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Yt-dlp – A YouTube-dl fork with additional features and fixes

822 points by makeworld 5y ago

Y_Y 5y ago
So how come a fork was necessary?
- ozarkerD 5y ago
  Devs on yt-dl have been inactive for a few months iirc
  - julienpalard 5y ago
    Does not look inactive to me: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/graphs/contributors https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/graphs/contributors
    - nannal 5y ago
      Jun 29, 2021 – Aug 26, 2021: 0 commits
    - rtkwe 5y ago
      It does look like there's little activity in the last couple months and none in the last almost 2 months.
  - MrDOS 5y ago
    For longer than that. 846 open PRs, 3.7k open issues. And this long predates the GitHub takedown debacle. This isn't to say that they're totally AWOL: they do a really good job keeping on top of the boring break/fix work, like keeping on top of the ever-changing interfaces of video providers. But they're very conservative about expanding functionality, and even fixing more minor bugs.
    - nonbirithm 5y ago
      And they've closed many issues as duplicates with no further explanation given: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/23860 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/23860
      - rovr138 5y ago
        Have they been duplicates?
        nonbirithm 5y ago
        The linked issue contains several issues describing the same problem, but what I meant to say was that which duplicate they were of was never made clear. The maintainers seemed to assume that everyone knew what it was and never provided a link to the original issue.
  - SevenSigs 5y ago
    my youtube-dl still works fine for youtube.com but I haven't tested many other supported sites...
  - the-dude 5y ago
    Wasn't the repo taken down for a while?
    - banana_giraffe 5y ago
      Yes, but it was brought back on November 16, 2020, and there was plenty of activity after that, till this recent drought of dead air.
- kunagi7 5y ago
  youtube-dl has been inactive for the last 2 months. Most things still work but support of different services is something that needs daily updates to not break. Even if most popular websites still work, pages like Newgrounds are breaking. There's 3.7k open issues right now and nothing gets merged [0]. [0] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues
  - krick 5y ago
    It's really stupid that this stuff still happens. I mean, youtube-dl main devs are stepping away, it's understandable. But it would be so much more convenient for everyone, if it was passed over to somebody, who is still interested (yt-dlp devs?) instead of ending up as a bunch of forks nobody knows about, and a dead project everyone continues to use. Just think about how many apps and scripts have youtube-dl hardcoded somewhere in them.
  - executesorder66 5y ago
    But still, why a fork? Why not contribute to the original project? Why not ask for maintainership if you need it?
    - slightwinder 5y ago
      Asking is meaningless if nobody answers.
pluc 5y ago
There's this too: https://github.com/deepjyoti30/ytmdl https://github.com/deepjyoti30/ytmdl
- TillE 5y ago
  A neat tool, but YouTube is generally an abysmal source for music. That's partly deliberate (from record labels) and partly an inevitable consequence of recompression with different lossy formats. Unless something is completely unavailable elsewhere, you'll find far better audio quality from other (original) sources.
  - Fogest 5y ago
    That and a lot of music I have found on there has a music video version of the song which can sometimes be slightly different than the original song. It's usually something like a longer intro before the music starts or something like cheering from a crowd or whatever to mimic it being a live performance music video. So you're getting a subpar sound quality combined with a sometimes differing song from the original.
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      You can usually find a lyric version with the unedited album track.
  - themodelplumber 5y ago
    It's not so much about availability or even quality as it is convenience for a lot of us. Soviet funk here, favorite TV news theme there, C64 remixes over here, NPR tiny desk over this way, and a rendition of the full original vocal lyrics to the M:I theme which is basically only available on YT itself... I can't imagine trying to source this stuff independently and keeping up with it, and if some commercial music crept in I imagine it'd be easier to simply stay on YT and ask what level of quality one subjectively needs for dental drilling, or mindless work, or throne-in-lair-sitting, or whatever it is...
