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How does it work anyhow? It must do more than `wget` the mp4
by ape4 6y ago
How does it work anyhow? It must do more than `wget` the mp4
- DiabloD3 6y agoThat is essentially what it does: it uses Youtube's own API to formulate the correct URL, using all publicly known data that Google themselves publish so Youtube can function.
- banana_giraffe 6y agoOne thing many people are not aware of: youtube-dl actually does it's thing for a whole bunch of sites that aren't youtube. Generally, it pulls down the HTML page for a site, parses it, and uses the results to pull down the video. The extractor for youtube itself is the most complex one, but there are plenty of others. Last time I checked it had extractors for something like 700 different sites, along with a generic one that works on a bunch of sites. In general, you can just point it at any video page you see online and have a fairly high chance of it doing the right thing.
- ape4 6y agoNow might be a good time to rename it to video-dl
- boomboomsubban 6y agoIt also uses ffmpeg to combine various pieces, and I'm not sure what wget like program they use by default. It doesn't do much though.