An issue when use patron downloader

[SaberMarionetteJ]

Sorry to ask you that, is there any tutorials for the patron downloader? I have installed the downloader. But the button on the chrome tool box is grey. I can't download pictures by press it when on the patron website. How to use that?

[sneat]

@SaberMarionetteJ can you press the F12 key and see if there are any errors listed in the Console?

It only works while on an individual Patreon post, not on the overview page for a creator.

Are you able to share the link to the post you are trying to download?

[Snap-i]

I've got the same thing, although my box is not grey but blue, it is however not downloading the video. Might it only work for pictures (as on a picture-only post the box is different). I did get an error (tried this on more than one post; always from the single-post-page): 4.362e5229.chunk.js:sourcemap:1 WebSocket connection to 'wss://ws-beaa7a4b-1278-4d71-98fa-a76a9882791e.sendbird.com/?p=JS&pv=Mozilla%2F5.0%20(Windows%20NT%2010.0%3B%20Win64%3B%20x64)%20AppleWebKit%2F537.36%20(KHTML.%20like%20Gecko)%20Chrome%2F94.0.4606.81%20Safari%2F537.36&sv=3.0.127&ai=BEAA7A4B-1278-4D71-98FA-A76A9882791E&key=9474f0e543894dfe33c8d89d102af6921142fe5f&active=1&SB-User-Agent=JS%2Fc3.0.127%2F%2F&Request-Sent-Timestamp=1634489926845&include_extra_data=premium_feature_list%2Cfile_upload_size_limit%2Cemoji_hash' failed:

[sneat]

@Snap-i thanks for the additional information. That error is unrelated to patreon downloader, it's to do with sendbird - perhaps another extension you have installed?

As for the button being blue, it only support some formats of videos. Is the post you are trying to download from a public post at all so that I can test against it?

[Snap-i]

Hi, ah ok, it's the only error I get I believe. Sendbird doesn't ring any bell actually, might look into that later. It is a video that is directly uploaded to Patreon (so not a Vimeo or Youtube or such). It is not a public post no, behind the paywall. This is the link just in case it helps to check it out: https://www.patreon.com/posts/your-mother-bits-57389173

[sneat]

@Snap-i I supported them to find out what sort of video it is and have added very basic support for that type. It will download the m3u8 playlist file from the post, which you can then open in your favourite video player (such as VLC). Unfortunately most video files aren't just the raw file, but are instead a playlist of stream files, which would need to be individually downloaded and the transcoded into a proper video file. Likely possible, but I spent about 3 hours trying to get the various options to work within chrome extensions and didn't have a lot of luck.

The basic support I added in v1.0.6 which should appear in the web store in a few days (once it passes review).

[Snap-i]

Hi @sneat That is such a cool move of you :-) Appreciate it (and hope you get to enjoy some of their video's now you've got access, they're hilarious :)). I actually tried getting the .m3u8 link earlier (via cntrl-shift-i - network), and then open / convert that in VLC (my favourite). It acted so weird though... It kept making a file with just 4 seconds. It once opened in full, but the second time, with same link it didn't. And I downloaded a file that way, which played well... till the next day it didn't work at all anymore. And that is kinda where my knowledge stopped I started looking for this extension ;) Curious about the v1.0.6, will keep an eye on that. By the way, their older video's were via Vimeo/YouTube and I got those differently. It's this type of direct-upload that is giving me a hard time.

Thanks again

[sneat]

@Snap-i you're right. I've checked the m3u8 file a couple of days later and it no longer works. I had originally tried it after a few hours and it was still working, so thought it might be good.

There are a few tools that will convert the m3u8 file to an mp4 file though (downloading and converting all of the TS segments). That might be a reasonable enough workflow for you for now?

[Snap-i]

Ah yeah, drove me mad. I watched it before, all good... next day poof. Oh yeah extra steps are not big issue. Not sure how to do that / what to use. I'm not that good at this stuff, I'm already happy knowing the m3u8 route haha :)

[sneat]

VLC (a popular video player) has a Convert/Save option that will take the playlist and allow you to save it to mp4. That's what I would do.

[Snap-i]

Hmm well I did that and got a file of just 4 kb. It actually played once, but otherwise it's just playing the first 4 seconds and stops :(

[sneat]

Release v1.1.1 adds a notice about better ways to download the videos from Patreon.