Downloads need to be started several times

[BrendaW2024]

Your question

I'm noticing that videos need to be restarted several times before they download in full. Sometimes, they will restart themselves when I click the stop button and other times they fail - then I have to go through several iterations of the download stalling / restarting / failing process before the file actually downloads.

In most cases, the files do actually download in full eventually - but it can take hours of trying to get it right. Any recommendations about how to make this process easier?

Addon & CoApp version and details

version: 9.3.0.0
target: mozilla
channel: beta
lang: en-GB
coapp: {"found":true,"path":"/Applications/net.downloadhelper.coapp.app/Contents/MacOS/vdhcoapp","version":"2.0.19","new_version":false}
license: {"accepted":true,"email":"","key":"26a4d9dfd21c470c"}
platform: x86-64 mac
UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:135.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/135.0
{
"valid_license_message_has_been_displayed": true,
"used_history_button": true,
"download_directory": "/Users/xxxx/Move onto Hard Drive",
"concurrent_downloads_max": 10,
"view_options": {
"all_tabs": false,
"low_quality": false,
"sort_by_status": true,
"sort_reverse": false,
"show_button_clean": true,
"show_button_clean_all": false,
"show_button_convert_local": false,
"hide_downloaded": false
},
"use_sidebar": true,
"open_count_store": 3,
"successfull_dl": 45,
"download_history": {
"__serializer_tag": "map",
"__serializer_value": []
}
}

[GrampaWildWilly]

I do not work for VDH. I'm just another user.

I have encountered this on Pornhub. I'll get something just fine. Maybe 2 or 3 more items. Then I'll hit one that doesn't work. It can take 3, 4, 5 retries until it actually works. Then the next one may work first try, may need a few retries. There's just no predicting & there doesn't seem to be any pattern to the ones that need to fail before they work. Now, I have never spent more than 10 minutes getting any individual item. Hours to get one item? That seems extreme. But I have to say I've seen what you're describing & I have no solution for it. Seeing as VDH does eventually work on the content, I have to believe the problem lies more with the web site than with VDH. Maybe you could get more reliable access using ffmpeg directly. See #1707.

[BrendaW2024]

Thanks for the reply.

I don't see how it can be website specific as I've had the problem on a range of websites, using both the Chrome and Firefox versions of VDH.

I did get to thinking about what else might be causing this as it makes no sense to me. One of the possibilities that has emerged has been my internet connection. We have two connections at home. We use Starlink as our primary connection (we're rural, no fancy fibre here unfortunately). Our second connection is a much slower wireless option. I tried doing a batch of downloads on the weekend using the slower connection and... voila... everything worked first time, regardless of which variant I downloaded AND with multiple files downloading at a time.

I tested the theory today on a different machine. Same results - multiple files downloaded fine.

So that would imply there's something about the quality of the internet connection that affects how VDH works... no idea what exactly, but maybe that will be helpful for some.