5 ms·

Show HN: A no-watermark video downloader for Any social media

28 points by bojanstef4 2y ago

Hi HN reader, I'm a solo-founder navigating product market fit. I've spent 3 years building Double Subtitles which I am very proud of, but I don't know how to do marketing and my growth is somewhat stagnant. Through learning about SEO, I discovered this opportunity that I want to share: There are a lot of websites that let you download social media videos, which have extremely high traffic. But they are all disjoint, in the sense that some download TikTok videos, while others download Instagram videos, others YouTube, etc... I quickly prototyped software which downloads any video from any link. Currently the live version of FastDownload only supports TikTok and YouTube videos, since they are the most stable. But I will slowly start rolling out Instagram and other services weekly. ps. Personally, what I think is really cool is this Apple Shortcut, which lets you download videos directly from within whatever app you're in, using Share Action Extensions. pps. Another thing I'm very excited about is that while doing analysis with Ahrefs and SEMRush I have been able to identify many high value keywords which I'm deploying pSEO strategies for now. I hope this product is helpful and any feedback (even negative) would bring me joy. All the best, Bojan

bojanstef4 2y ago
Apple Shortcut: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/f0e03a0999d44e6da53b0522e98549a7 https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/f0e03a0999d44e6da53b0522e98...
xnx 2y ago
Does this use yt-dlp?
lxgr 2y ago
What's Double Subtitles? Sounds interesting!
- bojanstef4 2y ago
  The TLDR is: an AI subtitle editor for videos. The longer story is: I started working on an AI-empowered subtitle editor in 2020 before the GPT boom. The idea was great but unfortunately my work-status didn't allow me to launch. So I waited until everything was proper, and then launched Double Subtitles late 2023. I'm trying to figure out how to get my first customers. A few differentiators with Double Subtitles are: 1. The speech-to-text response time is industry leading 2. It supports up to 1 hour long videos while most competitors support 5-10 minutes max
kinduff 2y ago
Congrats on the launch! Your oembed endpoint is pretty fast! Would love to hear some technical details about your product.
- bojanstef4 2y ago
  Hey thanks! I'm happy to answer technical questions, I'm on Telegram at the same username I use here (without the 4).
thot_experiment 2y ago
just put yt-dlp on your path and you can do this without sharing your data with some weird SEO garbager it's so lamentable that putting a binary on your path is too technical for most people these days as the user experience is so so much better than any other option, anytime I want to share a short form video i can Ctrl + L -> Ctrl + C to get the link, Ctrl + R to summon a command prompt, type `ytdl` Shift + Insert to paste the url and then I can drag the resultant file into whatever sharing tool I want to use, guaranteeing it's never going to be taken offline and whoever I'm sharing with doesn't need to have an account or solve a captcha or something else dumb
- crispyambulance 2y ago
  I agree with you that yt-dlp is the most practical way to do this stuff, but that simply isn't clear to most folks. Pretend you don't know how to download videos, the first thing you do is google "how to download youtube videos". The result? A whole lot of bad advice-- sketchy websites, clickbait videos, advice to pay for youtube premium, warnings that it's illegal and that google can cut off your access, vlc player can do it apparently, and then finally inside a reddit thread someone writes "yt-dlp is the best" (nothing else, no link). One would think that google itself has an interest in keeping this information away from people :-). I can't even remember how I first found it myself!
  - thefz 2y ago
    Well if yt-dlp is "too technical", there is always Open Video Downloader https://github.com/jely2002/youtube-dl-gui https://github.com/jely2002/youtube-dl-gui Which is a GUI wrapper around it.
- aaron695 2y ago
  [dead]
- anta40 2y ago
  I previously used yt-dl, then yt-dlp. So for it works nice. But, CLI only can be intimidating for non-tech users. Let's say there are multiple high resolutions of a video: 1280x720, 1920x1080, 2650x1440, 3840x2160 etc. By default, yt-dlp will fetch the highest one, which is 3840x2160. I want 1920x1080 instead. What I do is fetch the 1920x1080 video and the highest quality audio, then join those with ffmpeg. A GUI to easily do that is definitely a nice addition.
Waterluvian 2y ago
I wonder if the top FAQ question should be “how can this be free?”
crindy 2y ago
Why say "any social media" when it's only Youtube and TikTok?
- dylan604 2y ago
  They already admitted they struggle with marketing
  - bojanstef4 2y ago
    isn't that what marketing is? inflating your product with words
    - crindy 2y ago
      Nope. Underpromise, overdeliver. Build something so useful that you don't need to inflate it to get it noticed.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        sure, that's what it should be, but that's not what it is.
tnixc 2y ago
https://cobolt.tools https://cobolt.tools is free, open source, and more feature complete. It’s my go-to and I think it’s awesome.
- andrea81 2y ago
  Server not found
- aprilnya 2y ago
  Typoed link, the correct one is https://cobalt.tools https://cobalt.tools
  - nadermx 2y ago
    Cobalt is pretty awesome. Like their design
- exogen 2y ago
  Unfortunately it doesn't seem to support Instagram stories, which is the type of media I find myself wanting to save the most. OP: in case you weren't aware, websites that do this have been facing legal challenges recently, with some being shut down. I suspect that's part of the reason there's room in the market for yours... while it lasts :(
  - aprilnya 2y ago
    Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t — I remember seeing a post on Cobalt’s Twitter saying they fixed Instagram support, and then just a few hours later a post saying it broke again…
  - bojanstef4 2y ago
    Thanks for the heads up
paxys 2y ago
My advice – it is perfectly fine to do this as a random fun side project with no real expectations, but if you are a solo founder looking for product market fit for a serious product I don't understand the rationale behind going on all on something that is fundamentally illegal and/or against the ToS of the services you are relying on. You will be cut off at moment's notice if your work actually does turn out to be popular. What are you expecting here exactly? To start a company? To make profits?

