Vinyl

Ad-free, open-source YouTube downloading website using ytdl-core & FFmpeg

Website Link: https://vinyl-web.com

How does it work?

• Backend deals with streaming data
  • Uses a rapid downloader
    • Splits data into chunks and sends multiple requests before combining chunks together
    • Fallback to streaming data
• Frontend deals with converting data into usable formats
  • FFmpegJS pre-compiled with support for vp9
  • Limit of 5 videos at one time
  • Vercel Exclusive: Uses a hive network to outsource download
• Data transfer is locked when asking for a download
  • Uses aes-256-cbc encryption

Why did I make this?

• Provides a low-cpu-intensive backend environment as the heavy duty tasks are done client side
• A quick way to just find videos and download them from YouTube

How can you help out?

• Simply make a fork of this repository and deploy it on your own server!
  • Currently, local Vercel deployments are not supported
• Make sure to set the URL environment variable!

Environment Variables

Uses .env to store environment variables

URL: [REQUIRED] url of the webpage; used to check against referer header. If not set, uses http://localhost:<Your current port settings>/;

PORT: (defaults to 8080) port to host webpage

KEY: (defaults to random 16 characters) a 16 character key to encrypt messages

IV: (defaults to random 16 characters) a 16 character IV to encrypt messages

SALT: (defaults to random 4 characters) a 4 character salt used to encrypt messages

BYTE_LIMIT: (defaults to Infinity) a set number of bytes used to restrict download sizes

TIME_LIMIT: (defaults to Infinity) a set time (in seconds) used to restrict downloads

QUEUE_LIMIT: (defaults to 5) a set number of items that can be queued at once on site

RAPID_FORKS: (defaults to 1) the number of splits the rapid downloader should make to download a video. Note: a higher value will result in higher memory usage, but will result in a faster download time.

HIVE_QUEEN: [Current Website Only] A reference to the hive queen link. Part of the hive network (exclusive to Vercel deployment)

Hive Network [DEPRECATED]

Developed to supercharge Vinyl on Vercel.

To download a video, a request is sent to the "hive queen" which returns 34 possible URLs to the "hive workers". Vinyl uses these workers to download chunks of a video and then merge the incoming data.

Hive Queen

• Returns all possible workers back to the user

Hive Worker

• Receives a payload and returns a chunk of downloaded information