded video will touch your disk without
being encrypted. Learn more about the Masked Download feature.

You can now use the multi-formats video player that comes with the converter thanks to the new Play action.

Better F4F capture support: you can now choose between several quality variants when available on the server.

On March 24th, YouTube made some changes causing Video DownloadHelper not to recognize some videos when logged in. We provided a fix for that within 24 hours under the form of a beta version of the add-on. This 5.5.0 release brings those changes to everyone.

Videos streamed over the chunked protocols HLS (MPEG-TS/MP2T, on sites like Dailymotion and many live streaming sites) and DASH (M4F used on sites like Vimeo) can now be downloaded without the need for the converter. Previous 5.4.x versions had a basic support for those streams, but it was inconvenient (you had to keep the video running) and the converter had to be used to finalize the download to a proper video file. This new version even offer in most cases the choice between several quality variants.

The old list of supported sites (which were not maintained anymore) is back to life. All the listed 1000+ video web sites are alive and are DownloadHelper-compatible. New sites are added weekly. Those lists are hosted on the downloadhelper.net website and no longer managed by the addon.

A long-time request from users with a low quality network connection: automatic download retries. If the download fails in a recoverable way, the add-on tries to resume the download from where it stops. The number of retries before giving up is configurable.

Add-on settings are now managed from with a tab and no longer an add-on panel.

The DownloadHelper icon is now usable from the Firefox options panel.

An option has been added to switch to the tab owning a particular video entry in the panel.

Video entries with long titles can now have the ellipsis (…) at right, left or display over several lines, based on the settings).

Fixes from previous 5.4.2 version:

• Fixed filename overwriting on simultaneous captures
• Fixed YouTube ADP variants that could generate aggregation errors
• Fixed gallery downloads with spaces in file names
• Fixed canceling download from Firefox manager cancels entry download in add-on
• Fixed wrong video window ownership when popup is launched at video start
• Fixed download list showing chunks on YouTube when smartnaming default was set to header/url or obfuscated

• fix for Dailymotion change on October 11th
• added zh-TW (traditional Chinese) locale

Video DownloadHelper 5.3.0 introduces a new capture method we call Screen Capture, or SCRAP in some UI places, which consists of taking snapshots of a browser window region at high-frequency, and encode them on the fly, using the converter, to create a video file.

This capture method is used in two new features:

• Browsing session capture: an easy way to make web sites demo videos. The add-on captures the visible part of a browser window and optionally, is able to highlight the mouse.
• Applet capture: the add-on analyzes the loaded page to detect Flash and video regions big enough to be considered as capturable content and creates new entries in the detected hits list. Passing the mouse over those entries highlights the related region in the page so you know what you are about to capture.

Other minor fixes and additions:

• optionally use browser's default download directory instead of VDH specific one
• optionally display VDH controls from the Tools menu
• optionally allows prefixing gallery captured files with incremental number
• MP2T capture can now be configured from the settings
• conversion output profiles can now be configured from the settings
• if converter is not installed, place ADP variants detected from the network at the bottom of the list

This version brings a number of new features and fixes:

• MP2T Streaming capture: record some chunked streamed videos
• Twitter Periscope Auto-recorder: auto-capture Periscope live streams
• Toolbar button modes: main toolbar button in now optional
• Optional main panel compact display mode
• Improved smartnaming including obfuscated file names
• New localizations
• e10s compatible
• Many fixes

Video DownloadHelper 5 is a completely rewrite of version 4.9.24.

It fixes the problem 4.9.24 had with downloading since Firefox 36, provide an entirely new user interface, many more video variants, ...

Enjoy your new Video DownloadHelper !

Fixed broken network method detection when running on Firefox 32

Fixed Youtube videos not being detected starting August 7th

Fixed unresponsive toolbar button in Australis (new Firefox 29 beta user interface)
Fixed a number of issues with YouTube