  - Macha 5y ago
banana_giraffe 5y ago
One of the nice features added to yt-dlp recently: It integrates with sponskrub to call into the SponsorBlock database and with the right options will strip the sponsor segments from downloaded videos. Edit: Correct typo
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  dlc? Don't tell me that's a different one...
  - LeoPanthera 5y ago
    dlc is abandoned and dlp integrates its features.
    - stinos 5y ago
      So dlc is a fork of dl, but dl itself has actually a bunch of fairly recent commits which dlc does not have. And dlp nor dlc are 'forks' in the Github sense of forking. So how does one figure out whether recent dl commits are in dlp? And does this matter? Is this the downside of 'if you don't like it then just fork it and fix it'?
      - nnt38 5y ago
        Just get dlp its the most up to date version
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - pukkandan 5y ago
        Other than a few commits [1], everything in youtube-dl is already in yt-dlp. You can see upto which upstream commit is merged into yt-dlp in the changelog [2] [1] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/21 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/21 [2] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/Changelog.md#20210707 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/Changelog.md#20...
Ansil849 5y ago
So does anyone know what happened to youtube-dl? Development seems to have just abruptly ceased with no explanation.
- dwrodri 5y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the drama surrounding the DMCA takedown issued on the main git repository scared away a lot of contributors. Here's some coverage from the EFF, in case you missed it: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/github-reinstates-youtube-dl-after-riaas-abuse-dmca https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/github-reinstates-yout...
  - arp242 5y ago
    Quite the opposite; number of contributions increased: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/graphs/contributors https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/graphs/contributors Just seems a case of the same what usually happens: main author loses interest, has other stuff to do, etc. and no one really takes up the slack.
    - Mathnerd314 5y ago
      Also there are a lot of PRs that got ignored. A fair amount of the stuff in yt-dlp is just merging PRs from yt-dl.
polote 5y ago
Why don't they split youtube-dl in two parts: - The extractors part (all the scrappers basically) - The cli tool What would be wonderful is that the extractors part is splitted out, so that anyone can use it without using youtube-dl. That would be much easier to update it too, each extractor is independent, so it is only a question, does this scrapper (extractor) works or not. The next step would be to have a multi-language format to describe a scrapper, instead of being coded in Python. But no idea if this is possible or maybe that would make things much more complex
- FiloSottile 5y ago
  That is mostly already the case, you can invoke the extractors through the Python API or through the CLI and do the download yourself. Extractors regularly require custom logic, so they can’t be described in anything else than a programming language.
  - polote 5y ago
    Being two different projects has advantages, especially when one part (need to) moves much faster. The fact that some requires custom logic doesn't prove that you need a programming language, it is just custom logic compared to the standard framework.
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      If you’re implementing custom logic, why not just make it easy on yourself and use a proper programming language. Trying to invent custom logic systems gives us cmake.
- aexl 5y ago
  I have proposed this some years ago (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/14646 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/14646), but it didn't get much attention from the maintainers. It has been previously rejected in 2013 already (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/1185 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/1185).
Scaevolus 5y ago
> NEW FEATURES > Cookies from browser: Cookies can be automatically extracted from all major web browsers using --cookies-from-browser BROWSER[:PROFILE] Very nice. Having to manually copy cookies to get past login walls is annoying.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  As much as I like this feature, it is scary on the other side how easy it is to essentially steal cookies - what yt-dlp can, so can malware. Why don't OSes have some sort of system-wide secret store linked to an user's account (like the macOS Keychain) and an application's code-signing certificate? That would at least prevent easy file-dump attacks, moving the barrier to "execute something in the browser process context" instead.
  - qqii 5y ago
    Linux does right? I believe this is how android works but you can set something up manually by creating a seperate user and changing the permissions on the browser cache/data folder, then run the browser as one user and yt-dlp as a seperate one. There might be a more modern and streamlined solution for Linux, but in Windows land they also introduced Controlled Folder Access into defender.
