CYS Audio/Video Downloader -free Firefox add-on

In general, we ask that you keep the review section on the add-on's AMO page free of bug reports and inconsiderate outbursts. We value your opinion, but please, express it in a mutually beneficial way. Please, send bug reports to our support email address cytsaver@hotmail.com or create a new issue at cys.mantishub.io. Feel free to ask for new features via email, Mantis, or in a *fair* review posted on our extension's AMO page.

Why not insert the toolbar-button in front of the url bar in new installs of CYS 3.3.3+, where it used to be in earlier versions?

The AMO reviewer forced us to move the insertion point in Firefox, so as not to interfere with the "back/forward-button auto-hiding" feature.

Why does CYS only work on video pages/addresses on the source website, why not with embedded videos on other sites?

In order to add this feature we would need to hire more programmers to handle the work load. This can only be done if we reach the 3rd funding goal on Patreon.

Why an extra window when saving complete pages,why not just send to Firefox Download manager?

CYS saves a complete, off-line copy of the video page onto your hard disk, ready for archival. All embedded images, script files and style files are saved. To do this, CYS needs to scan through the web page, enumerate all linked external files, download them, transcribe all links to point to local copies of such files, and then download all comment pages requested by the user as well, and scan through those for similar embedded files. The Save Complete window is necessary to control this highly involved process of page editing and downloading possibly thousands of files.

Does downloading statistics work if the HTTPS-Everywhere extension is installed and enabled?

With the latest version, there should be no issues when using CYS with HTTPS-Everywhere.

Audio

Which is the highest quality audio format CYS can provide?

Absolute highest quality from the source are 192Kbps VBR OGG and 250Kbps CBR AAC. These do not involve transcoding, CYS can simply extract the audio track from the source video without any loss of audio quality. MP3 formats will, however, always involve transcoding, thus they take considerable time to produce locally on your PC, and will also be, theoretically, of slightly lower quality than the source, due to the nature of lossy perceptual coding. Of course, if you go with either of the best quality MP3 options, this loss of quality will be strictly theoretical, it will not be perceptible at all.

Which is the highest quality MP3 option provided by CYS?

It is VBR V1 -even though the bitrates it produces will typically be significantly less than 256Kbps, the best CBR option.

Why does CYS download an entire video when all I want is MP3 audio?

The source web site does not provide high quality MP3s. CYS will download either an audio or a video file containing audio to produce MP3s locally, on your computer. It all depends on what is available, and which option gives the best audio quality, while also trying to minimize the size of the downloaded file.

Why are not all enabled MP3/AAC/M4A/OGG conversion options visible in the detailed menu, especially the highest quality options?

CYS transcodes audio only to MP3 (and WAV), but extracts AAC/M4A/OGG audio tracks without transcoding, i.e. without any quality loss. CYS will always download the smallest video file with high enough audio quality to produce the desired output. Thus, if high enough audio quality is not provided in any of the available formats for a video, the highest quality audio conversion options will not be displayed on the CYS detailed menu. For example, it would not make any sense to transcode 96Kb AAC audio to Lame VBR-V1 or CBR 256Kb MP3, as sound quality will not be any higher, only the resulting file size. Thus, in such cases, only transcoding to Lame VBR V3/V5, or CBR 192Kb/128Kb are offered. On the other hand, for AAC/M4A/OGG, only qualities directly available in videos are displayed at all times.

Why is the size of converted/extracted audio usually much smaller than what the menu indicates?

The size displayed in the menu is "download size", i.e. the size of the source video file. This is also indicated by the pop-up tooltip when hovering above the respective column header on the Detailed Menu tab in Options. It is impossible to know the final size of resulting audio files prior to conversion/extraction, while displaying guessed and expectedly inaccurate size information would be needlessly confusing.

Why am I getting a video when I click on one of the MP3 options?

It means you did not give enough time for the conversion to MP3 to take place. You need to be patient with MP3 conversion. Being transcoding, it takes time, roughly 1-2 seconds per minute of audio to convert. Please, wait for the file to download, then wait for the MP3 conversion to take place properly. Double-clicking, or opening the still downloading file in a media player will block the conversion process, and you will be left with a video named *.MP3. This means the conversion could not complete.

Why does converted MP3 bitrate not match the value in the drop down list?

