403 Errors only with internal player.

[rjc3rd]

I've been having a problem recently. It is NOT because of FreeTube though, as far as I can tell. I am not saying that I think FreeTube is broken. I believe that Google is on to me, I know that they hate me.

So recently, I've not reliably (almost never) been able to watch videos in the internal player. I didn't know why at first, but I was able to use the external player, Celluloid, even after 5-10 failed attempts to play a video. I would simply select the external player and Celluloid opens up and the video plays with no issues, every time. This would be fine, except I have no way to SponsorBlock in Celluloid. Let me know if there is such a plugin for Celluloid. (just kidding)

Recently I was reading another discussion for a different problem and the suggestion there was to use CTL+Shift+I to get to the console. I figured out why I am not able watch the video in the internal player from looking at the console. Google is blocking with a 403 error with the internal player. But for some reason, they are not blocking when I use Celluloid or YouTube browser link. The only workaround that works for me (SponsorBlock) is to use the Right Click and get the YouTube link and paste into my browser. I have SponsorBlock installed there and this works just fine.

First question, why am I getting 403 error with the only internal player, and not in Celluloid, or browser? I've forced my ISP router to get a new IP address, but got 403 on the first attempt with internal player. My browser has CanvasBlocker and LibreWolf has built in fingerprint obfuscation, so maybe that has something to do with it. Not sure. But it doesn't seem to matter what my IP is.

Second question, even if I get the 403 errors sorted out, would it be possible to add a browser link in the External Player dropdown list? No matter what, I think that would be great, as an option.

I'm running FreeTube v0.23.4 Beta on Debian (trixie) with Kernel 6.10.4-amd64.

Thank You.

[TSKimball]

History for latest issue (related to the 403s) is in the post here: #7119 (comment)

Using an external player is the current workaround; I use QMPlayer2 myself (Windows standalone) without issues so far. [I manually paste in the URLs.] Lack of sponsorblock is not an issue in my case, though I also normally just watch/listen 100+ episode longform gaming LPs (usually with an RP or Immersive twist).

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

As for the second question though... It seems that it would be simple (although I don't know how to do it) to add an option to open a video in default browser. I mean, I can click a simple link in an email or office document, etc and the default browser opens up. Does that sound like a useful thing to add to the dropdown options for an external player?

Not something we are looking into see #7318 (comment)

[rjc3rd]

Well, as you said below, "That's Gold!" Thanks for the link. Now I have a tough choice, since I got SponsorBlock to work with Celluloid, I don't know which option I will use. But I've got two good options now.

Thanks.

[rjc3rd]

Not something we are looking into
#7318 (comment)

I realize that it wasn't on the radar, but it seems so easy. I admit that I could be (very likely) wrong, but there was a simple "workaround" suggested by @jn64 #7318 (comment) that worked perfectly. So you might say, if the workaround worked, why would I keep asking for the added feature? Simply because it is a workaround and it would require anyone (a regular normie) who thought to use the browser as an external player, to just give up. It is just simply passing the YouTube URL, which you are already generating by default anyway to a default browser. Clicking a URL seems to be practically, virtually built into the OS.

Alrighty then,

By the way, I want say, I feel that FreeTube is the GOLD Standard for a YouTube replacement. I do really appreciate that it is available, just in case my comment seems to be a complainer, just complaining. Even if you never add browsers to the dropdown, I will continue to use FreeTube and contribute in the discussion.

Thank you.

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

#6662 seems more likely as a last resort option. Adding support for the browser is way more trackable. Which is against the core principles of FT

[rjc3rd]

It does seem obvious that this is not a new concept to you guys. I can now see that this is a decision you guys have made a while back. I CAN accept this.

In my defense to that... I use LibreWolf with arkenfox-user.js and many Extensions to help with these problems. I only post this in case someone as hard headed as me finds this with a search and can at least make it work for them.

And my uBlock Origin is tight. My primary goal with uBlock Origin is keeping Google/YouTube in their own little box. For me, I'm feel pretty sure that I've locked that down.

Plus many users are using VPN and isolated choice of browser to not share too much with Google. And besides, FreeTube is still using local API and my real IP address (unless using VPN) so Google knows it all. All we can do is, DO OUR BEST to prevent Google from getting our data. At least obfuscate as much as possible.

Thank You.

[rjc3rd]

OMG, I should have googled about adding SponsorBlock to Celluloid before commenting above. LOL but I just really didn't think it would exist. But It DOES exist.

https://github.com/po5/mpv_sponsorblock

Now it is specifically created for mpv, which is awesome and would have been good enough for me. But I read in a discussion where someone asked if it could work in Celluloid since Celluloid is just a GTK frontend for mpv.

po5/mpv_sponsorblock#7
po5/mpv_sponsorblock#7 (comment)

I followed the instructions for installing the script for SponsorBlock for mpv and it works perfectly in mpv but not yet in Celluloid. Then I copied the same files to the Celluloid scripts folder and modified the the config file.

In the file In sponsorblock.lua in the Celluloid scripts folder...

Find
scripts_dir = mp.find_config_file("scripts")

Change it to
-- scripts_dir = mp.find_config_file("scripts")
scripts_dir = "/home/[INSERT USERNAME]/.config/celluloid/scripts/"

Be sure to change [INSERT USERNAME] to your username.

The reason I put the script in both scripts folders is so that it would work in mpv or Celluloid at same time. Otherwise I think you could just put it in the Celluloid script folder if you never plan to use mpv directly.

Hope this helps someone.

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

Thats gold! Going to include that in my next post, thanks :)

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

inquires regarding external players migrated to #7789