Tutorial: How to download iQiyi video and subtitle directly in browser

This is the official English translation of a post. The original post in bahasa Indonesia can be found here: Tutorial cara mengunduh video dan sub iQiyi via browser.
Note: You can always translate any article using Google Translate tool on the upper right corner (or lower part for mobile view) of this blog.

Welcome 2021! So, for the first post of the year, it will be a tutorial post. This time, Isamu no Heya will share how to download video files along with their subtitles from iQiyi directly through your own browser. And of course, without having to install any apps, programs, plug-ins or add-ons.

A glimpse about iQiyi

iQiyi logo

Since some of you may not be familiar enough with iQiyi, so before we continue, let me tell you what iQiyi is briefly. iQiyi (爱奇艺), pronounced as àiqíyì in pinyin, is a site that provides service that let us to watch videos online, or also known as online streaming service. It was launched on 22 April 2010 by Chinese technology company Baidu. iQiyi also received support from various companies later, like Xiaomi.

iQiyi provides various kinds of content, ranging from dramas, television series (including Korean dramas), cinema movies, animation (including anime), even to original Netflix series which can be officially distributed by them. Animes that can be watched include new series such as Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin), Cells at Work (Hataraku Saibou), Jujutsu Kaisen, and many more. Most of these contents can be enjoyed for free.

Reasons for downloading iQiyi videos

For some, watching videos online (streaming) may already be more than enough. But when it's needed to skip a scene, go back to a particular episode to retrace the events, or even re-watch the whole series, it would be more convenient if a copy of the video is available on our device. Spend no more quota just for buffering because they can be accessed anytime without the Internet. In other words, we may have downloaded them.

Good iQiyi downloader websites

View of iQiyi home page from local version (left) and international version (right)

There are many websites out there that can download videos from YouTube. Sites like safeform.net and keepv.id even claim to be able to download videos from hundreds of streaming sites. So, there must be working downloader sites for iQiyi, right? Actually, yes, there are. To mention a few, videotosave and 9xbuddy. But sometimes, they cannot download videos from certain anime and drama series.

There are two possible causes. First, iQiyi actually has two versions: a local version at iqiyi.com, and an international version at iq.com. So there's a possibility that those downloader sites only support that one version which you don't use. Second, videos on iQiyi are equipped with region locks. List of shows that can be watched in Southeast Asia will be different from the ones in the United States. So it could be that the downloader sites are in a different region from yours, so they can't access the videos.

To find out if a series can be accessed in any region, we can open the video album by clicking on the title of the series under the video player, then in the address bar, add "view-source:" in front of the existing URL. For example, for Cells at Work! S2, the URL that needs to be entered is view-source:https://www.iq.com/album/rou2ra211h.

How to view the source code of a page in Mozilla Firefox

Each of the 2-letter codes after "regionsAllowed" at the bottom of the page is a country code based on ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2. So for the previous example, the series can only be accessed in Thailand (th), Philippines (ph), Malaysia (my), Laos (la), Indonesia (id), Cambodia (kh), Brunei (bn), Vietnam (vn) , Singapore (sg), Myanmar (mm), Hong Kong (hk), and Macau (mo).

Types and format of iQiyi videos and subtitles

Due to the reasons mentioned above, you cannot rely on downloader sites and apps. So, the most likely way is to download it yourself, directly from the browser. However, Mozilla Firefox is highly recommended because it is much easier to use when downloading these files than other browsers, like Google Chrome. Besides that, Firefox also allows us to download videos from iQiyi both on a computer and on a mobile phone.

And for the format, iQiyi provides various of them to make sure that their videos can be played in as many devices as they can. The videos can be in MP4, TS (Transport Stream), or QSV (Quick Sync Video) format. For subtitles, it can be a SRT (SubRip Text), XML TTML (Timed Text Markup Language), or WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks) format.

Steps to download iQiyi videos from browser

Okay, here's the core of this post, how to download or save videos from iQiyi to your computer or mobile device. The resulting videos are in MP4 format and generally have a resolution of 360p.

Mozilla Firefox (main method)

1. Open the page of the video you want to download
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+M
   (Or from Menu > Web Developer > Responsive Design View)
   
   
3. Click the gear on the upper right, and make sure that "Show user agent" is checked
   (If not checked, click on that menu)
   
   
4. In the text box beside "UA", type this text, then press Enter:
   Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3; en-us) AppleWebKit/999+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/999.9
   
   
5. Press F5 to reload
6. Click on the video to play it
7. Right click it, then select "Save Video As..."
   
   

Firefox for Android; Mozilla Firefox (alternative method)

How to change user-agent
in Firefox for Android

First, change user agent for iQiyi visit. Do it once, for the first time only.

