[Bug]: Invidious video proxing IP blocks #3892
Comments
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Disable the setting to proxy the video through Invidious, it's in the player settings. |
That seems to have fixed it. Is this currently a bug/API issue that is yet to be fixed? |
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YouTube is IP blocking server IPs (Invidious, Piped and people running yt-dlp on servers are affected) on the video streaming endpoints. Relevant Invidious issue: iv-org/invidious#4045 |
absidue
changed the title
It's most likely related to the recent legal action they threatened to take against Invidious (I read about this on Vice a few weeks back). I'd imagine that they have since realised that they are unable to take legal action against the project due to it being little more than a proxy, but they can probably find alternate means such as IP blocking to make it harder to use. I tried loading various videos on an Invidious domain and they loaded fine on it. Invidious was previously the main workaround for accessing age restricted YouTube videos without having to either verify your age in Europe/Australia (which I have already done on my Google account) or having to see a content warning every time you wanted to watch such a video (which was what put me off watching them on YouTube). In the past FreeTube would not load these videos via the Local API following changes Google made to their API in either 2020 or 2021, but now seems to be able to do so fine. It's possible that FreeTube is now taking the NewPipe approach and authenticating them through YouTube by proxying videos through an age verified Google account. Interestingly turning off the "Proxy through Invidious" option seems to have sped up the load time for all videos compared to previously, which makes me wonder if the Invidious connection was being throttled previously. FreeTube loaded videos quickly when I first began using it in about 2020, although I don't know if it was proxying them through Invidious at that point. |
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No the legal action is unrelated, if it were, they would be targeting just Invidious. Invidious doesn't proxy by default (neither does FreeTube) but if you enable proxying on either you get the issue, Piped on the other hand always proxies so they are completely unusable for streaming at the moment. Neither FreeTube nor NewPipe nor Invidious use a Google account to bypass age restrictions, there is a workaround that works without needing an account, it just wasn't implemented in FreeTube before (in the nightlies since January, we are waiting on a release for an important dependency to fix some bugs before we do the 0.19.0 release candidate). |
YouTube still seems to work fine via a VPN (I've just tested it from the UK with a US VPN via Windscribe in Firefox), which will unblock georestricted videos. I'd imagine Google are differentiating between public IP servers that get lots of regular web traffic (there are a few sites such as RateYourMusic that will display an "IP Blocked" message when used through most VPNs) and servers that are almost exclusively being used to channel YouTube traffic. I think the action being taken by Google (and other similar services like Reddit) against proxies may be related to the rise of large AI models, of which some affiliated bots have been known to consume very large amounts of bandwidth. |
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There is a big difference between, you watching a few videos on a VPN vs Invidious and Piped instances that use 100s of terabytes of bandwidth a month proxing video. |
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I am not sure this is an issue between YT and Invidious. The Invidious videos play fine if you go to the same Invidious instance. They only don't play in Freetube. |
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@thisguy786 FreeTube doesn't proxy the video through Invidious servers by default, neither does Invidious, you need to explicitly enable the setting in both for it to happen. Some Invidious instances are frequently changing their IP addresses to try and avoid the YouTube's IP bans. The same instances that work with proxying enabled in your browser, will also work with proxying enabled in FreeTube. |
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As I see, there is no such issue in FreeTube v0.18.0 Beta: videos are always played normally. And I encounter this issue only in the new FreeTube v0.19.x with the same Invidious instance: videos are not played. By the way, this is the only reason I still have to use the old version of FreeTube. |
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@CrazzzzyChipmunk What is your preferred backend and have you enabled proxying videos through Invidious? |
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@absidue ,
Preferred API Backend: Local API
And then videos are played normally.
YES!!! The new FreeTube v0.19.0 does not play videos with the same settings. |
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Does the syntax error disappear when you disable proxying? |
No. When Proxy Videos Through Invidious: Off (FreeTube v0.18.0) the same two error messages are displayed and then videos are played normally. For the new FreeTube version (v0.19.0), if I DISABLE proxying, videos are displayed. But I don't want to use a version of FreeTube, which does not work via Invidious. |
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I misread and thought the errors were in 0.19.0, glad to know they aren't and it really just is proxying that has a problem. As for 0.18.0 feel free to use it if you really want to, but just know that it will just keep breaking more and more, with YouTube changes as it is already 10 months old. Please don't open any bug reports for any problems you face on 0.18.0 that don't exist on 0.19.0. Ironically with your choice of using 0.18.0, only DASH gets proxied, audio only and legacy don't. |
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@absidue, As well as the Invidious always plays videos normally when its site is open in a browser: This problem (when videos are not played), as I see, exist only on the new FreeTube app (0.19.0). Summary: Works in FreeTube v0.18.0: YES |
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Still getting this issue on most music related videos on the latest nightly 3505 either with proxy enabled or not. |
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@sol8712 Switching the preferred API backend to the local API should fix that (as long as video proxying is disabled), according to issues on the Invidious GitHub repo, music videos are broken on Invidious. |
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@CrazzzzyChipmunk Which formats are you using in FreeTube (DASH, legacy or audio) and Invidious (DASH, HD720, Medium or Small)? |
I use in FreeTube:
I use in an Invidious Instance (in a browser):
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hd720 on Invidious is the equivalent of legacy 720p in FreeTube. |
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@absidue, you told before:
Do you mean that FreeTube does NOT use proxy while playing videos with these settings?
