Coub Downloader

MIT License version

This downloader is console application targeted for Windows users and all fans of Coub. For now, this downloader is able to download:

  • LIKED coubs from user’s profile (keyword liked)
  • Bookmarked coubs (keyword bookmarks)
  • Coubs from any channel
  • Channel’s reposts
  • Own list of Coub URLs

How it works

guide

User will input names of what to download. Then the tool it will gather all the links with Coubs metadata. In the second phase it will download all gathered coubs one by one. Each coub will be processed in highest available quality in mp4 format.

If user is downloading liked/bookmarked coubs, he must provide personal Access Token.

Tool will automatically skip URL gathering if URL list already exists and skips all already downloaded coubs (if name matches).

Downloading own list of URLs

You can also choose to download your own list by inserting it into proper structure. Create a folder called Coubs-info inside the folder where CoubDownloader.exe is. Inside that, create another folder, call it whatever you want (e.g. MyList). And inside that subfolder, create file url_list.txt with URLs to download. URLs must be separated by new-lines.

Final structure should look like this: CoubDownloader\Coubs-info\mylist\url_list.txt. When running the downloader, during input insert nothing (just hit enter to continue) or insert name of the folder (in this case MyList).

Requirements

No installation or additional download needed if you’ll download full version of the Downloader in the Releases section.

Otherwise it depends on:

  • ffmpeg
  • Python 3.6 and above (included in all release packages)

How to install ffmpeg

  • Download newest version of ffmpeg here
  • Unzip downloaded file, for example to C:\ffmpeg
    • Go to \bin folder and find ffmpeg.exe
    • Copy this executable file into root folder of the downloader (at the same level as CoubDownloader.exe)
  • OR
    • Open CMD with admin privileges and type following command:
    • setx /m PATH "C:\ffmpeg\bin;%PATH%"
    • Restart PC (yes, this is mandatory)

If you save ffmpeg into different folder than C:\ffmpeg, don’t forget to modify the command in CMD accordingly to match actual \bin directory.

How to run

  • Download latest release package (already contain portable Python)
  • Make sure you have ffmpeg installed
  • Run CoubDownloader.exe
  • Enter channels to download, keywords liked or bookmarks to download liked/bookmarked coubs.
    • You can download multiple channels at once, separated by comma (e.g. liked,bookmarks,coub.channel)

Files structure

  • [Root]\Coubs-info\[dir]
    • Contains URLs to download as well as some metadata information like coub’s original name and tags. Each category has its own folder
  • [Root]\Coubs\[dir]
    • Actual coubs downloaded by the tool
  • [Root]\Coubs\[dir]\Reposts
    • Channel reposted coubs

Understanding metadata

Basic raw metadata

Metadata are JSON files containing detail information about each coub. Within those metadata you can find information like Coub’s category, views/likes/dislikes count, tags, size, audio/video URLs with different qualities, if coub is NSFW, banned, age restricted, cropped, and many many more.

Segments

Special metadata type are segments. They contain similar information like metadata. But in addition to that they contain raw video (without COUB watermark) as well as exact audio marks.

Not every coub has segments data (mostly recoubs) and sometimes the segments might not be even generated. Segments generation can be tracked by linked state/progress. I assume that generation is triggered by hitting correct API endpoint on /segments.

How to find Access Token

There are several ways to obtaining your Access Token.

Option 1:

  1. Log into your Coub account

  2. Go to your likes page

  3. Next the URL address, you’ll find a small lock icon

    guide

  4. After clicking on the lock, a small window appears. Select Cookies:

    guide

  5. New window will pop out. Select coub.com and then Cookies folder:

    guide

  6. In this list, find item called remember_token

    guide

  7. Click on this value and it should display details

  8. You should see long set of numbers and letters, this is your Access Token, copy it to the tool when asked.

Option 2:

  1. Log into your Coub account
  2. Go to your likes page
  3. Open developer console (press F12 if using Google Chrome)
  4. Go to Network tab (number 1 in picture)
  5. Reload the page (refresh / press F5)
  6. You should see a lot of stuff going on in the Network tab. Wait for page to fully load
  7. To ease the search, type ‘likes’ into the search bar (number 2 in picture)
  8. Click on the row called ‘likes’ (number 3 in picture)
  9. In ‘Response Headers’, search for value remember_token=
  10. The value after = is your Access Token, copy it to the tool when asked.

guide guide_2

Credit

Downloader in python was written by artemtar. I forked his repo and made several adjustments to avoid common formatting issues and other minor problems.

Known problems

  • Error in the download process will crash whole program

Troubleshooting

  • Problem: Program closes right after opening
    • Solution: This is caused by missing .NET 5.0 runtime library. Try installing the runtime or downloading self-contained version of the tool.

GitHub

View Github