Coub Downloader

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

Table of contents

• How it works
  • Downloading own list of URLs
• Requirements
• How to install ffmpeg
• How to run
  • Username vs Display name
• Configuration
  • Configuration Properties
• Files structure
• Understanding metadata
  • Basic raw metadata
  • Segments
• How to find Access Token
• Credit
• Troubleshooting

How it works

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 usernames (not display names!) 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)

Username vs Display name

If you want to download specific channel, you must enter channel's username. This can be confusing as username is not same thing as Display name. My display name is Bukk94, but my username is bukk9433113.

Username is often auto-generated (unless specified otherwise) with 8 or more characters, numbers, dots or dashes. Username can be found as part of the channel's URL address (e.g. https://coub.com/bukk9433113).

Configuration

CoubDownload is meant to be as simple as possible. Although you can set some settings through downloader itself, it wasn't enough for more advanced users. For those users, there is Configuration.json file in the root directory. Using this file you can further modify final output of the downloader.

You can open the file with any text editor (for example notepad).

Configuration properties

• DownloadSegments - true/false if CoubDownloader should download additional metadata.
• Loops - Number of loops for final video (by default until end of audio, but someone wants just one loop).
• WaitTime - Number of seconds to wait between each download. This reduces Coub's server load and you can more easily avoid ban detection.
• VideoQuality - By default, highest quality is downloaded, but you can download Medium (~720p) or Low (~360p) quality.
• KeepAudioVideo - Each Coub consists of audio and video. They are both combined into final Coub. By default those files are removed, but you can choose to keep them.
• OutputFolderPath - By default, all Coubs are downloaded into Root directory. You can change that and enter your own directory (e.g. on a different drive).
• NsfwOnly - true/false if CoubDownloader should download only NSFW coubs or all of them. NOTE that Coub will permanently remove all NSFW coubs on June 27th 2022, and this option will stop working (as there will be nothing to download).

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

   

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

   

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

   

6. In this list, find item called remember_token

   

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.

Credit

Python script was originally written by artemtar. I used his script as a base and made several adjustments to properly fit this CoubDownloader's usage and to avoid common issues and problems.

Troubleshooting

• Problem: Program closes right after opening
  • Solution: This is caused by missing .NET 5.0 runtime library. Try installing the runtime library or downloading full version of the tool.
• Problem: CoubDownloader cannot download coubs/lists and I can't access Coub websites anymore.
  • Solution: That means you were temporarily IP banned from Coub's website (usually for 1 hour). Don't panic, after some time you'll be able to access it again. This happens when you are mass downloading coubs within short interval. Try opening Configuration.json file and increasing WaitTime to 3 or more seconds.