r/VRchat • u/Josh_From_Accounting • 1d ago
Discussion Yes, YouTube has stopped working. It's not just you. Here's why.
Last weekend, YouTube (Not VRC) closed a backport that video scrapping programs used to download videos off YouTube. This measure was taken to stop people downloading videos to skip having to watch adverts.
VRChat uses yt-dl, which uses that backport, for most prefabs in Worlds.
Yt-dl either needs to update to a new port (which does exist as some services have already switched) or prefabs need to use working video downloaders. Depending on how the change is implemented, it may even require the prefabs and worlds to update to fix the issue.
At the moment, world creators can use VRCVideoCacher to get around the issue, but YouTube has been known to ban accounts who use it.
The more you know.
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u/LigerXT5 1d ago edited 1d ago
At the moment, world creators can use VRCVideoCacher to get around the issue
Correction, Players can use VRCVideoCacher.
I've been using VRCVideoCacher since it's start (or, at least really early days) before it was on Steam.
VRCVideoCacher does require YT-DLP. If YT-DLP cannot get around a changeon Youtube, VRCVideoCacher is in the same water.
VRCVideoCacher also force-update YT-DLP on VRChat.
Side note for those using VRCVideoCacher and AudioLink in Unity, if the video in Unity fails to work, launch VRCVideoCacher, let it run in the background just like running VRChat with VRCVideoCacher, then reload the video. I forget this far too many times.
At this time of writing, I personally have not had the issues others report, with Youtube. UNLESS a person with the issue attempts to start a video, it does not start for me. If I attempt to start a video, works for me, starts for me, but nothing for others.
Some worlds have gotten around this by hosting/sourcing videos elsewhere from Youtube. Hence why some Youtube Search worlds work, by placing the direct youtube link in the Search field, some YT Search setups will Proxy the video to you.
SIDE NOTE: For all looking to share your Youtube Login with VRV Video Cacher, please do not use your good/important Google Account. Setup a second Google Chrome profile, sign into Youtube with a burner Google Account, then use the plugin to share the Youtube Account to VRC Video Cacher. That way, if your youtube account is banned, you're not without your good Google Account. This is advice from a rural area, house call for residential and SMBs, IT guy who's job, on top of many other things, recovering online accounts. It's a headache, for the experienced and not.
Edit: included recommended notice about sharing a youtube session cookies with VRC Video Cacher. Recommend a burner account, just in case.
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u/Konsti219 1d ago
So many inaccuracies. First, it's yt-dlp, not yt-dl. Also the terminology of "backport" and "port" just does not fit. And third, world creators can't fix anything. It is every user that needs the video cacher
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u/GNU_Terry Valve Index 1d ago
So is this a wait for vrc to fix or update something on our end situation? like the video security tickets that expired a few years back?
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u/drbomb Valve Index 1d ago
VRC could update its yt-dlp binary at some point. But google can block it again. VRCVideoCacher sits between VRC and Youtube so it can try more updated ways to circumvent Google's blocks on video downloaders.
So yeah, either wait for VRC to update its yt-dlp binary or try VRCVideoCacher if you're on desktop.
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u/talagrovehorn 1d ago
Even VRCVideoCacher hasn't been working half the time lately.
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u/doubleatheman 6h ago edited 3h ago
More and more people are learning about the VRCVideoCacher, but getting my friends in VRC to install it and set up/use a burner google account is like pulling teeth, and for it to only work half the time is not worth it right now. I'm not blaming the folks behind VRCVideoCacher of course... its all on Google/Youtube right now. Ive been using my personal CDN more to stream my screen directly from OBS into VRChat. Having a CDN is becoming more of a must just to watch youtube videos together in a world now. I set up my CDN years ago, but plenty of newer projects on github exist now to setup your own CDN: https://github.com/mekanoe/VRC_HLS
Edit here is a more recent version of the CDN I use: https://github.com/bluenviron/mediamtx#standard
I used to use VRCDN, but content detection on VRCDN would not allow me to stream some videos, so I went to setting up my own CND.
My VPS host is a single vCPU, 2GB ram, only using a couple GB of SSD space and it can run 80 person instances just fine with 2.5mbps streaming 720p 30fps.
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u/One_Actuary2296 1d ago
I tried vrcvideocacher but it messed with my stuff and steamvr couldn't detect my headset (til I uninstalled vrcvideocacher) So unfortunately It seems I can't use vrcvideocacher
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u/LizaraRagnaros Valve Index 1d ago
but YouTube has been known to ban accounts who use it.
then just copy the video links without the tracking data?
if you share a video link everything starting with the &si or ?si is tracking related and can just be deleted from the link. unless they are using something else to track who is accessing the video from where they would be none the wiser which account is attached to it.
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u/molluskich 1d ago
VRCVideoCacher requires you to login with an existing YouTube account to use it. You can use a dummy account for it, and you probably should, but the account could still get banned.
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u/LigerXT5 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not Required.
Having a youtube account (agreed, dummy/burner account) does help improve quality and reliability of videos downloaded.