  - q-rews 5y ago
    It’s annoying that this has been downvoted because having your identity in easily-readable files on your computer is literally worse than saving passwords in a text file: Passwords will prompt 2FA, notifications and whatnot; Cookies might just work, albeit temporarily.
    - avhception 5y ago
      While I see the problem with malicious applications pillaging your users home directory, let's not forget that being able to tinker and hack together things is also one of the greatest strengths of the desktop platform.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
haven't paid attention to this since all the drama last year but again - what are all of you using youtube-dl for? Archiving your channel subs?
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  My experience is that the internet is really bad at forgetting the stuff you want gone, but really good at turning all your bookmarks into 404s and parked domains (another reason why bookmarks are pretty much worthless). So if you don't save it, it'll be gone next time you're trying to look it up. Doubly so if it is something even mildly controversial (now or then).
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > Doubly so if it is something even mildly controversial (now or then). Triply so if it's hosted by a corporation. Looking at you, Microsoft. For all the good[0] things you're doing for developers using your platforms, I'm still angry at the way your documentation links rot. It seems that everything that ever linked to MSDN prior to ~2015 will now have their links redirected to 404 or "buy new Surface" page. Hell, plenty of internal links are broken too. It's particularly apparent when trying to read about C++ and COM (vs. C#/.NET, which seems to be MS's main focus). -- [0] - In a pragmatic, day-to-day dev experience sense. Explicitly not talking about wider ethical issues here.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Watching videos in my media player rather than my browser. Hardware acceleration has better support in mpv than Firefox.
- ronnier 5y ago
  I made a tool for myself so I could 1 click download videos to my iphone's camera roll. It's based on youtube-dl. I like to share raw videos and do not like to share URLs. I use this tool to make that easy -- I copy a url and run the iOS shortcut and the video auto saves to my camera roll. https://github.com/rroller/media-roller https://github.com/rroller/media-roller
jrm4 5y ago
Love it. The question, especially for the folks around here. When Github eventually takes a stronger stand against this sort of thing, because it is 100% going to happen, are folks going to properly fight it?
- Macha 5y ago
  They were DMCAed, they got bad press out of it, they eventually stood up for the developer in exchange for a token concession (deleting test data that referred to copyrighted music and was named in the complaint): https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-youtube-dl-is-back/ https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-yo... , and reversed the takedown unilaterally (which would mean the claimant could take github/microsoft to court if they felt like it). Whether it's a matter of principles or just the bad press from the initial takedown is less clear, but I think it'll be a while before they re litigate this issue.
  - totetsu 5y ago
    I still can't access my fork of YouTube DL with all my custom plugin work on GitHub
    - kragen 5y ago
      Why not? Did you forget your GitHub password?
      - totetsu 5y ago
        They blocked everyones forks at the same time as the original.
        kragen 5y ago
        What does "blocked" mean? Is your fork still "blocked"?
nebula8804 5y ago
Thanks for this post! First I am hearing about this fork! Darn...unfortunately still can't download Joe Rogan Spotify. Guess they haven't found a way around the widevine encryption...(Right now it seems like only a few podcasts are encrypted so other Spotify streams work)
- nerdponx 5y ago
  It's always strange to think that there is encrypted data flowing through my software, through my operating system, into my hardware, that somehow I, the user, I am unable to access, but that the hardware can handle just fine. How does this work?
  - kuschku 5y ago
    You can access it just fine. It’s just processed by very obfuscated code that constantly changes.
  - lights0123 5y ago
    With Widevine L3, it does send your OS unencrypted data. You're free to screen record videos or audio record e.g. PulseAudio Monitor channels of your speakers. You just can't easily convert it to a DRM-free format at speeds faster than realtime.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    One way is x86. Intel’s chips have SGX (software guard extensions) that allows code to run in “enclaves” that outside code can’t access. You can send data into the enclave and read what it spits out, but you can’t inspect (debug) it.
