Props for trying. Don't give up!
I've never seen that sort of wait message from VDH. Are you sure you tried this: downloadhelper.net/ ? AFAIK there's no subscription fee for that. There's a premium service but not for downloading (https://www.downloadhelper.net/convert) Also, try it with a different service like Youtube. And, let me know what exactly are you clicking on? The extension will show many available videos, select the preferred on by clicking on the far right where you'll see many options like quick dl, download etc. Just click download.
I'd still recommend yt-dlp because there are many sites where VDH is useful to get the actual file location and then use yt-dlp to download. So, try this:
- Install latest python from python.org
- check the add python to PATH box in the installer
- open command prompt and type: pip3 install yt-dlp
- maybe you need to close and open your command prompt or try it in a new tab to check if it's installed. (Haven't used Win in a long time, so I'm saying this from memory)
Let me know how it goes.