videofetch 0.4.0

Videodl: A lightweight video downloader written in pure python

📄 Documents: videofetch.readthedocs.io

🌌 VideoDL Live Status Dashboard (VideoDL有效性实时监测)
_{Auto-updated every day via GitHub Actions, with ~3 randomly sampled preview clips.}

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🆕 What's New

• 2025-12-17: Released videofetch v0.4.0 - support parsing for more platforms; automatically enable N_m3u8DL-RE acceleration for all m3u8/HLS streams; and fix some bugs.
• 2025-12-15: Released videofetch v0.3.9 - supports the SnapWC universal parsing API, and updated the CCTV M3U8 downloader to use N_m3u8DL-RE instead of the previous solution.
• 2025-12-15: Released videofetch v0.3.8 - remove the general parsing endpoints that have switched to paid access, and add two free general parsing endpoints and make some improvements.
• 2025-12-12: Released videofetch v0.3.7 - add one general-purpose video parsing client.
• 2025-12-12: Released videofetch v0.3.6 - add two general-purpose video parsing clients.
• 2025-12-12: Released videofetch v0.3.5 - added support for parsing on two specific platforms and introduced a generic parsing interface.
• 2025-12-11: Released videofetch v0.3.4 - fix the problems with downloading CCTV videos.
• 2025-12-08: Released videofetch v0.3.3 - some simple code fixes, and a generic xiami parsing interface has been added.

🚀 Introduction

A fast and lightweight video downloader built entirely in Python! 🚀 If you find this project useful, don't forget to star the repository and help us grow—your support means the world! 🙌

📜 Statement

This repository is created solely for learning purposes (commercial use is prohibited). All APIs used here are sourced from public networks. If you wish to download paid videos, please ensure you have a paid membership on the respective video platform (respect copyright, please!). If any content in this repository causes concerns or infringes on copyright, please reach out to me, and I’ll promptly remove it.

🎥 Supported Video Client

The video platforms currently supported for parsing are,

VideoClient (EN)	VideoClient (CN)	WeChat Article	Search	ParseURL	Download	Core Code
AcFunVideoClient	A站	click	❌	✔️	✔️	acfun.py
PipigaoxiaoVideoClient	皮皮搞笑	click	❌	✔️	✔️	pipigaoxiao.py
PipixVideoClient	皮皮虾	click	❌	✔️	✔️	pipix.py
HaokanVideoClient	好看视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	haokan.py
TedVideoClient	TED视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	ted.py
Ku6VideoClient	酷6网	click	❌	✔️	✔️	ku6.py
BilibiliVideoClient	哔哩哔哩 (B站)	click	❌	✔️	✔️	bilibili.py
KuaishouVideoClient	快手	click	❌	✔️	✔️	kuaishou.py
YinyuetaiVideoClient	音悦台 (关停ing😭)	click	❌	✔️	✔️	yinyuetai.py
BaiduTiebaVideoClient	百度贴吧	click	❌	✔️	✔️	baidutieba.py
MGTVVideoClient	芒果TV	click	❌	✔️	✔️	mgtv.py
OasisVideoClient	新浪绿洲	click	❌	✔️	✔️	oasis.py
PearVideoClient	梨视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	pear.py
HuyaVideoClient	虎牙视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	huya.py
DuxiaoshiVideoClient	度小视 (全民小视频)	click	❌	✔️	✔️	duxiaoshi.py
MeipaiVideoClient	美拍	click	❌	✔️	✔️	meipai.py
SixRoomVideoClient	六间房视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	sixroom.py
WeishiVideoClient	微视	click	❌	✔️	✔️	weishi.py
ZuiyouVideoClient	最右	click	❌	✔️	✔️	zuiyou.py
XinpianchangVideoClient	新片场	click	❌	✔️	✔️	xinpianchang.py
WeSingVideoClient	全民K歌	click	❌	✔️	✔️	wesing.py
XiguaVideoClient	西瓜视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	xigua.py
RednoteVideoClient	小红书	click	❌	✔️	✔️	rednote.py
WeiboVideoClient	微博视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	weibo.py
CCTVVideoClient	央视网	click	❌	✔️	✔️	cctv.py
SohuVideoClient	搜狐视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	sohu.py
YouTubeVideoClient	油管视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	youtube.py
ZhihuVideoClient	知乎视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	zhihu.py
KakaoVideoClient	KakaoTV	click	❌	✔️	✔️	kakao.py
YoukuVideoClient	优酷视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	youku.py
TencentVideoClient	腾讯视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	tencent.py
GeniusVideoClient	Rap Genius (嘻哈百科)	click	❌	✔️	✔️	genius.py
UnityVideoClient	Unity	click	❌	✔️	✔️	unity.py
FoxNewsVideoClient	福克斯新闻	click	❌	✔️	✔️	foxnews.py
SinaVideoClient	新浪视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	sina.py
XuexiCNVideoClient	学习强国	click	❌	✔️	✔️	xuexicn.py
Open163VideoClient	网易公开课	click	❌	✔️	✔️	open163.py
CCtalkVideoClient	CCtalk	click	❌	✔️	✔️	cctalk.py
EyepetizerVideoClient	开眼视频	click	❌	✔️	✔️	eyepetizer.py
ArteTVVideoClient	德法公共电视网	click	❌	✔️	✔️	artetv.py
C56VideoClient	56视频网	click	❌	✔️	✔️	c56.py
RedditVideoClient	红迪网	click	❌	✔️	✔️	reddit.py
WWEVideoClient	世界摔角娱乐	click	❌	✔️	✔️	wwe.py