1. Open about:config page
2. Click the plus sign on the upper left corner
3. On Name, type:
   general.useragent.override.iq.com
4. On the right, change from "Boolean" to "String"
5. On the bottom, type:
   Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3; en-us) AppleWebKit/999+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/999.9
6. Click the "Create" button

How to save video
in Firefox for Android

To be able to access about:config in Android devices, you must use Firefox Beta, or version 68 and older. For Firefox 71 and newer, change general.useragent.override.iq.com with general.useragent.override instead.

Next, every time you want to download iQiyi video, do this:

1. Open the page of the video you want to download
2. Tap on the video to play it
3. Tap and hold it (or right click on PC), then select "Save Video"

Google Chrome

1. Open the page of the video you want to download
2. From Chrome Menu, click More tools > Developer Tools
3. From Developer Tools menu, click More tools > Network conditions
4. On User agent section, make sure that "Select automatically" (or "Use browser default" on newer version) is unchecked
   (If checked, click on the checkbox)
5. On the drop-down menu, select "Custom..."
6. On the textbox below, type in this text:
   Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3; en-us) AppleWebKit/999+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/999.9
7. Press F5 to reload
8. Click on the video to play it
9. Right click it, then select "Save video as..."

Please refer to the screenshot for Mozilla Firefox for more.

BONUS: Download iQiyi video through apps

If the above methods are not convenient enough, we can also use their official apps, iQiyi Video. Okay, here's how to download or save the videos from iQiyi to your mobile phone device. The resulting videos are in QSV format and have a resolution according to your preferences in the apps.

View of the folder where
QSV video from iQiyi was stored

1. Open the video you want to download
2. Under the description, tap the Download button
3. On the drop down, choose your preferred video resolution
4. Tap on the episode numbers which you want to download
5. Process will running in the background
6. After it completes, browse to "Internal storage/Android/data/com.iqiyi.i18n/files/app/download/video" using file manager
7. Find a file with .qsv extension which located inside of each of the folders there

Different from what's being said in many other blogs, actually this QSV format video is not made by Chinese, and it doesn't have to be played with a Chinese multimedia player also. QSV is a video format made by Intel that allows its hardware to read this video directly without the help of software. More information can be found on di Wikipedia.

This video can be played directly, no need to convert them. I have tried it on a 32-bit computer with an AMD processor. Just drag and drop this QSV file into Media Player Classic dengan K-Lite Codec Pack and the video will play, although you can't speed up the playback or go back and skip a couple of seconds. When using a 64-bit computer with an Intel processor, this issue is not found. Just open it with MPV Player, and the video will play perfectly right after.

Steps to download iQiyi subtitles from browser

Of course, it's not complete if you already have the movie, but you don't have the subtitle yet. But before we begin, let's learn the following language ID (LID) used in iQiyi.

iQiyi LID	ISO 639-1 Code	Original name	Translated name
1	zh-Hans	简体字	Simplified Chinese
2	zh-Hant	繁體字	Traditional Chinese
3	en	English	English
4	ko	한국어	Korean
18	th	ไทย	Thai
21	ms	Bahasa Melayu	Malay
23	vi	Tiếng Việt	Vietnamese
24	id	Bahasa Indonesia	Indonesian
26	es	Español	Spanish
28	ar	العربية	Arabic

Without further ado, here's how to download or save subtitles from iQiyi to your computer. The resulting subtitles are in SRT, TTML, or VTT format according to which link/bookmark was used.

Mozilla Firefox

Indonesian	:	id.srt | id.ttml | id.vtt
English	:	en.srt | en.ttml | en.vtt
Simplified Chinese	:	zh-Hans.srt | zh-Hans.ttml | zh-Hans.vtt

To make the process easier, please add bookmarks above by dragging them to the bookmarks bar. Or, right-click on the links above and select "Bookmark This Link".

For other languages, choose any language first, then right-click on the bookmark you just created then select "Properties". There, change the number after "lid==" according to the LID of the language that you want by following the table above.

How to bookmark a link in Mozilla Firefox

How to edit existing bookmark in Mozilla Firefox

Next, every time you want to download iQiyi subtitle, do this:

1. Open the page of the video you want to download its subtitle
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+E
   (Or from Menu > Web Developer > Network)
   
3. Press F5 to reload
4. On URL Filter, type: dash
5. Double click on the row which just appeared
6. On the opened new tab, use the bookmark which has been created before
7. Subtitle file will be automatically downloaded
8. Use this format for the file name so it can be automatically detected by video players:
   [movie name].[ISO 639-1 language code].[subtitle format extension]
   For example, for Indonesian SRT of a video named "01.mp4", save the file as "01.id.srt"

How to view the pages which being accessed through Web Developer Tools in Mozilla Firefox

iQiyi has change the response of their JSON file, so you may encounter a message that said "SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected keyword at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data" and these following instruction might not worked. Please use and change the provided bookmarks if necessary.