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DASH gets proxied so with those settings it will get proxied. To use DASH 720p on the Invidious website you need to set it to DASH and then in their separate DASH quality drop down select 720p. |
(!!!) @absidue, I just now tried explicitly use DASH 720p on the Invidious website and videos are NOT played (on Invidious websites). I tried for several Instances and in two browsers (Chrome and Firefox). But videos with these settings are still played normally in the PREVIOUS (old) version of FreeTube. Because of this I asked you before, does the PREVIOUS (old) version FreeTube ACTUALLY use proxy or it implicitly switches to direct youtube servers? |
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FreeTube only proxies when you have the setting enabled. When it is enabled both the local API and Invidious API streams will get proxied, when that setting is disabled, nothing is proxied, regardless of the selected API backend. Newer versions of FreeTube can proxy all 3 formats: DASH, audio and legacy (just checked the code), 0.18.0 can only proxy DASh though. The Invidious website cannot play DASH without proxying (browser limitation, CORS headers). FreeTube bypasses that limitation so it can play stuff without |
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I do know that some Invidious instances have had trouble in the past where they haven't returned proper proxied DASH URLs, so it is entirely possible that the only reason it worked on 0.18.0 is that FreeTube was trusting Invidious to return proxied URLs when we asked it to, but that they weren't. 0.19.0 stopped trusting Invidious and instead "force" proxied the URLs when Invidious failed to do it. 0.19.1 generates the DASH manifest inside FreeTube based on information in the Invidious API response, so that we can support multiple audio tracks when the Invidious API is selected, even though Invidious doesn't support it yet, but the information is there, so we can use it. If you haven't tried the 0.19.1 version of FreeTube yet, I recommend you do. Proxying won't work properly because Invidious instances are either IP blocked and the ones that aren't, are getting throttled (they have a pull request open on their GitHub to fix the throttling but they haven't merged it yet) but the code on the FreeTube side is correct. So if you setup your own Invidious instance with their fix, proxying should work through your instance. |
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This issue is stale because it has been open 28 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 7 days. |
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This issue is stale because it has been open 28 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 7 days. |
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I think I'm seeing this same issue on the latest version of FreeTube - v0.19.1 Beta |
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@treker7 According to the logs, the calls to YouTube's servers timed out, so this is unrelated and either caused by something blocking the connection or you using some really slow VPN or proxy (e.g. tor). |
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This issue is stale because it has been open 28 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 7 days. |
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This issue is stale because it has been open 28 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 7 days. |
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I have been able to replicate this issue on v0.20.0 Beta with the below settings. If i switch Preferred API to local then it works fine. My question is why does the "Fallback to Non-Preferred Backend on Failure" not apply to this case? Preferred API Backend: Invidious API |
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This issue is stale because it has been open 28 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 7 days. |
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I think this issue can be closed. FreeTube has nothing to do with Invidious instances getting blocked, just make sure to use an instance that has IPv6 address rotation set up. An example of this is iv.datura.network, I never had any issues with it. |
Guidelines
Describe the bug
1: Click on any video using either the Local or Invidious APIs
2: You will see the message "NotSupportedError: Failed to load because no supported source was found" as the video page loads
3: The video loading will infinitely hang and you will remain stuck on the thumbnail
Expected Behavior
Clicking on most videos should result in normal playback after a short buffer period.
Issue Labels
API issue, content not loading
FreeTube Version
v0.18.0-nightly-3257 Beta
Operating System Version
Windows 10 Pro 22H2 19045.3324
Installation Method
.zip
Primary API used
Local API
Last Known Working FreeTube Version (If Any)
The previous Nightly build I tested (3220) initially worked fine but developed this issue. Upgrading to a newer nightly build did not fix the problem.
Additional Information
The exact same problem appears to occur with both the Local and Invidious APIs, suggesting that this may be a bug in Freetube's code as opposed to an issue with either the YouTube or Invidious APIs. At the same time, the previous nightly build of Freetube (3220) that I downloaded worked fine until a couple of days ago.
Nightly Build
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