mobilevids-dl

Mobilevids Downloader

• Introduction
• Features
• Installation instructions
  • Recommended installation method for all Operating Systems
• Filing an issue/Reporting a bug
• Contact

Introduction

Mobilevids is an amazing website for downloading movies and tv shows.

This script makes it easier to batch download movies or TV serials.

Why is this helpful? A utility like wget can work, but has the following limitations:

1. Video names have numbers in them, but this does not correspond to the actual order. Manually renaming them is a pain that is best left for computers.
2. Using names from the syllabus page provides more informative names.
3. Using wget in a for loop picks up extra videos which are not posted/linked, and these are sometimes duplicates.

This work was originally inspired in part by coursera-dl.

Features

• Support for all kinds of movies / TV shows.
• Intentionally detailed names, so that it will display and sort properly on most interfaces (e.g., VLC or MX Video on Android devices).
• Login credentials accepted on command-line or from .netrc file.
• Core functionality tested on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Installation instructions

mobilevids-dl requires Python 3 and a free Mobilevids account.

Note: We strongly recommend that you use a Python 3 interpreter (3.9 or later).

On any operating system, ensure that the Python executable location is added to your PATH environment variable and, once you have the dependencies installed (see next section), for a basic usage, you will need to invoke the script from the main directory of the project and prepend it with the word python. You can also use more advanced features of the program by looking at the "Running the script" section of this document.

Recommended installation method for all Operating Systems

From a command line (preferably, from a virtual environment), simply issue the command:

pip install mobilevids-dl

This will download the latest released version of the program from the Python Package Index (PyPI) along with all the necessary dependencies. At this point, you should be ready to start using it.

If this does not work, because your Python 2 version is too old (e.g. 2.7.5 on Ubuntu 14.4), try:

apt-get install python3 python3-pip
pip3 install mobilevids-dl

instead.

Note 1: We strongly recommend that you don't install the package globally on your machine (i.e., with root/administrator privileges), as the installed modules may conflict with other Python applications that you have installed in your system (or they can interfere with mobilevids-dl). Prefer to use the option --user to pip install, if you can.

Note 2: As already mentioned, we strongly recommend that you use a new Python 3 interpreter (e.g., 3.9 or later), since Python 3 has better support for SSL/TLS (for secure connections) than earlier versions.

Running the script

Refer to mobilevids-dl --help for a complete, up-to-date reference on the runtime options supported by this utility.

usage: mobilevids-dl [-h] [-a] [-d] [-i] [-e EPISODE] [-m MOVIE] [-p PASSWORD] [-s SEASON] [-t TV]
                     [-u USERNAME]
                     [search]

Mobilevids Downloader script

positional arguments:
  search

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -a, --ascii           show ascii art
  -d, --debug           debugs the program - duh
  -i, --info            show info about movie/show
  -e EPISODE, --episode EPISODE
                        download a single episode (must be used with -t [TV ID] and -s [SEASON]
  -m MOVIE, --movie MOVIE
                        downloads the ID of a movie
  -p PASSWORD, --password PASSWORD
                        provide a mobilevids password
  -s SEASON, --season SEASON
                        specify season to download (must use with -t)
  -t TV, --tv TV        download a TV show based on it's ID
  -u USERNAME, --username USERNAME
                        provide a mobilevids username

Run the script to download the media by providing your mobilevids account credentials (e.g. email address and password or a ~/.netrc file), the movie name, as well as any additional parameters:

On *nix platforms, the use of a ~/.netrc file is a good alternative to specifying both your username (i.e., your email address) and password every time on the command line. To use it, simply add a line like the one below to a file named .netrc in your home directory (or the equivalent, if you are using Windows) with contents like:

    machine mobilevids-dl login <user> password <pass>

Create the file if it doesn't exist yet. From then on, you can switch from using -u and -p to simply call mobilevids-dl. This is especially convenient, as typing usernames (email addresses) and passwords directly on the command line can get tiresome (even more if you happened to choose a "strong" password).

Reporting issues

Before reporting any issue please follow the steps below:

1. Verify that you are running the latest version of the script, and the recommended versions of its dependencies, see them in the file requirements.txt. Use the following command if in doubt:

    pip install --upgrade mobilevids-dl
   

2. If the problem persists, feel free to open an issue in our bugtracker, please fill the issue template with as much information as possible.

Filing an issue/Reporting a bug

When reporting bugs against mobilevids-dl, please don't forget to include enough information so that you can help us help you:

• Is the problem happening with the latest version of the script?
• What operating system are you using?
• Do you have all the recommended versions of the modules? See them in the file requirements.txt.
• What are the precise messages that you get? Please, use the --debug option before posting the messages as a bug report. Please, copy and paste them. Don't reword/paraphrase the messages.

Contact

Please, post bugs and issues on github. Please, DON'T send support requests privately to the maintainers! We are quite swamped with day-to-day activities. If you have problems, PLEASE, file them on the issue tracker.