4 ms·

The fantastic YouTube-dl team

50 points by vmorgulis 11y ago

schoen 11y ago
Previous HN discussion of youtube-dl, including its remarkable contributor community and frequency of updates: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8647943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8647943
userbinator 11y ago
I personally use http://www.jwz.org/hacks/youtubedown http://www.jwz.org/hacks/youtubedown - it's probably much less featureful than YouTube-dl, but it's a single script, easily hackable, and does what I need. In contrast, YTDL seems to have grown into a generic "video site downloader".
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- 101914 11y ago
  I wrote my own. I can change it faster when YouTube changes something than waiting for someone else. YouTube makes downloading very straightforward. No need for Perl, Python or any interpreter except sh. # requirements: # sh, sed (BSD ok), tr, openssl, ftp or some other httpclient curl=ftp file=${2-1.mp4} # default outfile # itag #s are on the wikipedia page for youtube case $# in [12]) { sed 's/http:/https:/' \ |while read a; do b=${a#*://}; c=${b%%/*}; { printf "%b" "GET /${a#https://*/} HTTP/1.0\r\n"; printf "Host: $c\r\n"; printf "User-Agent: OK, Google.\r\n"; printf "Connection: close\r\n\r\n"; } \ |openssl s_client -ign_eof -connect $c:443 -verify 9 done \ |sed ' s,http,\ &,g; ' \ |sed ' /%3A%2F/!d; /videoplayback/!d; s,%3D,=,g; s,%3A,:,g; s,%2F,/,g; s,%3F,?,g; s/^M//g; ' \ |sed -e ' s/&itag=5//;t1 s/&itag=1[78]//;t1 s/&itag=22//;t1 s/&itag=3[4-8]//;t1 s/&itag=4[3-6]//;t1 s/&itag=1[346][0-9]//;t1 ' -e :1 \ |sed ' s,%26,\ ,g; s,&,\ ,g; ' \ |sed 's/%25/%/g' \ |tr '\012' '&' \ |sed 's/&$//'; echo } \ |sed ' s,%3D,=,g; s,%3A,:,g; s,%2F,/,g; s,%3F,?,g; s/^M//g; ' \ |sed ' s/&https/\ \ https/g;' \ |sed 's/\\u0026.*//' \ |sed '/itag='"${1-.}"'/!d;'|{ read a; exec $curl -4o $file $a;} ;; *) exec echo \ "usage: $0 itagno [outfile] outfile: $file" esac
vmorgulis 11y ago
I noticed that youtube-dl now converts the webm to mp4 with ffmpeg after the download. It tries also to merge similar files to an mkv (not sure).
- snorrah 11y ago
  There's a wealth of options to control this. I prefer going with MP4 for various reasons except if the source is available as a 1440p 60fps file, which I think is Webm only right now. Mix and match to your hearts content!
snorrah 11y ago
YouTube-dl and livestreamer are probably my personal favourite examples of open source code. Almost invaluable in getting around the flash-based monopoly of online video, they are both still highly useful in simply watching video in a preferred/favourite media player rather than some browser player UI.
- gluelogic 11y ago
  I agree. I have a lot of respect for youtube-dl. Great software.
bossx 11y ago
Do these tools violate the YouTube TOS? Has anyone found a solution for building your own YouTube powered mobile app with Chromecast support? It seems the only way to do this is to use a tool like this to cast the raw video URL.
- userbinator 11y ago
  Do these tools violate the YouTube TOS? They do, but it's not like YT can do anything about it except adding some obfuscation and changing that periodically. If it can be viewed on one machine, it can also be recorded. Hence the War on General-Purpose Computing. I still remember when all you needed to do to download was change "watch?v=" into "get_video?video_id=" in the URL...

50 points by vmorgulis 11y ago

Previous HN discussion of youtube-dl, including its remarkable contributor community and frequency of updates: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8647943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8647943

userbinator 11y ago

I personally use http://www.jwz.org/hacks/youtubedown http://www.jwz.org/hacks/youtubedown - it's probably much less featureful than YouTube-dl, but it's a single script, easily hackable, and does what I need. In contrast, YTDL seems to have grown into a generic "video site downloader".

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
101914 11y ago
I wrote my own. I can change it faster when YouTube changes something than waiting for someone else. YouTube makes downloading very straightforward. No need for Perl, Python or any interpreter except sh. # requirements: # sh, sed (BSD ok), tr, openssl, ftp or some other httpclient curl=ftp file=${2-1.mp4} # default outfile # itag #s are on the wikipedia page for youtube case $# in [12]) { sed 's/http:/https:/' \ |while read a; do b=${a#*://}; c=${b%%/*}; { printf "%b" "GET /${a#https://*/} HTTP/1.0\r\n"; printf "Host: $c\r\n"; printf "User-Agent: OK, Google.\r\n"; printf "Connection: close\r\n\r\n"; } \ |openssl s_client -ign_eof -connect $c:443 -verify 9 done \ |sed ' s,http,\ &,g; ' \ |sed ' /%3A%2F/!d; /videoplayback/!d; s,%3D,=,g; s,%3A,:,g; s,%2F,/,g; s,%3F,?,g; s/^M//g; ' \ |sed -e ' s/&itag=5//;t1 s/&itag=1[78]//;t1 s/&itag=22//;t1 s/&itag=3[4-8]//;t1 s/&itag=4[3-6]//;t1 s/&itag=1[346][0-9]//;t1 ' -e :1 \ |sed ' s,%26,\ ,g; s,&,\ ,g; ' \ |sed 's/%25/%/g' \ |tr '\012' '&' \ |sed 's/&$//'; echo } \ |sed ' s,%3D,=,g; s,%3A,:,g; s,%2F,/,g; s,%3F,?,g; s/^M//g; ' \ |sed ' s/&https/\ \ https/g;' \ |sed 's/\\u0026.*//' \ |sed '/itag='"${1-.}"'/!d;'|{ read a; exec $curl -4o $file $a;} ;; *) exec echo \ "usage: $0 itagno [outfile] outfile: $file" esac

vmorgulis 11y ago

I noticed that youtube-dl now converts the webm to mp4 with ffmpeg after the download. It tries also to merge similar files to an mkv (not sure).

snorrah 11y ago
There's a wealth of options to control this. I prefer going with MP4 for various reasons except if the source is available as a 1440p 60fps file, which I think is Webm only right now. Mix and match to your hearts content!

snorrah 11y ago

YouTube-dl and livestreamer are probably my personal favourite examples of open source code. Almost invaluable in getting around the flash-based monopoly of online video, they are both still highly useful in simply watching video in a preferred/favourite media player rather than some browser player UI.

gluelogic 11y ago
I agree. I have a lot of respect for youtube-dl. Great software.

bossx 11y ago

Do these tools violate the YouTube TOS? Has anyone found a solution for building your own YouTube powered mobile app with Chromecast support? It seems the only way to do this is to use a tool like this to cast the raw video URL.

userbinator 11y ago
Do these tools violate the YouTube TOS? They do, but it's not like YT can do anything about it except adding some obfuscation and changing that periodically. If it can be viewed on one machine, it can also be recorded. Hence the War on General-Purpose Computing. I still remember when all you needed to do to download was change "watch?v=" into "get_video?video_id=" in the URL...