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Video DownloadHelper Changelog

What's new in Video DownloadHelper 8.2.2.8

Mar 22, 2024
  • MPD support improvements

New in Video DownloadHelper 8.2.0.23 (Feb 15, 2024)

  • SideDownload becomes the default download method:
  • Last update introduced the SideDownload method. We are happy to report that this new download mechanism has significantly improved the quality of the downloads. We are now making it the default download method, and simply renamed it "Download".
  • New "Download Audio Only" method:
  • A new action is now available to only download the audio track of a video.
  • Better MPD streams support:
  • We have significantly improved MPD downloads. This requires a Companion App upgrade, but we will only request upgrade if you attempt to download MPD content (not very common).
  • Smarter video stream detection:
  • The stream detection mechanism has been improved. You can tweak its behavior in the settings:
  • Settings > More > Video Qualities.
  • Updated locales:
  • Special thanks to our contributors! You too can help improve Video DownloadHelper by contributing to our locales on Google Groups https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-internationalization

New in Video DownloadHelper 8.0.0.6 (Jan 3, 2024)

  • This version is very similar to 8.0.0.0, mostly fixing an issue with YouTube changes on 2023/08/11 causing downloads to fail.

New in Video DownloadHelper 8.0.0.0 (Jul 12, 2023)

  • This major release mostly fixes an issue downloading YouTube videos.

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.6.0.0 (Jul 1, 2021)

  • Fixed YouTube bulk download:
  • After changes on the YouTube video site, it was no longer possible to download several videos from a single operation by mouse-selecting the videos in the YouTube page and requesting a bulk-download operation. Video DownloadHelper version 7.6.0 provides a workaround for this issue.
  • Fixed YouTube multiple videos selection:
  • A long standing issue: when mouse-selecting a portion of a YouTube web page in order to request a download of all the videos included in this selection, some videos could be missed in the process. This is now fixed.
  • Soundcloud support
  • Soundcloud now has special support allowing tunes to be downloaded as MP3 files.
  • Updated all locales

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.4.0 (Dec 18, 2020)

  • Added aggregator tool
  • In some situations, on sites streaming separately video and audio, Video DownloadHelper is not able to recognize both streams as being parts of the same media and does not offer automatic aggregation. As a result, the user may end up with an audio or video-only file, depending on the chosen variant. When an audio-only and a video-only file have been downloaded, it is now possible to use the local aggregation tool to merge those two files to a single audio-video media file.
  • Added Greek and Hungarian locales
  • Fixed possible crash when downloading a HLS videos
  • Updated all locales

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.3.9 (Mar 31, 2020)

  • Fixed some quality variants being ignored following technical changes at YouTube.
  • Fixed missing YouTube video thumbnails.
  • Updated locales: Russian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, German, Polish, Slovenian, Dutch.

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.3.7 (Mar 31, 2020)

  • Video DownloadHelper 7.3.7 handles a recent YouTube change that could cause a video to be undetected, showing "No media to process in the current tab" in the add-on main panel.
  • Updated locales: Russian

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.3.6 (May 30, 2019)

  • New locales available: Indonesian (thanks to Amin Muhammad), Catalan (thanks to Jaume Badiella)
  • Updated locales: Japanese, Dutch, Slovak, Turkish, Chinese Traditional, Polish, Swedish, Slovenian

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.3.5 (Aug 2, 2018)

  • Has support for downloading videos from YouTube that are available in DASH streaming.
  • All major locales have been updated: German, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, ...

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.3.4 (Jul 11, 2018)

  • Feature: support for downloading Facebook videos
  • Feature: configurable file naming when using gallery download
  • 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
  • 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

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.3.1 (Jun 6, 2018)

  • 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

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.3.0 (May 30, 2018)

  • 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

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.2.2 (Apr 29, 2018)

  • 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

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.2.0 (Feb 26, 2018)

  • 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

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.1.2 (Jan 19, 2018)

  • 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

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.1.1 (Dec 17, 2017)

  • 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.

