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The tragedy of this software (and many like it) is that despite working exactly as advertised, easily and with a lot of features, because it's a quiet open sour
by guycook 10y ago
The tragedy of this software (and many like it) is that despite working exactly as advertised, easily and with a lot of features, because it's a quiet open source project without any SEO rigging it will never appear in page 1 of any searches by laymen trying to download videos ("save youtube to hard drive", "download youtube videos" et al).
The amount of crapware I've had to remove from family member's PCs just because they wanted to save a video is ridiculous.
- baldfat 10y agoI treat youtube-dl like Fight Club. I am glad it isn't on the top of searches since I am afraid sites would start trying to stop it from working harder.
- dexterdog 10y agoThey already do. That's why it updates pretty much every time I do a homebrew update.
- baldfat 10y agoI should have said. They would try harder.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- haddr 10y agoI hope you haven't voted this article then. Let's keep it secret ;)
- samstave 10y agoExactly! SHHH - dont talk about ytdl... obv if the masses start talking about things like this, then sites like YT will go on the attack. WE DO NOT WANT THIS.
- rpgmaker 10y agoI don't know what parent is talking about, this script it's already very popular. I found it years ago and it wasn't difficult to find on google. Something worth mentioning is that the script works with dozens and dozens of video sites (or just sites with regular video content). Almost any video you throw at it gets downloaded. When something breaks it's usually fixed within days. It's a great piece of work.
- Houshalter 10y agoI think most video download sites use youtube-dl on the backend so they should already be doing that.
- clapinton 10y agoMy Maslow's middle layer immediately filled up when I read this. Thanks for making my Monday better.
- jmnicolas 10y agoYour family members would use a command line app ?
- Lanari 10y agoHis family members are a lines of code...
- guycook 10y agoIf they knew about it, sure. All it would take is a 3 step (after initial download) instructional with some screenshots: 1. Open Explorer where you downloaded youtube-dl 2. Shift+Right click -> Open command window here 3. Type 'youtube-dl <space>' and paste url[0], then enter As I said it really is a discoverability problem, one that the organiser of the world's information is neither incentivised nor really expected to address. [0] ok, this is a pain pre Win 10, but ^V is supported now
- kalessin 10y agoI literally taught my younger brother how to pip install --upgrade youtube-dl from cmd.exe and then use it.
- aluhut 10y agoIt's not easy because it's an command line. Not a single family member would touch this here. It's sad but understandable.
- cheshire_cat 10y agoIf you are looking for something to give your family members, almost everyone I know uses the open-source tool jdownloader [0] to download youtube videos. It's a ponderous java monster but it works great and comes with a huge plugin collection for numerous sites. The fact that it has a gui makes it really accessibly to non-technical people. There seems to be talk about AdWare in the installer but I personally never had that problem and you can get around that by downloading the executable .jar. [0] http://jdownloader.org/home/index?s=lng_en http://jdownloader.org/home/index?s=lng_en
- aluhut 10y agoI know jdownloader. Have been using it in it's early days for 1-click hosters on a separate machine. Don't trust it at all ;)
- cheshire_cat 10y agoI don't trust it that much either, but in the end jdownloader gets developed by a company registered in Germany. [0] If they ever did something really sinister they would be quickly out of business. [0] http://www.wemakeyourappwork.com http://www.wemakeyourappwork.com http://www.wemakeyourappwork.com/#contact http://www.wemakeyourappwork.com/#contact
- Jordrok 10y agoAnother jdownloader user here. I have similar misgivings about its trustworthiness, but so far I haven't found any concrete reasons to distrust it other than that vague sense of unease. It's just so damn useful though!
- CalRobert 10y agoDepends on the family. My mom taught me DOS.
- ProfOak_ 10y agoI found this neat project that adds a GUI to YouTube-dl. It looks like an easy program for non-technical people to use. https://github.com/MrS0m30n3/youtube-dl-gui https://github.com/MrS0m30n3/youtube-dl-gui
- masklinn 10y agoguycook's lament is about the findability of the project for laypeople, not about its interface. The interface is not an issue when laypeople can't find the project in the first place.
- Houshalter 10y agoWell the reason it has a bad ranking is because it isn't accessible to lay people. People might click the link and say "how do I install pip? Whats a PATH variable?" (or even "What's a command line?") and click back to the search page. Google counts that as a vote against that site, hence the bad ranking.
- giancarlostoro 10y agoI never knew this occurred, how do they do this if I open links in a new tab? Maybe if the website uses Google Analytics they might take this into account, but if they didn't have any other software from Google? I'm quite intrigued. Thanks for that post!
- Houshalter 10y agoI think just clicking the link and then clicking a different link counts against the first link. It probably doesn't matter if you actually use the back button or not. I don't know how they account for people clicking multiple links in new tabs. My guess is they reorder links sometimes so that users that click multiple links cancel each other out. They just try to maximize the probability you will click on a link and not come back to the search page.
- rplnt 10y agoSMPlayer, which I use, includes some sort of yt downloader, not that I ever used it. As for the SEO - I haven't had any problems in the last years. First or second hit was a working webpage that gave me the downlaod url (not much options though).
- macco 10y agoThe link an hacker news will definitly help.
- z3t4 10y agoOpen source projects should use more restrictive license or someone will be able to take this and bundle it with crapware + SEO.
- dalore 10y agoSEO rigging? That's mostly having links from other reputable sources. If this software is good, other good sites will link to it rising it up in the search results. Lot's of open source projects come up top of the results when you search for stuff because of this fact.