To make videodl more robust and able to adaptively parse videos from more websites, even when the video URL is not in the supported list above, I also plan to gradually add some general-purpose parsing interfaces. The currently supported generic parsers include:

CommonVideoClient (EN)	CommonVideoClient (CN)	ParseURL	Download	Core Code
IIILabVideoClient	兽音译者	✔️	✔️	iiilab.py
KedouVideoClient	Kedou视频解析	✔️	✔️	kedou.py
SnapAnyVideoClient	SnapAny万能解析	✔️	✔️	snapany.py
GVVIPVideoClient	GreenVideoVIP视频解析	✔️	✔️	gvvip.py
VgetVideoClient	Vget视频解析	✔️	✔️	vget.py
ILoveAPIVideoClient	我爱API	✔️	✔️	iloveapi.py
XMFlvVideoClient	虾米解析	✔️	✔️	xmflv.py
QZXDPToolsVideoClient	全栈工具视频解析	✔️	✔️	qzxdptools.py
KuKuToolsVideoClient	KuKuTool视频解析	✔️	✔️	kukutool.py
LongZhuVideoClient	龙珠API视频解析	✔️	✔️	longzhu.py
XiazaitoolVideoClient	下载狗	✔️	✔️	xiazaitool.py
NoLogoVideoClient	去水印下载鸭	✔️	✔️	nologo.py
SnapWCVideoClient	SnapWC视频解析	✔️	✔️	snapwc.py

The default parsing order is to first use the parsers in the supported list. If those fail, the generic parsers are then invoked one by one until parsing succeeds.

📦 Install

You have three installation methods to choose from,

# from pip
pip install videofetch
# from github repo method-1
pip install git+https://github.com/CharlesPikachu/videodl.git@master
# from github repo method-2
git clone https://github.com/CharlesPikachu/videodl.git
cd videodl
python setup.py install

Some of the video downloaders supported by videodl rely on additional CLI tools to enable video decryption, stream parsing and downloading, accelerated stream downloading, and other extended features such as resuming interrupted downloads. Specifically, these CLI tools include,

• FFmpeg: All video downloaders that need to handle HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) streams depend on FFmpeg. ❗ Therefore, we recommend that all videodl users install FFmpeg. ❗ Specifically, you need to ensure that, after installation, FFmpeg can be invoked directly from your system environment (i.e., it is on your PATH). A quick way to verify this is to open a terminal (or Command Prompt on Windows) and run,

  ffmpeg -version
  

  If the installation is correct, you should see detailed version information instead of a "command not found" or "'ffmpeg' is not recognized" error.

• N_m3u8DL-RE: FFmpeg is a general-purpose media tool that can download standard HLS/m3u8 streams, but it assumes that the playlist and segment URLs strictly follow the protocol. N_m3u8DL-RE is a specialized m3u8 downloader that adds extensive logic for handling encryption, anti-leech headers, redirects, and malformed playlists, so it can capture many ‘protected’ or non-standard videos that FFmpeg fails on. In many cases it’s also faster, because N_m3u8DL-RE can download HLS segments in parallel with optimized retries/merging, while FFmpeg typically pulls segments sequentially by default. ❗ Therefore, we recommend that all videodl users install N_m3u8DL-RE to ensure videodl delivers the best possible performance. ❗ Of course, you can choose not to install it, but in that case you may not be able to use videodl to parse the following platforms,

  CCTVVideoClient, FoxNewsVideoClient, TencentVideoClient, GVVIPVideoClient, 
  SnapAnyVideoClient, VgetVideoClient, ArteTVVideoClient, XMFlvVideoClient, 
  RedditVideoClient, IIILabVideoClient, WWEVideoClient
  

  and downloads from many other sites that provide m3u8/HLS streams may also be significantly limited. As with FFmpeg, after installation you should make sure this tool can be run directly from the command line, i.e., its location is included in your system PATH. A quick way to check whether N_m3u8DL-RE has been installed successfully is to open a terminal (or Command Prompt on Windows) and run:

  N_m3u8DL-RE --version
  

  If N_m3u8DL-RE is installed correctly, N_m3u8DL-RE --version will print the N_m3u8DL-RE version (e.g., 0.5.1+c1f6db5639397dde362c31b31eebd88c796c90da). If you see a similar command not found / not recognized error, N_m3u8DL-RE is not installed correctly or not available on your PATH.

