Video truncation downloading from Curiosity Stream

[voidshard]

Checklist

• I'm asking a question
• I've looked through the README and FAQ for similar questions
• I've searched the bugtracker for similar questions including closed ones

Question

Hey guys,

Question;
I'm trying to download videos from CuriosityStream so I can watch them offline at leisure

• I've double checked and it's listed as a supported website.
• I have a valid login & a cookies.txt that includes the auth_token (among others) for the curiosity stream domain

When I point youtube-dl at a CuriosityStream URL it downloads the first 2 minutes of the video & then moves on to the next (it still follows a playlist successfully & pulls the first 2 mins of each video). Regardless of whether I give it a cookies file or not it always grabs the first 2 mins .. for some reason (I kind of expected it to fail without cookies at all).

I'm using:

youtube-dl -ci -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' --cookies cookies.txt --restrict-filenames [url]

Curious for any tips for downloading full length videos from CuriousityStream & thoughts on what I am doing wrong!?

[voidshard]

Why incomplete? If I've missed something in the README or FAQs then please point it out 'cause I sure as hell can't see where it's mentioned ..

[R3v3rso]

Hey @voidshard I had the same problem as you, and I just figured it out :
Instead of relying on the cookies.txt file for authentication, just add -u YOUR-USERNAME -p YOUR-PASSWORD to your parameters :)
It worked like a charm for me, I just downloaded everything I needed to watch offline.

Hope this will help you !

[voidshard]

Hey @R3v3rso thanks! I'll give that a try!

[ilazim]

@voidshard any luck downloading from there? If so could you help me with it?

[Lamieur]

Instead of adding -u -p, just put:
machine curiositystream login <your email> password <your password>
in your ~/.netrc (just like you do for YouTube etc.)

(also @ilazim)

[nathanfranke]

I can still reproduce this on 2021.04.01. Without auth, downloads 2 minutes. With auth,

[curiositystream] Downloading JSON metadata
[curiositystream] 4015: Downloading JSON metadata
ERROR: No video formats found; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.

[voidshard]

Hey @nathanfranke I believe using -u and -p solved it for me

[ewtoombs]

@nathanfranke I have observed the same error. It looks like CS has changed their API slightly. Authentication no longer works. But it is a separate issue.