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youtube-dl is a command-line tool which downloads a webpage (not just youtube), finds the audio/video media link(s) on the page, and downloads them to whatever
by matja 6y ago
youtube-dl is a command-line tool which downloads a webpage (not just youtube), finds the audio/video media link(s) on the page, and downloads them to whatever format the links are in, or a container format that is compatible in storing them in. That's your basic usage - open a command shell (cmd.exe on Windows) and run "youtube-dl <url>".
The basic usage might give you a file format which isn't entirely appropriate, like a .flv/.mp4 of a audio file.
It has special handling for lots of different sites, to be able to parse site-specific Javascript, navigate custom media players, etc, to get the media that you request.
Additional options like --extract-audio do some additional processing to get exactly what you specify - I think it needs ffmpeg installed which you'd need to download and add to your %PATH% environment variable on Windows - I haven't tried on Windows myself.