If you want to download subtitle in language which not mentioned on the table above, or maybe if you want to download them manually without using the bookmark, do this:

1. Follow step 1-5 from how to download subtitle above until tab "dash" is open
2. On JSON filter, type: dstl
3. Write down the displayed value (usually http://meta.video.iqiyi.com)
4. ON JSON filter, type: lid=
5. Visit the combined URL from value of dstl with one displayed value of xml, srt, or webvtt to download the subtitle
   
   For example, to download the subtitle in the first language (index 0) in SRT format, like what's being selected in the screenshot below, you must visit this URL http://meta.video.iqiyi.com/20210224/b8/8e/55ac6b21b4ba7d50b5920c9acc05f94e.srt?qd_uid=0...

How to filter JSON file in Mozilla Firefox

The value of xml, srt, or webvtt ends with LID for corresponding languge, so it can be used as a filter to check if subtilte in the chosen language are available or not. For example, filter "lid=3" to check for English subtitle. If you find another LID from a language that is not listed in the table above, don't forget to leave a comment.

Google Chrome

Indonesian	:	id.srt | id.ttml | id.vtt
English	:	en.srt | en.ttml | en.vtt
Simplified Chinese	:	zh-Hans.srt | zh-Hans.ttml | zh-Hans.vtt

To make the process easier, please add bookmarks above by dragging them to the bookmarks bar. Or, copy the link address and paste them after manually added the bookmark through the Bookmark Manager (Ctrl+Shift+O).

For other languages, choose any language first, then right-click on the bookmark you just created then select "Properties". There, change the number after "lid==" according to LID of the language that you want by following the table above.

How to edit existing bookmark in Google Chrome

Next, every time you want to download iQiyi subtitle, do this:

1. Open the page of the video you want to download its subtitle
2. From Chrome Menu, click More tools > Developer Tools
3. Open the Network tab
4. Press F5 to reload
5. On Filter, type: dash
6. Double click on the row which just appeared
7. On the opened new tab, change https:// to http:// in the address bar URL
8. Use the bookmark which has been created before
9. When confirmation shown, click "Allow"
10. Subtitle file will be automatically downloaded
11. Use this format for the file name so it can be automatically detected by video players:
    [movie name].[ISO 639-1 language code].[subtitle format extension]
    For example, for Indonesian SRT of a video named "01.mp4", save the file as "01.id.srt"

How to view the pages which being accessed through Developer Tools in Google Chrome

Unfortunately, using Google Chrome, it was not an easy task to download subtitles in language which not listed on the table above, or if you want to download them manually withouth using the bookmark. So, please just use Mozilla Firefox which is better in handling JSON files.

Google Chrome doesn't support JSON display as tree structure view. It will just display the text as it is. Since they also doesn't have filtering feature, we can only rely on find feature for searching the link to download the subtitles. Moreover, we must remove any backslash ("\") first before we can use it as an URL.

The view when opening JSON files in Google Chrome

BONUS: Download iQiyi subtitles through other sites

If the above methods are not convenient enough, we can also use the help from subtitle downloader websites such as downsub.com. Just copy and paste the URL of the iQiyi video page you want to download the subtitle, then click the "Download" button. Then a list of languages and formast will be shown along with buttons to download each of them.

Important notes

Link to iQiyi dash JSON (starts with cache-video.iq.com) and to the video file (start with data.video.iqiyi.com) linked with personal information such as browser data and your location. It means that you cannot share with the others your direct link to download these files. When someone else opens the link and iQiyi finds out that the sent data is different from theirs, access will be denied. Only subtitle files (starts with meta.video.iqiyi.com) don't have this kind of protection.

So, avoid re-uploading videos that have been downloaded, because who knows what data they contain that can identify you. It is wiser to share the URL of the page where the video was originally shown (starts with www.iq.com) and, of course, the tutorial you are currently reading. With this approach, we also support the original uploader where the views count will keep being recorded, and the ads will continue to serve.

Closing

We reach the end of the post. But, you can also check other tutorial posts here. For the most popular tutorial, how to download LINE stickers, read here. Hopefully this post is useful for you. Don't forget to share so it can help more people. Finally, thank you for reading, and see you in the next post!