intact wrote
Pornhub (and probably others) has gotten wise to Video DownloadHelper, and I've found the plug-in rarely works there anymore.
Not quite true that they've deliberately blocked VDH (and others) altho' that may perhaps be seen as an incidental bonus.
What they've done is migrated their video streaming to HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). xhamster did this a while ago.
Previously they needed to down-convert each video to several different files, each with a different resolution. Then Johnny Boomer would try to watch a vid in 720 on his crappy ADSL while his kids were downloading the entire Marvel catalogue - or maybe Jhonne Millennial would test the limits of his office wifi in the toilet at work - and have a poor experience of 2 seconds of video interspersed with 10 seconds of buffering.
HLS breaks a video into little pieces and changes the bit-rate for each piece depending on your connection. It was designed for live video (ie sport) but is being increasingly used for video-on-demand.
I suspect that ph will prob convert their entire content library.
intact wrote
Often I get a choice of "streaming" that doesn't download anything.
Yeah, you need the companion app (a separate program, not a browser plugin) but it only allows you 1 DL every 2 hrs!
intact wrote
Anyone got guidance on getting quality downloads when the site wants money, or VDH doesn't work?
I was using Ant, which works with both Chrome and Firefox but it saves files in .mkv format with only basic file data. I have switched to [Login to see the link] which saves in good ol' .mp4 but is currently only a Chrome extension.
It opens a new tab for each download and defaults to low resolution for me because I don't let it save cookies, but I've found it to be pretty decent.
You won't be able to DL anything more than a sample if it's a pay vid.