  - joshspankit 5y ago
    HDCP is one method, as are the “safeguards” built in to the audio and video APIs on macOS (to protect them from losing revenue by recording iTunes Music (before they removed DRM) or screen capturing new movies (thus threatening the contracts with Hollywood).
krick 5y ago
I know it sounds incredibly picky, but given it's supposed to be a drop-in youtube-dl replacement, it's quite annoying to suddenly change the name to something as hard to remember as yt-dlp instead of, say, youtube-dlp. I will be mixing it up every time I'll google it, I guess. Not to mention it messes with naming scheme of bash scripts and aliases I already have.
- aethanol 5y ago
  alias it?
  - krick 5y ago
    I alias "youtube-dt <options>" to "yt-<something>". i guess a lot of people do. I won't be surprised if I already have some yt-dlp among the other variations. Also, I already said it's not hte only problem. So suddenly naming the thing itself yt-dlp is a "fuck you".
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - gitgud 5y ago
      Please remember it's an open source free project...
  - peterburkimsher 5y ago
    Here's the aliases that I typically use. I'm very pleased to see that yt-dlp added --split-chapters, it's great for separating long videos into separate songs! e.g. the Faça Você Mesmo EP from Under Control, a Brazilian punk rock bank https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSHEZ_HdjHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSHEZ_HdjHs alias yt-mp3='yt-dlp --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 --split-chapters --no-check-certificate' alias youtube-mp3='youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 ' alias youtube-mp4='youtube-dl -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/mp4"' alias youtube-mp4-480p='youtube-dl -f "bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]"' alias youtube-playlist='youtube-dl -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/mp4" -ciw -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -v ' #alias ffmpeg-mkv=find . -type f -name "*.mkv" -exec bash -c 'FILE="$1"; ffmpeg -i "${FILE}" -vn -c:a libmp3lame -y "${FILE%.mkv}.mp3";' _ '{}' \; #alias ffmpeg-webm=find . -type f -iname "*.webm" -exec bash -c 'FILE="$1"; ffmpeg -i "${FILE}" -vn -ab 128k -ar 44100 -y "${FILE%.webm}.mp3";' _ '{}' \; #alias ffmpeg-mp3=find . -type f -iname "*.mp4" -exec bash -c 'FILE="$1"; ffmpeg -i "${FILE}" -vn -y "${FILE%.mp4}.mp3";' _ '{}' \;
gillytech 5y ago
This is going to cost me karma but don't waste your time with Joe Rogan.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  I enjoy some of his podcasts. Yeah some are a waste of time but many have been spectacular.
  - gillytech 5y ago
    To be fair I would agree with you that some of his guests are great (e.g. Quentin Tarantino) and I do enjoy the long-form interviewing. But Rogan himself, to me, gives off bad vibes. Not really sincere or actually interested in his guests more than he is interested in himself. I find he'll say he's interested and come back with some show of how cultured and learned he is by bringing some obscure minutiae. I think he should be truly interested in his guest and put them in the spotlight. Sorry to point out the truth but Joe himself is an unaccomplished stoner and promotes lifestyle choices that are repugnant to me. I would never trust him with my kids. So why would I trust him with my time? Others do a much better job of the long form interview and have themselves provided some value to society on their own merits. Tim Ferriss and Jordan Harbinger to name a couple.
    - newbie789 5y ago
      > Joe himself is an unaccomplished stoner… This is an interesting take. I personally find Joe Rogan to be an abhorrent human being that gives a platform to pseudoscientists and white supremacists, but I’ve never heard “his tens of millions of dollars are negated by the fact that he smokes weed” as a criticism. Out of curiosity, what value does Tim Ferris provide to society? I’m not being sarcastic, I just only know him as the guy that wrote the four hour work week book, which I did not find substantive.
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        Out of curiosity, who were the "psuedoscientists" and "white supremacists" you're accusing Joe of giving a platform to? Slanderous accusation to just drop and not expand on. Or is that what you call people that you don't agree with their scientific or political beliefs?