• CBox: CBox is an optional dependency for CCTVVideoClient. It helps prevent garbled output when downloading HD streams, which can happen when the m3u8 playlist is encrypted. To enable it, download CBox from the GitHub release above and add the CBox folder to your system PATH. If you intend to use CCTVVideoClient, you should also install FFmpeg and N_m3u8DL-RE and ensure they are available on your PATH as well. If you’re not using CCTVVideoClient for HD downloads, you can skip the CBox setup entirely. To verify your setup, these commands should print the full executable paths (instead of returning nothing):

  python -c "import shutil; print(shutil.which('cbox'))"
  python -c "import shutil; print(shutil.which('N_m3u8DL-RE'))"
  python -c "import shutil; print(shutil.which('ffmpeg'))"
  

• Node.js: Currently, Node.js is only used in YouTubeVideoClient to execute certain JavaScript code for video parsing. Therefore, if you don’t need to use YouTubeVideoClient, you can safely skip installing this CLI tool. A quick way to check whether Node.js has been installed successfully is to open a terminal (or Command Prompt on Windows) and run:

  node -v (npm -v)
  

  If Node.js is installed correctly, node -v will print the Node.js version (e.g., v22.11.0), and npm -v will print the npm version. If you see a similar command not found / not recognized error, Node.js is not installed correctly or not available on your PATH.

• aria2c: videodl now also supports manually integrating aria2c to accelerate downloads (for example, MP4 files) and to enable resuming interrupted video downloads, etc. Before using this feature, you must ensure that aria2c is available on the system PATH in your runtime environment. You can verify this by opening a terminal and running aria2c --version (or aria2c -v); if the command returns version information instead of a “command not found” error, then aria2c is correctly installed and detectable. On Linux/macOS you can also run which aria2c, and on Windows where aria2c, to confirm that the executable can be found. To enable aria2c during video downloading, please refer to the Quick Start section.

⚡ Quick Start

After a successful installation, you can run the snippet below,

from videodl import videodl

video_client = videodl.VideoClient()
video_client.startparseurlcmdui()

Or just run videodl -i "URL" (maybe videodl --help to show usage information) from the terminal.

Usage: videodl [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --version                       Show the version and exit.
  -i, --index-url, --index_url TEXT
                                  URL of the video to download. If not
                                  specified, videodl will start in terminal
                                  mode.
  -a, --allowed-video-sources, --allowed_video_sources TEXT
                                  Platforms to search. Separate multiple
                                  platforms with "," (e.g.,
                                  "AcFunVideoClient,PipixVideoClient"). If not
                                  specified, videodl will search all supported
                                  platforms globally and use the first one
                                  that can download the video url.
  -c, --init-video-clients-cfg, --init_video_clients_cfg TEXT
                                  Config such as `work_dir` for each video
                                  client as a JSON string.
  -r, --requests-overrides, --requests_overrides TEXT
                                  Requests.get kwargs such as `headers` and
                                  `proxies` for each video client as a JSON
                                  string.
  -t, --clients-threadings, --clients_threadings TEXT
                                  Number of threads used for each video client
                                  as a JSON string.
  -g, --apply-common-video-clients-only, --apply_common_video_clients_only
                                  Only apply common video clients.
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

The demonstration is as follows,

If you just want to parse a video link and retrieve information about the video, you can do it like this,

from videodl import videodl

video_client = videodl.VideoClient()
video_infos = video_client.parsefromurl("https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDUxOTc1NDg4MA==.html?spm=a2hkl.14919748_WEBHOME_HOME.scg_scroll_3.d_2_play&s=faab858435f24d5bb6d3&scm=20140719.rcmd.feed.show_faab858435f24d5bb6d3&alginfo=-1reqId-249a939e8%203783%204341%2099d9%20974d2b07ad23%231764142230027-1seqId-20IX2riz0CjZG971l-1abId-2468080-1sceneId-246595&scg_id=22896555")
print(video_infos)

