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Let's talk about BBdown#

Before I recommend this software on "Running Cheese" (https://www.runningcheese.com), the software I often used was BBDown (https://github.com/nilaoda/BBDown). After using it for over a year, I found the pros and cons as follows:

• Pros:

1. No need to manually capture cookies. The built-in bbdown login and bbdown logintv can automatically capture the necessary cookie parts for the program, which is very user-friendly for beginners.
2. Default multi-threaded downloading, and can call Aria2 for ultra-fast downloading.
3. Default support for multi-part downloading, list downloading, and favorites downloading, without the need for additional parameter settings.
4. Can globally specify downloading HEVC, AV1, AVC encoding without individual specification.
5. The exe file is easy to carry and share with others, and easy to use when changing computers.
6. There is a third-party GUI (https://github.com/1299172402/BBDown_GUI) available, which is easy to get started with.

• Cons:

1. Due to the large number of users (possibly), the features are too obvious, so the cookie will be blacklisted for a period of time after long-term high-speed downloading (at this time, the download speed is less than 10kB/s), and it will recover later, but the specific recovery time is unknown.
2. Need to manually change the system environment variables, which is difficult for unfamiliar users and cannot move the exe file location after configuration.

Introducing Bilix

Today, following the tutorial ¹, I configured Bilix for easier and faster downloading. Currently, I found the pros and cons of Bilix as follows:

• Pros:

1. Installed using the pip package manager, no need to manually configure environment variables.
2. The download interface is intuitive, with no unnecessary log output.
3. Can achieve multi-threading (customizable thread quantity) downloading without Aria2c.
4. Cookie will not be blacklisted (temporarily).

• Cons:

1. Because of the pip package manager, Python needs to be installed, which is unnecessary for those who are unwilling to install additional software for just one application (and cannot be packaged).
2. List downloading, favorites downloading, and multi-part downloading require specifying different functions, such as get_video, get_series, etc.
3. Need to manually capture the cookie (requires the SESSDATA segment).
4. Unable to specify the download encoding, need to first info and then specify the desired encoding to download :(

Unlike the biggest pain point of BBdown, which is the blacklisting of cookies, the pain point of Bilix is only the tedious configuration part. Therefore, for users like me who often need to download a large number of Bilibili videos (mainly long-term LIVE videos), the best choice is Bilix.

Configuring Bilix

Configuring Bilix requires installing Python, which is very simple, just remember to check the option to add Python to PATH during installation.

1. Install Bilix
   Bilix installation is relatively simple, just open CMD and enter the following command:

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   pip install bilix
   

2. Configure the download command

   • Here, the environment used is "Chrome + ContextSearch plugin". The configuration reference can be found in the settings of "ContextSearchOptions_Chrome.zip" shared by "Running Cheese" (https://www.lanzouh.com/b07nx1b4f). Only modify the download directory (where -dir is) and the cookie (where --cookie is).
   • Download the .zip file and unzip it, then import the json file into the ContextSearch plugin. At this time, you can see that Bilix is grayed out and needs to be enabled by right-clicking and selecting "Show".
   • Download the "ContextSearch-Native-App.zip" file from the link in step 1 and unzip it. After entering the folder, find "install.py" and open CMD, then enter:
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   python install.py
   

   • Double-click on Bilix in the ContextSearch plugin to see the version number displayed in the lower left corner of the popup window (e.g., "2.17"), indicating that the configuration is complete.

3. Capture the cookie

   • Log in to Bilibili and go to the "Personal Center" (https://space.bilibili.com).
   • Press F12 and switch to the "Network" tab, then refresh the webpage.
   • Find your UID (e.g., mine is "6095761") and click on it. Then you can find the cookie section. Copy all of it to a notepad, Word, or other location for later use.
     
   • Find the "SESSDATA" field in the cookie and copy the content from "SESSDATA=" to before the next field (e.g., if the cookie is "SESSDATA=8fd7a4a4%2C1679606403%2C1234567890 ,bili_jct=xhdfikloqp236j1", only copy "8fd7a4a4%2C1679606403%2C1234567890").
   • Double-click on the Bilix option in ContextSearch, add \"--cookie copied SESSDATA field from the previous step\" to the command (e.g., \"--cookie 8fd7a4a4%2C1679606403%2C1234567890\"), and save it.

4. Start downloading
   Now, find any 4K or even 8K video, copy the link, click on the ContextSearch extension, paste it into the text field, and click on Bilix to start high-speed downloading of the original video.

Note: Bilix defaults to downloading the highest quality video.

Reference links:

1. "Running Cheese - The fastest video downloading method on the Internet!" (https://www.runningcheese.com/onekey-video-download)
2. "Running Cheese - How to tame Chrome, Edge, and Firefox at the same time!" (https://www.runningcheese.com/openwith)
3. BBdown - GitHub (https://github.com/nilaoda/BBDown)
4. Bilix - GitHub (https://github.com/HFrost0/bilix)
5. "One-click Video Download" - Lanzou Cloud (https://www.lanzouh.com/b07nx1b4f)