Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about formats, limits, and technical reliability.
Q:What platforms are supported?
ClipStream supports YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels & Posts, X/Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Vimeo, Twitch Clips, Dailymotion, SoundCloud, Bilibili, and practically any video page supported by yt-dlp, including direct MP4/HLS streams.
Q:Why are Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, and paid streaming services not supported?
Subscription streaming services use hardware Digital Rights Management (DRM, such as Google Widevine and Apple FairPlay) that encrypts audio and video at the hardware/decryption layer. yt-dlp does not circumvent DRM, and downloading DRM-encrypted content is strictly blocked by our security policy.
Q:How does the signed download link work?
Download links use an HMAC-SHA256 stateless signature. The link encodes the media parameters and an expiration timestamp (valid for 6 hours). No database is needed, and tampering with any parameter invalidates the cryptographic signature.
Q:Why did my download fail with an authentication / bot detection error?
Public cloud hosting providers (including Vercel, AWS, GCP) share datacenter IP ranges that platforms like YouTube and Instagram occasionally challenge with bot verification or HTTP 429 rate limits. Server operators can configure YTDLP_COOKIES or a proxy in their environment variables to resolve this.
Q:What are the server processing and video length limits?
Serverless functions have execution limits (configured up to 300 seconds on Vercel with Fluid Compute). To prevent function timeouts, videos over 2 hours are restricted, and high-speed container remuxing (-c copy) is prioritized over CPU-intensive re-encoding.
Q:Which video container format should I pick?
MP4 is the most universally compatible format, playable on any phone, browser, TV, or editing suite. MKV preserves multiple audio and subtitle streams. MOV is native to macOS and QuickTime players.
Q:What is the difference between MP3, M4A, and WAV audio?
MP3 is universally compatible across all audio players. M4A uses modern AAC compression with higher clarity per bitrate. WAV is uncompressed, lossless 16-bit PCM audio ideal for music production or video editing.
Looking for advanced format conversions?
Convert to AVI, WEBM, FLAC, OGG, GIF, and custom codecs using our specialized converter.