> Did your customers own those video files or the rights to the video?
Not sure why that's relevant?
I often use(d) Youtube-dl to grab 1080p videos to watch once, not to keep them. eg as an alternative to Firefox
That's because YouTube itself recently seemed to change something about their streaming, such that some 1080p video's now stutter and don't work correctly.
So, I download them to a temp directory then watch with VLC instead. Then batch clean up the temp directory when it's getting full.
eg Youtube-dl is just another Youtube client, no different from a browser. If you're saying that watching media via Youtube-dl is different than watching it via Firefox... to me that sounds incredibly bizarre.
A video streaming service is literally a host for video content + UI's for accessing it.
Whether YouTube internally stores those video's as single files, as multiple versions of a file, as chunked pieces, or whatever... who cares? They'll obviously optimise their backend storage for their particular needs.
Whether you start viewing in the middle of a video, or from the start... are you're trying to say it makes a difference?
Because VLC can seek around a video too.
With YouTube-dl, I download the video, and watch it. At some point, it gets deleted.
With Firefox, I download the video and watch it. At some point, it gets deleted.
Are you saying it makes a difference whether or not it gets assembled into "a file" on the receiving side in order to watch it in an appropriate player?
With firefox, you can see the ads that pay for hosting that content you are interested before, during and after you see it. I don't know how enforceable is that you should watch some content exclusively with the provided frontend, but it really makes a difference for them how you watch it.
And you see that in the downloaded version as well whenever it is part of the video. The fact that youtube implemented this differently for some of their ads is their problem, not mine.
That is like complaining that you aren't allowed to view a webpage on a kindle because the ads are supposed to be viewed in color.
Not sure why that's relevant?
I often use(d) Youtube-dl to grab 1080p videos to watch once, not to keep them. eg as an alternative to Firefox
That's because YouTube itself recently seemed to change something about their streaming, such that some 1080p video's now stutter and don't work correctly.
So, I download them to a temp directory then watch with VLC instead. Then batch clean up the temp directory when it's getting full.
eg Youtube-dl is just another Youtube client, no different from a browser. If you're saying that watching media via Youtube-dl is different than watching it via Firefox... to me that sounds incredibly bizarre.