Mobilevids Downloader

• Introduction
• Features
• Installation instructions
  • Recommended installation method for all Operating Systems
• Filing an issue/Reporting a bug
• Contact

Introduction

Mobilevids is an amazing website for downloading movies and tv shows.

This script makes it easier to batch download movies or TV serials.

Why is this helpful? A utility like wget can work, but has the following limitations:

1. Video names have numbers in them, but this does not correspond to the actual order. Manually renaming them is a pain that is best left for computers.
2. Using names from the syllabus page provides more informative names.
3. Using wget in a for loop picks up extra videos which are not posted/linked, and these are sometimes duplicates.

This work was originally inspired in part by coursera-dl.

Features

• Support for all kinds of movies / TV shows.
• Intentionally detailed names, so that it will display and sort properly on most interfaces (e.g., VLC or MX Video on Android devices).
• Login credentials accepted on command-line or from .netrc file.
• Core functionality tested on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Installation instructions

mobilevids-dl requires Python 3.10+ and a free Mobilevids account.

On any operating system, ensure that the Python executable location is added to your PATH environment variable and, once you have the dependencies installed (see next section), for a basic usage, you will need to invoke the script from the main directory of the project and prepend it with the word python. You can also use more advanced features of the program by looking at the "Running the script" section of this document.

Recommended installation method for all Operating Systems

From a command line (preferably, from a virtual environment), simply issue the command:

pip install mobilevids-dl

This will download the latest released version of the program from the Python Package Index (PyPI) along with all the necessary dependencies. At this point, you should be ready to start using it.

Note: We strongly recommend that you don't install the package globally on your machine (i.e., with root/administrator privileges), as the installed modules may conflict with other Python applications that you have installed in your system (or they can interfere with mobilevids-dl). Prefer to install it into a virtual environment, or use pip install --user.

Running the script

Refer to mobilevids-dl --help for a complete, up-to-date reference on the runtime options supported by this utility.

usage: mobilevids-dl [-h] [--version] [-a] [-d] [-i] [-e EPISODE] [-m MOVIE]
                     [-n [PATH]] [-o DIR] [-p PASSWORD] [--segments SEGMENTS]
                     [-s SEASON] [-t TV] [-u USERNAME]
                     [search]

Mobilevids Downloader script

positional arguments:
  search                title to search for

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -a, --ascii           show ascii art
  -d, --debug           enable debug logging
  -i, --info            show info about movie/show
  -e EPISODE, --episode EPISODE
                        download a single episode (requires -t [TV ID] and -s
                        [SEASON])
  -m MOVIE, --movie MOVIE
                        ID of a movie to download
  -n [PATH], --netrc [PATH]
                        read credentials from a netrc file, using the default
                        location if PATH is omitted
  -o DIR, --output DIR  directory to save downloads in (default: ~/downloads)
  -p PASSWORD, --password PASSWORD
                        Mobilevids password
  --segments SEGMENTS   parallel connections per download (default: 4)
  -s SEASON, --season SEASON
                        season to download (requires -t)
  -t TV, --tv TV        ID of a TV show to download
  -u USERNAME, --username USERNAME
                        Mobilevids username

Credentials are resolved in this order:

1. the --username/--password command-line flags
2. the MOBILEVIDS_USERNAME and MOBILEVIDS_PASSWORD environment variables
3. a .netrc file

The environment variables are the recommended option: command-line arguments are visible to other users on the same machine (via the process list) and get saved in your shell history.

On *nix platforms, a ~/.netrc file is a good alternative to typing your username and password every time. To use it, add an entry like the one below to a file named .netrc in your home directory (or the equivalent, if you are using Windows):

machine mobilevids
    login <user>
    password <pass>

Create the file if it doesn't exist yet, and make sure only you can read it (chmod 600 ~/.netrc). From then on, you can switch from -u/-p to simply calling mobilevids-dl.

Reporting issues

Before reporting any issue please follow the steps below:

1. Verify that you are running the latest version of the script, and the recommended versions of its dependencies, see them in the file requirements.txt. Use the following command if in doubt:

    pip install --upgrade mobilevids-dl
   

2. If the problem persists, feel free to open an issue in our bugtracker, please fill the issue template with as much information as possible.

Filing an issue/Reporting a bug

When reporting bugs against mobilevids-dl, please don't forget to include enough information so that you can help us help you:

• Is the problem happening with the latest version of the script?
• What operating system are you using?
• Do you have all the recommended versions of the modules? See them in the file requirements.txt.
• What are the precise messages that you get? Please run with --debug and copy and paste the output rather than paraphrasing it. Your password is never printed, but review the output before posting in case it contains anything else you'd rather not share (e.g. video titles or IDs).

Contact

Please, post bugs and issues on github. Please, DON'T send support requests privately to the maintainers! We are quite swamped with day-to-day activities. If you have problems, PLEASE, file them on the issue tracker.