Tistron 5y ago
For me, something like this is exactly where Deno would shine. I could just run `deno run <script url> --allow-net=YouTube.com --allow-write=.` and not worry about that it could do anything dangerous. Probably the url list would be a bit more complicated, but I could also just blanket allow net without worrying, since allow-read isn't needed.
- xmprt 5y ago
  Do you know if generic sandboxing tools exist? I feel like it should be possible to use Docker and some sort of Firewall to isolate your running application from your system if you're worried about it accessing things that it should be able to. And that way you don't need to worry about using deno or relying on the program being written in a certain framework/language.
  - NotEvil 5y ago
    Firejail?
- dpacmittal 5y ago
  While it's great that Deno is sandboxing code, but I feel like this should be a part of the OS and not the language.
  - chaorace 5y ago
    Should it also be the OS's job to sandbox JS from the websites you visit? Admittedly, that question is made in bad faith -- I know what you mean, even if what you mean isn't necessarily "sandboxing": permissions! Android and iOS do it right. One OS-level source of truth that manages application-level permissions for the entire machine. When you frame it that way, it becomes clear that Deno asking for rights on a per-run basis is indeed silly, but only in the context of the user experience... not necessarily the core software design.
- irae 5y ago
  I use little snitch on macOS and it provides me almost the same thing you want universally across all my apps.
prvc 5y ago
>yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork based on the now inactive youtube-dlc. The main focus of this project is adding new features and patches while also keeping up to date with the original project yt-dlc's last commit was only 4 days ago, from the project owner. What are the advantages of each, and what about other forks out there?
- sbarre 5y ago
  The README covers most of these questions FYI
  - prvc 5y ago
    The above quotation is from README.md in the yt-dlp repository, which does list some differences, but I get the sense this is not the full story.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- molticrystal 5y ago
  https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc/commits/master https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc/commits/master The previous update was July 25, and the one before that was December 2020. While the July update dealt with the updater, having 2 days of small changes since December is not very active. As far as the advantages, there are plenty of comments now outlining them better than I could. For me there are many additional sites that work with yt-dlp that do not work with the other forks. I found myself using this fork more and more instead of youtube-dl due to the additional support, until I've now made it my default. It does have a compat mode so if you use a lot of youtube-dl switches that yt-dlp may of removed or depreciated in the cleanup, they will still usually work if applicable with this fork as well.
weq 5y ago
Im going to claim original idea that all these other downloders built off ~2006 still get k's of downloads a day even though its been 15yrs since the last update https://sourceforge.net/projects/gvdownloader/files/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/gvdownloader/files/
- totoglazer 5y ago
  Is Google video still live somewhere?
  - capableweb 5y ago
    See https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Google_Video https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Google_Video and https://archive.org/details/googlevideo2011 https://archive.org/details/googlevideo2011
wp381640 5y ago
If you use youtube-dl and haven't noticed that it hasn't been receiving updates it's worth aliasing youtube-dl with this project
dasl 5y ago
youtube has recently been implementing download speed throttling on some video downloads. See: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326 . Youtube-dl does not yet have a solution for this occasional download speed throttling. This yt-dlp fork has a workaround (though not a true fix) for the issue: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326#issuecomment-879256177 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326#issuecom...
- makeworld 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure you don't even need those flags, and it just uses the non-throttled mdoe by default: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/492 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/492
  - pukkandan 5y ago
    you are correct. That comment is only applicable for the old version. Newer versions will bypass throttling out of the box
kragen 5y ago
Nice to see this. youtube-dl -U keeps telling me: youtube-dl is up-to-date (2021.06.06)
jokoon 5y ago
I noticed Reddit videos are sometimes mp4 iso5, which is an unusual format and refused by WhatsApp status.
codetrotter 5y ago
Not currently available for installation via Homebrew for macOS, as opposed to youtube-dl and youtube-dlc both of which can be installed via Homebrew. However, there is an open pull request for it from just a few hours ago https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/84049 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/84049 So here's to hoping it'll be available there soon :D
mattl 5y ago
How much to get a way to block “hey guys” at the start of a video?
