While trying to find a torrent for a show, I became curious about how others are creating the torrents I know and love. Is ripping a video from a streaming service relatively easy? Are there tools y’all would recommend?
I haven’t actually tried myself; but I’ve read many DRMs can be defeated by simply running the service in a VM, then screen recording the VM from the host.
Try to directly screen capture Netflix for example, and the webpage will appear as a solid black box in the recording; but not if the capture is done from outside the VM.
yt-dlp does a great job at ripping on majority of websites. If yt-dlp can’t rip something then likely there is service-specific tool to do that i.e tidal-dl for Tidal (hi-fi music service). There’s also a hardware method that involves cheap chineese hdmi splitters (it needs to be a cheap one, b/c they lack support for DRM) and hdmi capture card. Sometimes it’s DVD or blu-ray ripping.
From what I recall, this sort of stuff is usually kept as a closely guarded secret by those who do it. Perhaps someone else more knowledgeable about the practice could give some more insight.
Closest I’ve got to info is widevine keys extracted from insecure Android boxes. I’m happy just to download their copy tbh. It’s usually just as quick, if not more so.
Interesting, I wonder why that is. I guess to stay one step ahead of the corporations trying to prevent them from succeeding? I can’t imagine it’s to prevent others from following suit. Feels like that would be a weird motivation for people saving and disseminating content.
Usually the methods are not shared because streaming services would go out of their way to break them. Just like Youtube breaks yt-dlp every now and then. But Youtube is too big to implement any serious protection, so, downloaders usually win. I heard Crunchyroll is ripped via their mobile app, albeit modified. But specifics are better left in the dark.
Monetization is another secret probably. Ads alone could drive millions on streaming platforms. I don’t have idea on public or private trackers, but I guess is also more than what I could win in my life xD but that’s probably me just being poor.
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I haven’t actually tried myself; but I’ve read many DRMs can be defeated by simply running the service in a VM, then screen recording the VM from the host.
Try to directly screen capture Netflix for example, and the webpage will appear as a solid black box in the recording; but not if the capture is done from outside the VM.
Sounds cool!
This actually makes a lot of sense, I wonder if it works
yt-dlp does a great job at ripping on majority of websites. If yt-dlp can’t rip something then likely there is service-specific tool to do that i.e tidal-dl for Tidal (hi-fi music service). There’s also a hardware method that involves cheap chineese hdmi splitters (it needs to be a cheap one, b/c they lack support for DRM) and hdmi capture card. Sometimes it’s DVD or blu-ray ripping.
Very informative, thanks!
Do you know of any others?
Sadly, no. You can open https://github.com and look for name of service you’re intrested in.
Good idea!
From what I recall, this sort of stuff is usually kept as a closely guarded secret by those who do it. Perhaps someone else more knowledgeable about the practice could give some more insight.
Closest I’ve got to info is widevine keys extracted from insecure Android boxes. I’m happy just to download their copy tbh. It’s usually just as quick, if not more so.
Interesting, I wonder why that is. I guess to stay one step ahead of the corporations trying to prevent them from succeeding? I can’t imagine it’s to prevent others from following suit. Feels like that would be a weird motivation for people saving and disseminating content.
Usually the methods are not shared because streaming services would go out of their way to break them. Just like Youtube breaks yt-dlp every now and then. But Youtube is too big to implement any serious protection, so, downloaders usually win. I heard Crunchyroll is ripped via their mobile app, albeit modified. But specifics are better left in the dark.
Crunchyroll doesn’t use DRM. You can use yt-dlp to download videos from it
To stay a step ahead of other crews, I would say. It is a competition
Is it? What’s the reward? More recognition? More seeders?
It is a race and being faster than your competitors means you win. It’s a game and the reward is dopamine.
Well said 😄
Monetization is another secret probably. Ads alone could drive millions on streaming platforms. I don’t have idea on public or private trackers, but I guess is also more than what I could win in my life xD but that’s probably me just being poor.
Does it, are you sure? Or is it only reducing the amount of investor money they burn a little?
Interesting. I assumed if a ripper couldn’t break drm they just recorded it with a capture card, compressed it and uploaded it.
If anyone is seriously interested, I would suggest using a cracked Version of Streamfab: https://cdm-project.com/Download-Tools/StreamFab
If anyone needs more Infos or want to try other ways, you can check out this: https://cdm-project.com/explore/repos
You would have to crack DRM if you want to rip from streaming services. See Widevine.
There are multiple classes of security L3, L2 etc and correspondingly harder to bypass.
Fee people know how to bypass it. I guess you can research more about how it works and try to find if you can bypass it.
Thanks for the info! In all likelihood will never pursue this but always happy to learn more about how things work.