28 points by bojanstef4 2y ago

bojanstef4 2y ago

Apple Shortcut: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/f0e03a0999d44e6da53b0522e98549a7 https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/f0e03a0999d44e6da53b0522e98...

xnx 2y ago

Does this use yt-dlp?

lxgr 2y ago

What's Double Subtitles? Sounds interesting!

bojanstef4 2y ago
The TLDR is: an AI subtitle editor for videos. The longer story is: I started working on an AI-empowered subtitle editor in 2020 before the GPT boom. The idea was great but unfortunately my work-status didn't allow me to launch. So I waited until everything was proper, and then launched Double Subtitles late 2023. I'm trying to figure out how to get my first customers. A few differentiators with Double Subtitles are: 1. The speech-to-text response time is industry leading 2. It supports up to 1 hour long videos while most competitors support 5-10 minutes max

kinduff 2y ago

Congrats on the launch! Your oembed endpoint is pretty fast! Would love to hear some technical details about your product.

bojanstef4 2y ago
Hey thanks! I'm happy to answer technical questions, I'm on Telegram at the same username I use here (without the 4).

thot_experiment 2y ago

just put yt-dlp on your path and you can do this without sharing your data with some weird SEO garbager it's so lamentable that putting a binary on your path is too technical for most people these days as the user experience is so so much better than any other option, anytime I want to share a short form video i can Ctrl + L -> Ctrl + C to get the link, Ctrl + R to summon a command prompt, type `ytdl` Shift + Insert to paste the url and then I can drag the resultant file into whatever sharing tool I want to use, guaranteeing it's never going to be taken offline and whoever I'm sharing with doesn't need to have an account or solve a captcha or something else dumb

crispyambulance 2y ago
I agree with you that yt-dlp is the most practical way to do this stuff, but that simply isn't clear to most folks. Pretend you don't know how to download videos, the first thing you do is google "how to download youtube videos". The result? A whole lot of bad advice-- sketchy websites, clickbait videos, advice to pay for youtube premium, warnings that it's illegal and that google can cut off your access, vlc player can do it apparently, and then finally inside a reddit thread someone writes "yt-dlp is the best" (nothing else, no link). One would think that google itself has an interest in keeping this information away from people :-). I can't even remember how I first found it myself!
- thefz 2y ago
  Well if yt-dlp is "too technical", there is always Open Video Downloader https://github.com/jely2002/youtube-dl-gui https://github.com/jely2002/youtube-dl-gui Which is a GUI wrapper around it.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
anta40 2y ago
I previously used yt-dl, then yt-dlp. So for it works nice. But, CLI only can be intimidating for non-tech users. Let's say there are multiple high resolutions of a video: 1280x720, 1920x1080, 2650x1440, 3840x2160 etc. By default, yt-dlp will fetch the highest one, which is 3840x2160. I want 1920x1080 instead. What I do is fetch the 1920x1080 video and the highest quality audio, then join those with ffmpeg. A GUI to easily do that is definitely a nice addition.

Waterluvian 2y ago

I wonder if the top FAQ question should be “how can this be free?”

crindy 2y ago

Why say "any social media" when it's only Youtube and TikTok?

dylan604 2y ago
They already admitted they struggle with marketing
- bojanstef4 2y ago
  isn't that what marketing is? inflating your product with words
  - crindy 2y ago
    Nope. Underpromise, overdeliver. Build something so useful that you don't need to inflate it to get it noticed.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      sure, that's what it should be, but that's not what it is.

tnixc 2y ago

https://cobolt.tools https://cobolt.tools is free, open source, and more feature complete. It’s my go-to and I think it’s awesome.

andrea81 2y ago
Server not found
aprilnya 2y ago
Typoed link, the correct one is https://cobalt.tools https://cobalt.tools
- nadermx 2y ago
  Cobalt is pretty awesome. Like their design
exogen 2y ago
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to support Instagram stories, which is the type of media I find myself wanting to save the most. OP: in case you weren't aware, websites that do this have been facing legal challenges recently, with some being shut down. I suspect that's part of the reason there's room in the market for yours... while it lasts :(
- aprilnya 2y ago
  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t — I remember seeing a post on Cobalt’s Twitter saying they fixed Instagram support, and then just a few hours later a post saying it broke again…
- bojanstef4 2y ago
  Thanks for the heads up

paxys 2y ago

My advice – it is perfectly fine to do this as a random fun side project with no real expectations, but if you are a solo founder looking for product market fit for a serious product I don't understand the rationale behind going on all on something that is fundamentally illegal and/or against the ToS of the services you are relying on. You will be cut off at moment's notice if your work actually does turn out to be popular. What are you expecting here exactly? To start a company? To make profits?