How To Archives

The main subject of this site: how to get something done, further divided by tags.

How to reactivate Easy YouTube Video Downloader for Firefox

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There’s a really useful Firefox plugin called the Easy YouTube Video Downloader by Dishita. Here’s the direct link on the Firefox Add-Ons Directory. Once installed, it allows you to download MP4 and MP3 versions of any video on YouTube. That’s super handy if one my streams is not recorded properly at my end. Let me tell you, it’s always good to have a local backup of things!

With the free version we can download MP3 files in 128Kbps and MP4 files in 720p. Higher resolutions are available with the Pro Version, for which you can make a voluntary donation. It’ll work immediately after you’ve made a payment, by clicking a link provided to you via email.

Trouble is, every once in a while (usually after a Firefox update), the Pro Version reverts back to the Free Version, and you’re stuck without all your paid for Pro Features. How do we get them back without paying again?

I’ve just found out – and I thought I’d remind us all how this works.

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How Quality Options work in YouTube, Twitch and Mixer streams

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When we watch a video online, we usually get an option to pick a quality/resolution at the bottom right of the player. It’s often represented by a little gear icon that lets us choose either “auto” or a specific format like 480p or 720p.

But when we watch a live stream, those options might vary or be completely absent.

In this article I’ll discuss why that is and how different services deal with Quality Options in Live Streams.

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How to find your Followers on Twitch (as of July 2020)

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Twitch never had a simple menu item to access a list of your followers. Looks like since July 2020, we finally have one… again! This thing keeps changing, but we all want to see who’s following us. After all, if you’ve had a nice conversation with somebody, and you’d like to see when they’re live … Read more

How to copy Windows.old to an external drive

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After a recent Windows 10 Refresh, I found myself with most of my data missing from my installation – a bit of a surprise, having done Windows refreshes before and seeing that I selected the option to “keep all my data”. Ah well…

However, Windows was kind enough to preserve much of my previous configuration in an folder called Windows.old. As such, I could at least go back to some of the system data that I needed. Thank you, Windows 🙂

Before moving on with major re-installation work, I thought it would be wise to preserve the Windows.old folder on an external drive and make some room on my main SSD. I thought it’s just a simple matter of dragging the folder over – but that was not the case. When I tried, only perhaps 1GB of the total 30GB the folder contained was copied over.

What’s going on here? Why is this happening? My user name is exactly the same as before, why can I not create an exact replica of the whole folder somewhere else?

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How to find your Twitch Stream Key (2019)

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The Twitch web interface changes what feels like every two months, which means I can never find my Twitch streaming key (granted, we only needed when setting up a new package). So for February 2019, here’s how to find it: Login to Twitch.tv and head over to the top right corner and click on your … Read more

How to download videos from YouTube in 1080p

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When I do live streams on YouTube, I frequently forget to record my programme locally. I guess there’s just so many buttons to press in the heat of the moment.

Hence I was looking for a way to extract full 1080p HD footage from YouTube, ideally both for my own files as well as those from other users.

Right now (February 2019), YouTube only allows me to download a 720p version of my own clips, and a YouTube Premium subscription is required to download other users’ footage. Either way, my desktop streams are usually 1080p, and that’s what I’d like to download for local archiving. 

I hunted around for a solution, and doing a quick Google search presented several contenders – many of which no longer work since YouTube have once again re-jigged some aspect of their operation. Most solutions, online and offline, can handle 720p for free, but again that’s not what I was looking for.

Thankfully I found a Firefox Add-On by a developer named Dishita, called Easy YouTube Downloader. It’s available for free from the Firefox Add-Ons repository.

Easy YouTube Downloader in action

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