playlist metadata inconsistent

[talmobi]

This issue is to track recent inconsistencies for playlist metadata ytInitialData results.

It seems that some youtube servers are returning inconsistent playlist metadata in the ytInitialData.

I'm not sure why this is.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7k0JFoxwvTbKL8kjGI_CaV31QxCGf1vJ sometimes returns a playlist of only 5 videos instead of the 9 that it currently has.

The videos not present in the inconsistent ytInitialData response are:

The Max Fleischer Cartoon (From "Superman)
[Deleted Video]
[Private Video]
Hans Zimmer - Man of Steel Theme

video id's of these are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQtKjU_pOuw&list=PL7k0JFoxwvTbKL8kjGI_CaV31QxCGf1vJ&index=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1PjuAq-ua0&list=PL7k0JFoxwvTbKL8kjGI_CaV31QxCGf1vJ&index=2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br_8B1exfm8&list=PL7k0JFoxwvTbKL8kjGI_CaV31QxCGf1vJ&index=4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EngKxF3Cqh4&list=PL7k0JFoxwvTbKL8kjGI_CaV31QxCGf1vJ&index=8

[talmobi]

update:

it seems the videos in question are troublesome.

links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQtKjU_pOuw&list=PL7k0JFoxwvTbKL8kjGI_CaV31QxCGf1vJ&index=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EngKxF3Cqh4&list=PL7k0JFoxwvTbKL8kjGI_CaV31QxCGf1vJ&index=8

These videos are sometimes "unavailable" or "copyright restricted". It seems this happens randomly even if you use the same IP address. Same issue happens in US IP and European IP (I used VPN to test).

And because of this, it seems the ytInitialData will sometimes omit these videos from showing up in the playlist.

My guess is that there are some youtube servers in the cluster swarm that is handling requests that will respond differently.

It's so weird because if you just keep refreshing the video will be unavailable some of the time and work other times.

Not sure what to do. Guess we'll have to wait until youtube will converge into returning a consistent result?

My previous test was not good because the playlist auto-jumped to next video so I got inconsitent results.

It seems that both videos work in US, but outside of US they are unavailable and Copyright restricted.

In Canada one of them seems to work while the other is restricted.

Regardless the ytInitialData response is inconsistent depending on who makes the request from where. It's not clear how this should be handled. The playlist metadata is sometimes returned fine even outside US and logically should not depend on which of the videos in the playlist is available or not but alas.

Guess we'll have to wait and see for a bit into what youtube converges into returning consistently.

[talmobi]

It looks like deleted or restricted videos no longer show up in the list at all. Instead an additional alert is shown on the page indicating how many videos have been hidden.