§ Part I: Filme

ARD uses a video streaming player that streams H.264+AAC content from an akamaihd CDN. Subtitles are in TimedText format.

§ Example URL for episode download

To see which streams are available, inspect network traffic with your browser and download the master.m3u8 file, you will find something like that:

https://dasersteuni-vh.akamaihd.net/i/de/YYYY/MM/DD/<UUID>/,512-1,640-1,320-1,480-1,1280-1,960-1,.mp4.csmil/index_2_av.m3u8?null=0
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=316000,RESOLUTION=480x270,CODECS="avc1.66.30, mp4a.40.2",CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE
https://dasersteuni-vh.akamaihd.net/i/de/YYYY/MM/DD/<UUID>/,512-1,640-1,320-1,480-1,1280-1,960-1,.mp4.csmil/index_3_av.m3u8?null=0
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=3771000,RESOLUTION=1280x720,CODECS="avc1.64001f, mp4a.40.2",CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE
https://dasersteuni-vh.akamaihd.net/i/de/YYYY/MM/DD/<UUID>/,512-1,640-1,320-1,480-1,1280-1,960-1,.mp4.csmil/index_4_av.m3u8?null=0
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=1988000,RESOLUTION=960x540,CODECS="avc1.77.30, mp4a.40.2",CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE
https://dasersteuni-vh.akamaihd.net/i/de/YYYY/MM/DD/<UUID>/,512-1,640-1,320-1,480-1,1280-1,960-1,.mp4.csmil/index_5_av.m3u8?null=0

<UUID> is a unique directory with the transmission content

choose the desired resolution (streams won't go beyond 1280x720 anyways), f.e.:

https://dasersteuni-vh.akamaihd.net/i/de/YYYY/MM/DD/<UUID>/,512-1,640-1,320-1,480-1,1280-1,960-1,.mp4.csmil/index_1_av.m3u8?null=0

build the download URL with:

https://pdvideosdaserste-a.akamaihd.net + /de/YYYY/MM/DD/<UUID>/ + 1280-1.mp4

Notes:

• Sometimes the path /de can be replaced with /int (check carefully the master.m3u file).

• Sometimes "1280x720" resolution is not explicit but the file is there as well most of the time.

• Movies rated FSK ab 16 or FSK ab 18 are not available before late evening. You can circumvent the block searching in the network traffic the XML file of the movie (there should be only one), that provides the needed YYYY/MM/DD/<UUID> and also a path to the subtitle XML file.

To keep things easy, you can straight inspect the response for a GET that will provide everything (streams and subtitles links):

http://mediathek.daserste.de/play/media/<movie_id>?devicetype=pc&features=

§ Part II: Untertitel

Example URL for subtitles:

get the documentId from URL, f.e.:

http://mediathek.daserste.de/Filme-im-Ersten/<Film_name>/Video?bcastId=1933898&documentId=57028028

get the player configuration from:

http://mediathek.daserste.de/play/media/57028028?devicetype=pc

then search for _subtitleUrl and download the XML.

or you can have fun guessing the subtitle filename, they are machine generated and it's always an XML:

https://www.daserste.de/unterhaltung/serie/<fernsehserie>/videos-folgen-verpasst/<fernsehserie_folge_1>-ut100.xml

https://www.daserste.de/unterhaltung/film/filmmittwoch-im-ersten/videos/<movie-title-slugified>-video-ut102.xml

https://www.daserste.de/unterhaltung/film/film-im-ersten/videos/<movie-title-slugified>-video-ut100.xml

Then convert the XML to .srt (more common in video players):

• works fine!

  # first fix timings
  cat orig.xml | sed 's/="10:/="00:/g' | sed 's/="11:/="01:/g' > tmp.xml
  # convert XML -> SRT on that website
  dos2unix file.srt
  

• You can do it using some scrips, f.e. this one (not tested).

thanks ARD for putting all this wealth of stuff free for everyone.