Hi, so I was doing world dev yesterday, youtube videos were working without issues. I come back an hour later, to hang out in some venues to discover youtube videos specifically no longer work for me. VRCDN and Twitch work fine. I went as far as reformatting my PC entirely thinking that would help. It did not. Here is what I show from the log.
Also I noticed this but may not be related.
2025.03.06 13:41:03 Debug - [AVProVideo] Initialising AVPro Video v2.8.5 (native plugin v2.8.5f1-ultra) on AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT/Direct3D 11.0 [level 11.1] (MT False) on WindowsPlayer
2025.03.06 13:41:03 Error - [AVProVideo] No MediaReference specified
2025.03.06 13:41:03 Error - [AVProVideo] No file path specified
2025.03.06 13:41:03 Error - [AVProVideo] No MediaReference specified
2025.03.06 13:41:03 Error - [AVProVideo] No file path specified
Youtube works fine in the browser, so iâm not sure what the problem is seeing as I have a fresh copy of windows now and fully up to date drivers.
The second part where AVPro starts and says it isnât given a video to play is not a problem.
The bot error is new, in the browser are you logged in to a google account? Stuff like yt-dlp acts differently from a browser, particularly with cookies and also fingerprinting. Your web browser acts perfectly like a web browser for obvious reasons, but software like yt-dlp doesnât act perfectly, or itâll act like older stuff
Thanks so much for the quick reply! Yes, I am logged into youtube with my google account. Let me know if I can get you anything else. I did also notice now that while twitch plays smoothly, its got artifacting. I tried multiple channels to test.
Only hunch I have, is I was opening 2 vrchat instances testing my udon networking which played a youtube video MANY times while I made changes and reloaded. Could it be youtube detecting it as like⌠hammering abuse and just cut me off? I would think not because it still works in browser. So its seemingly not IP related. No idea why this started.
You can easily be signed in on browser. Not sure if you can be signed in on VRChats yt-dlp, also I wouldnât want to risk my Google account lol, I like having a Gmail account.
But yeah, YouTube can easily tell the difference between your logged in browser and other things.
Yea, super unfortunate. I think they have blacklisted my current machine from using yt-dlp without authenticating. VRChat uses a special version of yt-dlp that doesnt even contain the command line switches for logging in. I tried using tthe newest one from github that has the âget cookies from browserâ function and it worked. So I can no longer anonymously use yt-dlp it seems. My best hope is that its just a cooldown situation. If I permanently cant watch youtube videos in vrchat that would be so lame. As a DJ that makes venues, I use this functionality a lot. Thanks for the help though.
Hi, ive been dealing with the exact same issue, since 4 days ago. i was wondering if this was ever sorted out? ive tried every solution i have found and i have no idea what else to do, im at a loss and kinda just need to know if this is it for my binges and spooky events XD
I was able to get a reply from YouTube support on X, I linked them a short video of the issue. They have not responded, itâs been days. I am seeing more and more posts about it though on here, so we arenât alone.
Contacting YouTube support? Thatâs brave. VRChat uses YouTube in a way that would be seen as either an adblocker or a download tool, both of which they are not fans of.
Nice got the issue starting today, seems like i wonât be able to watch any YouTube on vrc anymore⌠god i hate this media platform managed by such greedy freaks
YouTube is experimenting with some sort of new aggressive IP-based block on videoplayback urls - perhaps to replace or complement the existing âsign in to confirm you are not a botâ error on the player endpoint. This produces an HTTP 403 error on videoplayback urls, regardless of client and protocol (HTTPS, DASH, HLS, UMP, SABR, ONESIE).
If you are seeing this for the first time, backing off further downloading/requests for a little while may help to lift it. It is recommended to make use of the yt-dlp sleep options to help avoid it.
When youâre affected by this issue, youâll only be able to watch YouTube while signed into their site on a browser. Other locations (third-party app, Discord, Private mode) will not work.
I just attempted to set this up to fix the error but I dont have a yt dlp folder in the appdata folder. Do you have a way to generate a yt folder with the config file? I cant find anything online after doing a pretty thorough search
Hey Rythmx. A bunch of my post unfortunately got automatically flagged as spam/advertising (since they were so similar as thereâs 15 topics all about the same issue lol)
I just updated the program & config generation is now working as expected - I forgot to check if AppData\Roaming\yt-dlp existed before trying to make the config file (and windows is picky about making files in directories that donât exist xP)
Hereâs the link again for anyone looking for the fix :3
Perfect timing on the update! This issue has been driving me nuts lol I just tried it and it did auto generate the appdata folder. Now I just need to figure out which name the config file wants since im using containers in zen browser and we should be back to normal!
Update: Im happy to report that this fix works perfectly! YT videos and streams come up just like before and havent had a interruption to playing in a couple days. Keep in mind that when you set this up you do have to restart your PC for it to take effect, especially with the containers fix mentioned in the instructions. Just restarting vrc wont cut it. Thanks for the fix!
My best hope is that its just a cooldown situation. If I permanently cant watch youtube videos in vrchat that would be so lame. As a DJ that makes venues, I use this functionality a lot. Thanks for the help though.