The indicated bitrate is a statistical average, an approximation only, this is a characteristic of Lame VBR MP3 compression. The essence of VBR mode is keeping a constant *quality* during the track, as opposed to bitrate. You will generally find that more complex, "busier" sounding music will result in significantly higher bitrate. In general, as acoustic instrument sounds usually compress to higher bitrates than synthesized music, heavy metal routinely produces the highest VBR MP3 bitrates, while electronic music is usually much smaller compressed at the same quality level.

Why does the bitrate in converted audio not always match what the menu indicates?

Audio track bitrates have been raised at the source several times over the years. For OGG, M4A and AAC formats, CYS extracts whatever audio track is available from videos without transcoding. CYS does take into account the date the video was uploaded, but there are still a few videos where the real and expected bitrates do not match precisely. In most of these cases, the original video uploaded by the user contained an audio track of poor quality.

What happens when I click to download an audio format, like MP3?

The conversion starts when 100% of the video/audio file is downloaded from the source. FFmpeg is the conversion program used. During conversion: you will also see a temp file in the destination folder, you will get an ffmpeg (.exe) process in the list of running processes of your OS, you will get no response on double clicking on the file in the FF downloads list. This is expected behaviour, while the conversion is carried out. Once the conversion completes, the tmp file is deleted, the ffmpeg process disappears, and you will be able to play the converted file by double clicking it in the FF downloads list. If worried about the conversion process, you may opt to unhide the console window on Windows OSes (in CYS Options). This will let you see all the textual output FFmpeg dumps into its console window during conversion, and when it completes. You might want to do this for very long conversions (video length over 15m).

I downloaded some huge DASH video with audio but muxing somehow failed. Can I mux the video and audio tracks manually to make an MP4 video?

To mux audio + video, follow these steps: ensure that the FFmpeg executable is either in your system PATH, or temporarily, copy the executable into the folder the audio and video to mux are; 2: open a console window (terminal on Linux/Mac), and step into the folder with the audio and video to mux; 3: use the following command replacing *vtrack* with the name of the video track file, and *atrack* with the name of the audio track file: ffmpeg(.exe) -i *vtrack* -vcodec copy -i *atrack* -acodec copy muxed_video_file.mp4; 4: make sure the name you give to the resulting file ("muxed_video_file" here) is different from the name of the video track file, ffmpeg will refuse to do the muxing if they are the same.

FFmpeg

What is FFmpeg and why install it?

FFmpeg is an open source, cross-platform media encoding/decoding/conversion software. Without having FFmpeg on your system, you will be able to download all classic video formats, save complete pages with stats and comments. However, you will need to install FFmpeg on your system and set it up with CYS properly to use some advanced CYS features, like saving any DASH video formats complete with audio with a single click, or the unique high-quality audio conversion/extraction functionality.

Why do conversions and/or DASH format downloads fail on Debian/Ubuntu Linux? I have FFmpeg set up in CYS Options properly.

The version of FFmpeg shipping with Debian/Ubuntu has been outdated/"deprecated" for years. These FFmpeg versions reportedly fail during numerous conversions, DASH format downloads in particular. Please do not use the included FFmpeg version on these systems. Instead, download the tested static binary for your OS from our converter page. There is a Debian RFP intended to resolve this issue.

Why do conversions and/or DASH format downloads fail on Windows XP? I get error messages about "cmdproxy" or ".NET framework", even though I have FFmpeg set up in CYS Options properly. What can I do?

The problem is that you do not have the .NET framework installed properly (or at all) on your XP system. You will need to download and install the .NET framework (version 2 or higher is needed). Alternatively, you may use CYS without the .NET framework, but you need to untick the "Hide console window" checkbox in CYS Options (General tab), in the FFmpeg field. "Cmdproxy.exe" is a small .NET executable CYS uses to hide the console window popping up in Windows OS whenever FFmpeg runs. By disabling this option, you will be able to use all CYS features on Windows XP even without .NET installed -but you will need to put up with the console window popping up during every conversion.

I use portable Firefox, how can I use FFmpeg with CYS?

Just set FFmpeg up in CYS Options once, then copy/move the FFmpeg executable into the profile folder of your Firefox portable installation. If the FFmpeg location is set up, but FFmpeg is not found there, CYS will check the profile folder for the FFmpeg executable and use it if found there.