[Bug] Age Restricted Videos do not play

[SimoonDude]

Videos that have been marked age-restricted don't play
Any video with age-restriction doesn't work. All you can see is the thumbnail. I've tested this on all public instances.

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to any age-restricted video
2. See error

Even the play button doesn't work

Additional context

• Browser: Latest Windows version of Chrome
• OS: Win10 x64

[Mennaruuk]

Yeah, I’ve been facing the same issue. It seems like a recent problem. I don’t know if it’s related to what is going on at youtube-dl. But I couldn’t download using youtube-dl either, and I’m not in the E.U. nor do I have a Google account.

[unixfox]

Can someone post a couple of age-restricted videos here? (this is for testing purposes though)

[Mennaruuk]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gZCjMjoilo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzhHXt7NKUs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIVPYWyPqKA

[TheFrenchGhosty]

A 20$ bounty has been added to this issue.

Anyone opening a PR fixing this issue, will receive 20$ (in BTC) from the Invidious project.

More details: #1898

[TheFrenchGhosty]

Note: the yt-dlp people found a way to get access to the video by (I think) using the mobile website's embed. However this only works with videos that can be embedded. Having this solution implemented is "enough" for you to get the bounty.

Related: yt-dlp/yt-dlp@4e6767b

[pukkandan]

Just add &c=TVHTML5&cver=6.20180913 to

invidious/src/invidious/videos.cr

Line 994 in 993d731

embed_info = HTTP::Params.parse(YT_POOL.client &.get("/get_video_info?html5=1&video_id=#{id}&eurl=https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/#{id}&gl=US&hl=en&sts=#{sts}").body)

Note that this is a temporary fix and we expect it to break in the near future. See yt-dlp/yt-dlp#328 for some fallbacks

[syeopite]

The x-youtube-client-version header would also have to be set to 6.20180913

[pukkandan]

The x-youtube-client-version header would also have to be set to 6.20180913

No. get_video_info doesnt need x-youtube-client-version header

[syeopite]

Yep. However, Invidious appends those headers by default as seen in here:

invidious/src/invidious/helpers/utils.cr

Lines 4 to 17 in 993d731

	def add_yt_headers(request)
	request.headers["user-agent"] ||= "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.3904.97 Safari/537.36"
	request.headers["accept-charset"] ||= "ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7"
	request.headers["accept"] ||= "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8"
	request.headers["accept-language"] ||= "en-us,en;q=0.5"
	return if request.resource.starts_with? "/sorry/index"
	request.headers["x-youtube-client-name"] ||= "1"
	request.headers["x-youtube-client-version"] ||= "2.20200609"
	# Preserve original cookies and add new YT consent cookie for EU servers
	request.headers["cookie"] = "#{request.headers["cookie"]?}; CONSENT=YES+"
	if !CONFIG.cookies.empty?
	request.headers["cookie"] = "#{(CONFIG.cookies.map { |c| "#{c.name}=#{c.value}" }).join("; ")}; #{request.headers["cookie"]?}"
	end
	end

In order to get this fix to work, x-youtube-client-version would also have to be set to 6.20180913

[pukkandan]

hm.. that is a problem. The header for all other requests should still be 2.20210407.08.00

Is it not possible to send this request without the header?

[syeopite]

Nope. If we want to use the connection pool, all of those headers would get added no matter what. The only workaround for this is to set x-youtube-client-version to 6.20180913 during the request function call since the add_yt_headers function doesn't override existing headers.

    required_parameters = URI::Params.new({
      "video_id" => [id],
      "eurl"     => ["https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/#{id}"],
      "html5"    => ["1"],
      "c"        => ["TVHTML5"],
      "cver"     => ["6.20180913"],
    })

    embed_info = HTTP::Params.parse(YT_POOL.client &.get("/get_video_info?#{required_parameters}", headers: HTTP::Headers{"x-youtube-client-version" => "6.20180913"}).body)

[unixfox]

Reopening as not every age restricted videos are unblocked.

[girst]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2022 at 01:00:24PM -0700, TheFrenchGhosty wrote: Here's 4 SFW videos that are age restricted, for testing purpose:

there's a 4-tiered list of videos that's used to check agegate bypasses: yt-dlp/yt-dlp#575 (comment)

[unixfox]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2022 at 01:00:24PM -0700, TheFrenchGhosty wrote:

Here's 4 SFW videos that are age restricted, for testing purpose:

there's a 4-tiered list of videos that's used to check agegate bypasses:
yt-dlp/yt-dlp#575 (comment)

Tiers 1,2 and 3 seems to work with the new method, which is great.

[tuxayo]

Should this ticket be closed now that #2996 has been merged? Or is there still an issue?

[unixfox]

Should this ticket be closed now that #2996 has been merged? Or is there still an issue?

No because not all age restricted videos can be bypassed so this issue is not entirely fixed.

[pukkandan]

tbh, It is doubtful this can ever can be fully fixed unless setting up an account proxy server is an acceptable option

[unixfox]

tbh, It is doubtful this can ever can be fully fixed unless setting up an account proxy server is an acceptable option

We have been talking about integrating that into invidious so it may come one day.

[unixfox]

Note: encrypted age-restricted videos don't work, see: #3245

Example video IDs:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQvteoFiMlg
• https://kworb.net/youtube/topvideos_restricted.html (archive)

[SamantazFox]

Non-working video ID, reported to me by e-mail: A2W2EBMX8DY

[UlyssesZh]

For me, I still have issues watching age restricted videos. Loading them are significantly more slowly (which greatly influences watching) than loading other videos. I can observe this for all videos listed in this comment.

[unixfox]

For me, I still have issues watching age restricted videos. Loading them are significantly more slowly (which greatly influences watching) than loading other videos. I can observe this for all videos listed in this comment.

Known issue, it's tracked in #3245

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale and will be closed in 30 days because it has not had recent activity and is much likely outdated. If you think this issue is still relevant and applicable, you just have to post a comment and it will be unmarked.

[unixfox]

Closing as there is no way to circumvent anymore. Logging into a google account will do but it's tracked in #4977