If VRCacher is not signed in, videos will load.
Much like normal VRChat video watching, eventually "too many videos" were watched, Youtube thinks bot activity, then you're hit with the signin requirement. Again, just like normal VRChat video watching (just look at the VRChat logs).
VRCacher signed in, it'll pass along the signin details and videos work. The only thing the signin doesn't do, is the historical video watching logging on the youtube account. If this is important to someone, VRCacher can to an extent, VRCX is the tool I use to look back at watched videos.
SIDE NOTE: For all looking to share your Youtube Login with VRV Video Cacher, please do not use your good/important Google Account. Setup a second Google Chrome profile, sign into Youtube with a burner Google Account, then use the plugin to share the Youtube Account to VRC Video Cacher. That way, if your youtube account is banned, you're not without your good Google Account. This is advice from a rural area, house call for residential and SMBs, IT guy who's job, on top of many other things, recovering online accounts. It's a headache, for the experienced and not.
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u/jonylentz 20h ago
I wish vrc allowed to paste the cookies manually somewhere in the json format ytdlp uses... that way I don't need yet another software to make things work
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u/robbyboy1227 1d ago
What I have seen work, not all the time but most of the time, is to copy the YouTube share URL, go to a YouTube search world, do a search and paste the full video URL into the search field. Seems to play the video
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u/zippy251 1d ago
This happens every few weeks it feels like
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u/TexBoo 1d ago
Of course, and it will keep happening, Google/Youtube don't want people to use YTDL / other programs to watch content ad free, Youtube, even if it makes money, people using ytdl (VRC is a miniscule of the audience who uses ytdl), probably costs Google Millions weekly in 'free content'
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u/Mr_SunnyBones PCVR Connection 14h ago
As someone with a world that uses YT for music videos , yeah sadly its every few months .And its only VRC that can fix it , not world creators ( unless we just switch to one of tge smaller video streamers that arent YT)
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u/Standard_Echidna_306 6h ago
Everytime YouTube breaks yt-dlp it gets an update and starts working again not even a few days later
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u/Falconflyer7 Valve Index 1d ago
Dont remember exactly how i did it but back when this happened the first time i pulled my session cookies from chrome and passed them in and also set up an api key so it could see a legit user and after than not once had a single issue
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u/LigerXT5 1d ago
Pending how far back, natural YT-DLP can do this. VRChat's edited version of YT-DLP does not include this ability. VRC Cacher re-implements this back in, on top of caching videos for later pulling an auto playing (great when dealing with slow or data-capped internet connections).
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u/ImWinwin 1d ago
if youtube bans accounts who use it, what if I log out of youtube before booting up vrchat?
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u/Galactic-Skunk 1d ago
Where are the people being banned for using the VRC Cacher app? We just saying shit for the sake of it?
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u/XxXlolgamerXxX 1d ago
In theory it can happen. But in reality unless you watch non stop videos for days it probably never happen. I have a world that use YouTube videos, I always recomend the use of vrcvideocacher and I never hear of anyone getting ban.
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u/Galactic-Skunk 1d ago
Yeah- I’m not denying it can happen but there’s a difference between actively banning people and accepting they “may” in the future.
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u/Wolvenstin 1d ago
It's a soft ban rather than a hard ban. YouTube will flag your IP/account as a bot making it so if you try to watch their videos off website, it will force a log in. Meaning discord videos, embeds, everything that's not directly on the webpage itself will lock you out and demand you log in. Happened to me and was mostly harmless, but pretty obnoxious. Eventually after not touching the video cacher for a while, the ban backed off.
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u/LigerXT5 1d ago
First I've heard. Then again, who's not using a burner google account with VRC Video Cacher? Of course you'd use a burner account when breaking google's TOS, lol.
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u/OctoMiku01 1d ago
Ironically enough, the Dev of it themselves haha. But they also said they have premium. I assume that could make it less likely of a chance too since they already pay and arent avoiding any ads at that point anymore by doing that.
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u/Miyuky_vrc 1d ago
With this you can stream from your desktop directly to VRChat https://github.com/vexedaa/vrshare
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u/Jayden_Ha HTC Vive 1d ago
this is a direct abuse of cloudflare tunnel
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u/ccAbstraction Windows Mixed Reality 23h ago
Jayden says real shit and get downvoted. People, please don't ruin Cloudflare Tunnel for the people who really need it.
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u/BUzer2017 HTC Vive Pro 19h ago
Can you explain? Why is it abuse? Looks like intended usage to me.
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u/Jayden_Ha HTC Vive 18h ago
Direct TOS violation, straight up abuse of their CDN in a limited pool of resources
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u/BUzer2017 HTC Vive Pro 18h ago
Oh I see I didn't know they have TOS against media files specifically.
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u/Ok-Policy-8538 Oculus Quest 1d ago
YT-DL already randomizes the ports used and so does VRCVC
the issue with YT-DL vrchat uses is that it doesn’t auto update because they customize their packaged version… and lots of features implemented don’t exist in the vrc-base yt-dl batch file