- mootothemax 10y ago>SEO rigging? That's mostly having links from other reputable sources. If this software is good, other good sites will link to it rising it up in the search results You have tell Google what your site is about, otherwise it's pretty hopeless; you're pretty much well asking Google to guess what terms the site should rank for. The five-minute-basics this site needs are to create a meaningful title tag (getting "YouTube Downloader" in there would be a great start. With zero research, maybe even "YouTube Downloader - Save Videos for Later"), create a friendly meta description that'll tell people what it's about in the search result pages, and use an H1 where it's currently using a TD with "subtitle" class. It wouldn't hurt to also have a short bullet-point list of uses cases, just to get related search terms - e.g. "save youtube to my computer" - that the big G can use to direct users to the site. >Lot's of open source projects come up top of the results when you search for stuff because of this fact. The problem is so bad, I know lots of people - myself included - who hunt for projects first on Github, and Google a distant second. Google is capable of some quite incredible things; using mind-reading to find out the important parts of a project or what it relates to, sadly, isn't one of their core strengths.
- OJFord 10y ago> The problem is so bad, I know lots of people - myself > included - who hunt for projects first on Github, and > Google a distant second. Seriously? I search with `site:github.com` all the time.
- mootothemax 10y ago>Seriously? >I search with `site:github.com` all the time. Yup - I find that Google's index isn't always as fresh as Github's, and being able to filter by code vs. repository vs. issues and then by language if necessary is a great help. Basically, for me, finding open-source projects is a real unsolved problem!
- blablabla123 10y agoYeah, you really need to go through the documentation if you want to download something the way you want. I guess it's more like wget.
- wslh 10y ago> The amount of crapware I've had to remove from family member's PCs... I think it is time antivirus, Google Chrome, et al recognize those installers as crapware and give a warning before installation (yes, including Java SDK and Skype trying to install toolbars). Currently Google Chrome is giving a malware warning just because you have an .exe in your web page that for them seems malware, and if you work in
- retube 10y ago> Currently Google Chrome is giving a malware warning just because you have an .exe So how should one make available for download windows executables?
- reedlaw 10y agoI don't think it's a tragedy because if it was very popular and easy to use YouTube would likely block it. It's directly competing with their own YouTube Red. Also look at popular Linux distros like Ubuntu. As soon as they reach mass market they lose what made them special to begin with and start experimenting with advertising and so on.
- Kristine1975 10y agoIs it really possible to block youtube-dl? All it does is the same thing Youtube's own HMTL5 player does, except that it saves the video instead of playing it back.
- throwaway7767 10y agoThey can change their site around enough to make it not worth the effort to maintain the tool. But it's always a cat-and-mouse game.
- baldfat 10y agoCertain videos will download without audio then I update youtube-dl and that usually fixes it.
- cookiecaper 10y agoYes. It's called a cease and desist.
- MrBra 10y agoFrom https://www.quora.com/Is-downloading-YouTube-videos-legal/answer/Paulina-M-Leon https://www.quora.com/Is-downloading-YouTube-videos-legal/an... Downloading from YouTube is in most cases not illegal - it could be considered time-shifting for personal consumption, in some cases fair use, both of which are legal in US. In some cases though - like downloading the movies that are paid or videos with limited distributions and not available in the States, could be considered copyright infringement. What downloading does though is break YouTube's Terms of Service. Even though some courts already stated explicitly that breaking Terms of Service is not illegal, doing so might still get you in trouble in civil court, as you are breaking an agreement between yourself and the company services of which you are using. If you would be using YouTube APIs for your product, they would probably suspend your access if they wouldn't like your product, so something to consider. Is it ok to download the videos for offline viewing? Your choice - might not be illegal, but not 'ok' from YouTube's point of view. Doesn't youtube lose out on advertising revenue this way? Yes - that's is precisely the reason for the rule :) The big unknown here is that the issue has not been presented in US courts yet, at least as far as I know, so there is no precedent. Hope it helps. -------------- Also check http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/is-it-legal-download-youtube-videos-3420353/ http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/is-it-legal-downl... -------------- Also check http://lifehacker.com/5901773/breaking-a-terms-of-service-isnt-necessarily-a-crime http://lifehacker.com/5901773/breaking-a-terms-of-service-is...
- sombremesa 10y agoGood! The top slots belong to those services which don't require you to download anything but the video to your computer. In this day and age, is there really any excuse for making anything beyond a web app, or in rare cases, a browser app? If I want to do a one off task, I'm not going to download any software for it, when I know there is an alternative that can be used entirely on the browser. There are plenty of addons for major browsers that do this. Those belong on page 1, not this. Most users don't give a shit about FOSS.
- Mahn 10y agoTo be fair, it it wasn't a crapware YouTube Downloader, it would be something else. As long as "computer intuition" doesn't become more commonplace, we are always going to have this problem despite our best efforts to get rid of crapware on the net.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- haddr 10y agoSpot on! However I worry that if projects such as this or mps-youtube (console youtube player) get mainstream, they would be effectively shut down in some way...
- at-fates-hands 10y agoI've started to become more and more disgruntled with search engines in general. Yeah, if I want to find something obvious, I'll find it. But what about mildly obscure software like this? This is something I would completely use, but have no way to find it. There's so many tools out there which are totally awesome, but wilting away because you can't find it in the search engines. As much as I love technology, it still seems the best stuff is usually found through the old tried and true methodologies. Word of mouth, conferences, or from friends or other developers.
- zyngaro 10y agoIt's a command line tool not very lambda Windows user friendly; that's why it's not very popular maybe