Running Mint 18.2, Cinnamon 3.4.3 on a Dell i7 laptop,I sometimes am unable to download a video owing to an "ENAMETOLONG" error.

There seems to be ways to fix this in Windows, but not any I can find for linux. Fiddling around with "Smart Naming Rules" I still can't make any headway, owing no doubt to not knowing what I am doing.

Alternatively, if I could get VLC to talk to Video DownloadHelper, that possibly could work?

I tried everything I could think pof there, no luck....

I would guess the file has spaces or special characters in the name. You have not given us a file name, site being downloaded from, nor tool used to download (browser maybe?) so no detailed assistance can be provided since we can't even attempt to replicate the error.

1 members found this post helpful.

Ahh, ok thanks. I had seen videos on eliminating this error on Windows machines, and that involved unchecking some box somewhere. I just assumed the cure in Mint would be unchecking some box or maybe entering a command via the terminal.

I've been using mpv + youtube-dl to watch online video for, like, ever.
I think I wrote a blog article about it.

Example:

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for that!

Will check it out asap.

For a while, I had good luck with " youtube-dl", but there seems to be an ongoing battle between youtube and anyone who would download from it. What works today probably won't tomorrow.


btw, everyone: is there a way to re-enable the right mouse click when a site disables it? I tried to download an image of an ordinary houseplant, and right-clicking for the "save image as" menu got me a

pop-up banner saying "no right-clicking" (!?!)

"Whose computer is this anyway!"

Alternatively, what's broken today will probably be fixed tomorrow, (if not sooner).

Youtube-dl is effectively a headless browser; YouTube cannot win whilst browsers can be emulated or until Google gains full control over HTTP and/or HTML.



Disabling JavaScript can be an easy way, though may prevent other things from working. (uBlock Origin is a recommended browser addon which makes it easier than fiddling with browser config.)

Alternatively, F12 > Network tab, then reload the page - JavaScript cannot prevent the "Save Image As" option there.

1 members found this post helpful.

Interesting!

thanks.

I have seen sites that refuse to load if you have developer tools open. So they are checking for that. If you open the web inspector after the page is loaded, all of the info won't be there.

To the OP, youtube-dl is the best tool that there is for youtube. You will need to keep it up to date. Post a link to the video that you can't download.

OK, thanks. I have tried several times to update youtube-dl, seemingly with success, until I tried to use the "updated" version. I am running Mint 18.2, Cinnamon 3.4.3, a bit long in the tooth - might this be contributing to the issues?

I am a bit reluctant to update from 18.2 because when I updated to it, I guess it wasn't completely "stable", so I ended-up worse off that if I had just stayed with 17.x (I forget exactly which iteration it was) A bad attitude know - so what is the most current, reasonably bug-free Mint/Cinnamon these days?

ANYWAY, here is the info you requested:

1.) url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn85RHrShrI

the video is definitely viewable, no problem, BUT:

2.) Here is the text from the terminal:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

jude@jude-Inspiron-5567 ~ $ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn85RHrShrI
[youtube] rn85RHrShrI: Downloading webpage
[youtube] rn85RHrShrI: Downloading video info webpage
WARNING: unable to download video info webpage: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
WARNING: unable to download video info webpage: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
WARNING: unable to download video info webpage: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
WARNING: unable to download video info webpage: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
WARNING: unable to download video info webpage: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/youtube-dl", line 6, in <module>
youtube_dl.main()
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 471, in main
_real_main(argv)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 461, in _real_main
retcode = ydl.download(all_urls)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1989, in download
url, force_generic_extractor=self.params.get('force_generic_extractor', False))
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 785, in extract_info
ie_result = ie.extract(url)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 440, in extract
ie_result = self._real_extract(url)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 1605, in _real_extract
if 'token' not in video_info:
TypeError: argument of type 'NoneType' is not iterable
jude@jude-Inspiron-5567 ~ $


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I'm not sure, but I think I might have messed something up with one of my update attempts: I remember looking around on the net, and then installing something to do with "python", among other things. This was all more than a few months ago, and I was trying to follow advice from forums.

Your version of youtube-dl is broke. I thought that youtube-dl used python3.
https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/
Nope, 2.7, 3.2+

I'm a month out of date.

Apparently there's a method that checks whether the difference between window.innerHeight and window.outerHeight is beyond a certain threshold, which can be bypassed by undocking devtools.

There's also supposedly a method using a new debugger statement, although the demo I tried seemed to only be capable of detecting when it was closed (opening it before or after page load didn't get detected). In theory, that method would be avoidable by setting "devtools.debugger.enabled" to false, but Mozilla are incompetent and that setting does nothing.

If any site is really being an arse, a transparent proxy that simply logs all traffic going through it is easy enough and should be entirely undetectable.

---

On the youtube-dl front, my version is several months old and still downloads that video fine.

I think the path "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/youtube_dl/__init__.py" suggests a package manager version was used - youtube-dl is one of the few instances where it can be better to not use the package manager version, especially if you're running an older/LTS release of an OS.

The download page gives the following example:

youtube-dl always has to be the newest version, esp. with youtube itself (it handles many more sites).
To accomplish that, you should
a) just uninstall any repo version (except if you're using Archlinux)
b) install the version directly from here
c) save it somewhere to your PATH, and mpv will find it

Correct, and since after the recent debacle we even have that in legal writing!