The output of this code looks like,

[
  {
    "source": "YoukuVideoClient",
    "raw_data": {
      "cost": 0.020000001,
      ...
    },
    "download_url": "http://pl-ali.youku.com/playlist/m3u8?vid=XNDUxOTc1NDg4MA%3D%3D&type=mp4hd2v3&ups_client_netip=725c13f7&utid=dJytIY%2Bx4WYCAXJcE%2Few6YTM&ccode=0564&psid=2fb1945e5c8cc1b213f831c70ace818841346&duration=2205&expire=18000&drm_type=1&drm_device=0&drm_default=1&dyt=0&ups_ts=1764142708&onOff=0&encr=0&ups_key=f30ad69f9025369053e0932bfe1d2276&ckt=3&m_onoff=0&pn=&drm_type_value=default&v=v1&bkp=0",
    "title": "史家绝唱",
    "file_path": "videodl_outputs\\YoukuVideoClient\\史家绝唱.m3u",
    "ext": "m3u",
    "download_with_ffmpeg": true,
    "err_msg": "NULL",
    "identifier": "XNDUxOTc1NDg4MA==",
    "guess_video_ext_result": {
      "ext": "m3u",
      "sniffer": "requests.head",
      "ok": true
    }
  }
]

Then you can also call the video downloading function to download the video parsed by videodl. The code is as follows:

from videodl import videodl

video_client = videodl.VideoClient()
video_infos = video_client.parsefromurl("https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDUxOTc1NDg4MA==.html?spm=a2hkl.14919748_WEBHOME_HOME.scg_scroll_3.d_2_play&s=faab858435f24d5bb6d3&scm=20140719.rcmd.feed.show_faab858435f24d5bb6d3&alginfo=-1reqId-249a939e8%203783%204341%2099d9%20974d2b07ad23%231764142230027-1seqId-20IX2riz0CjZG971l-1abId-2468080-1sceneId-246595&scg_id=22896555")
video_client.download(video_infos=video_infos)

If you want to use aria2c to accelerate the download of non-HLS/m3u8 streams, such as mp4 files, you can do the following:

from videodl import videodl

video_client = videodl.VideoClient()
video_infos = video_client.parsefromurl("https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1KZgHzJEs6/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click")
for v in video_infos: v['download_with_aria2c'] = True
video_client.download(video_infos=video_infos)

If you want to use N_m3u8DL-RE to speed up the download of HLS/m3u8 streams, you can do the following (starting from videofetch 0.4.0, as long as the environment variables include N_m3u8DL-RE, the program will automatically invoke N_m3u8DL-RE to accelerate video downloads.):

from videodl import videodl

video_client = videodl.VideoClient()
video_infos = video_client.parsefromurl("https://www.acfun.cn/v/ac36491489")
for v in video_infos: v['enable_nm3u8dlre'] = True
video_client.download(video_infos=video_infos)

If you know that the video you want to parse is definitely not in the supported list and you want to use the generic parser directly, you can set apply_common_video_clients_only to True, e.g., just run videodl -i "URL" -g from the terminal, or coding as following,

from videodl import videodl

video_client = videodl.VideoClient(apply_common_video_clients_only=True)
video_client.startparseurlcmdui()

If you’re a VIP member of a video platform, such as Tencent Video, you can try the following code to improve the quality of the videos you download:

from videodl import videodl

your_vip_cookies_with_str_or_dict_format = ""
init_video_clients_cfg = dict()
init_video_clients_cfg['TencentVideoClient'] = {'default_parse_cookies': your_vip_cookies_with_str_or_dict_format, 'default_download_cookies': your_vip_cookies_with_str_or_dict_format}
video_client = videodl.VideoClient(init_video_clients_cfg=init_video_clients_cfg)
video_client.startparseurlcmdui()

Alternatively, you can run the following command directly in the terminal:

videodl -i "URL" -c "{'TencentVideoClient': {'default_parse_cookies': your_vip_cookies_with_str_or_dict_format, 'default_download_cookies': your_vip_cookies_with_str_or_dict_format}}"

If you want to speed up the parsing, you can try specifying the parser used for the video you’re downloading. For example, when downloading a Douyin video, you can run the command like this:

videodl -i "https://www.douyin.com/jingxuan?modal_id=7578412593719577899" -g -a "KedouVideoClient"

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📚 Citation

If you use this project in your research, please cite the repository.

@misc{freeproxy2022,
    author = {Zhenchao Jin},
    title = {Videodl: A lightweight video downloader written in pure python},
    year = {2021},
    publisher = {GitHub},
    journal = {GitHub repository},
    howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/CharlesPikachu/videodl/}},
}

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