New in Video DownloadHelper 7.0.0 (Nov 15, 2017)

  • 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.

New in Video DownloadHelper 6.3.3 (Oct 25, 2017)

  • 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.

New in Video DownloadHelper 6.3.1 (Jul 4, 2017)

  • Fixed missing audio on Vimeo videos:
  • 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.

New in Video DownloadHelper 6.3.0a1 Beta (Apr 11, 2017)

  • This beta version addresses the recent changes on Vimeo causing videos to be downloaded without the audio.
  • Video and audio streams are now downloaded separately and require the use of the converter to aggregate the streams to a single file. This operation is automatic but you have to install the converter.

New in Video DownloadHelper 6.2.0 (Jan 12, 2017)

  • 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

New in Video DownloadHelper 5.5.0a11 (Oct 19, 2015)

  • Configurable display of long video titles: ellipsis at right, left, multi-lines
  • Go-to-tab handle to activate the tab a video originates from
  • Icon now works from the menu (options panel)
  • 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

New in Video DownloadHelper 5.4.2 (Oct 17, 2015)

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

New in Video DownloadHelper 5.5.0a10 (Oct 14, 2015)

  • Fixes October 2015 changes in Dailymotion.

New in Video DownloadHelper 5.4.0 (Jun 27, 2015)

  • Capturing videos: support for F4F and segmented FLV streamings
  • Performances: improvements and default settings changes
  • User interface: changes in the main panel
  • Locales: 3 languages added
  • Many other smaller changes and fixes

New in Video DownloadHelper 5.3.0 (May 6, 2015)

  • 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

New in Video DownloadHelper 5.2.0 (Apr 20, 2015)

  • 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

New in Video DownloadHelper 5.0.1 (Mar 12, 2015)

  • 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, ...

New in Video DownloadHelper 5.0.0 (Mar 11, 2015)

  • This is a complete rewrite of Video DownloadHelper.
  • It solves the downloading problem of VDH 4.9.24 when running on Firefox 36.

New in Video DownloadHelper 4.9.24 (Sep 5, 2014)

  • Fixed broken network method detection when running on Firefox 32

New in Video DownloadHelper 4.9.23 (Aug 9, 2014)

  • Fixed Youtube videos not being detected starting August 7th

New in Video DownloadHelper 4.9.22 (Aug 9, 2014)

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

New in Video DownloadHelper 4.9.21 (Aug 13, 2013)

  • Improved YouTube support (bug #536, bug #554)
  • Improved DailyMotion support (bug #546)

New in Video DownloadHelper 4.9.20 (Jul 29, 2013)

  • Improved YouTube support (bug #536, bug #554)
  • Improved DailyMotion support (bug #546)

New in Video DownloadHelper 4.9.19 (Jul 25, 2013)

  • Improved YouTube support (bug #536, bug #554)
  • Improved DailyMotion support (bug #546)

New in Video DownloadHelper 4.9.18 (Jul 23, 2013)

  • Fixed bug #536: some Youtube videos download as empty file.
  • Fixed bug #546: Dailymotion videos do not download anymore.

New in Video DownloadHelper 4.9.17 (Jul 19, 2013)

  • Fixed bug #536: some Youtube videos download as empty file.
  • Fixed bug #546: Dailymotion videos do not download anymore.

New in Video DownloadHelper 4.9.15 (Jun 3, 2013)

  • Fixed bug #518: some Youtube features (liking, commenting, ...), unavailable when VDH is enabled, since May 25th.
  • Fixed bug #525: default toolbar icon location.

New in Video DownloadHelper 3.0.4 (May 27, 2008)

  • Fixed issue with downloading videos from YouTube resulting into an empty file or a 345 bytes file decribing a bad access. This problem happened when using the second entry in the download menu (the one with the red back arrow icon), required to take benefit of the video caching.
  • Updated Portuguese locale
  • Fixed about dialog in Finnish locale