- sodality2 5y ago
  Sponsorblock can skip sponsors, self-promos, subscribe reminders, intro animation, and end credits. (crowd-sources the timestamps) https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
  - mattl 5y ago
    Alas not really watching a video on a browser.
    - sodality2 5y ago
      Android? Youtube vanced offers this built-in.
      - aero-glide2 5y ago
        Need to check out vanced, NewPipe keeps breaking.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        Never heard of YouTube Vanced. I see it's not open source. The feature list is interesting, but it doesn't say anything about tracking/telemetry. Does the app track you (and how much), independently of YouTube tracking? I'm currently happy with NewPipe - which is essentially a youtube-dl GUI, and has to be updated just as often, which is damn annoying because FDroid is still completely broken UX-wise - but I have less tech-savvy people around me, who would very much like an alternative to the official YouTube app.
        sodality2 5y ago
        Newpipe works as well. Youtube vanced cannot be open source as it is just a nodded youtube client, which isn't open source. I cannot speak on tracking but I tracked its DNS requests and nothing out of the ordinary.
DarthNebo 5y ago
Nice, sponsor scrub!
nikisweeting 5y ago
I wonder if I should switch ArchiveBox to use this… is it available as easily via apt/pip/brew/Pkg/etc as YouTube-dL? Otherwise vendoring is always a pain.
- dewey 5y ago
  Doesn't look like yet, but at least for brew there's a pending MR: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#installation https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#installation
svnpenn 5y ago
I have a similar tool here https://github.com/89z/mech https://github.com/89z/mech
Bellamy 5y ago
I pay for YouTube premium, but this beautiful piece of software automatically strips out the commercials from the videos and it seems I can download any video from YouTube even without logging in. My question is the following: What is benefit of setting my credentials to the config file?
- ObscureScience 5y ago
  From the description I understood it as better quality audio stream.
- scns 5y ago
  I would highly advise against that, after all the stories about G accounts suspended without explanation && recourse.
- truth_ 5y ago
  My friend downloaded whole of Pluralsight's database using yt-dl. Config files are necessary for sites that require the user to access the content.
database64128 5y ago
I just updated my youtube-dl GUI to support yt-dlp. https://github.com/database64128/youtube-dl-wpf https://github.com/database64128/youtube-dl-wpf Currently it's WPF based and therefore only supports Windows. I'm considering porting it to Avalonia so I can also use it on my Linux desktop. The reason I made this GUI is mostly for manual format selection. The automatic 'bestvideo+bestaudio/best' doesn't always result in the best format combination. So I always select AV1 + Opus manually and use the WebM container. The GUI also includes some opinionated defaults like embedding metadata, thumbnail, subtitles.
paulcarroty 5y ago
Actually it works with mpv: create `~/.config/mpv/script-opts/ytdl_hook.conf` file with content `ytdl_path=yt-dlp`.
thomasfl 5y ago
Why can't YouTube and Alphabet simply provide a download button or a public API? When you are running the worlds largest digital museum of rare video footage, you have some obligations to the society.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Apparently, copyright law makes this an unwise proposition. But the least they could do is offer the Internet Archive with some privileged access so all this can be mirrored and viewed when it's out of copyright in 80 years.
  - caractacus 5y ago
    It's not copyright law, it's the agreements that YT has with copyright owners. No one is going to license their content to YT if the site allows anyone to download whatever is there.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      If it wasn't for copyright law, there wouldn't be copyright owners. So copyright law is ultimately responsible for the status quo.
  - alerighi 5y ago
    They could at least let you download videos for which the author specified a free license, such as Creative Commons, or videos that are public domain. There are a lot of these videos so why not?
    - thomasfl 5y ago
      Just discovered that several video sharing sites, like pexels.com, have a download button on videos with creative commons license. They are off course useless for professional YouTubers, but great for everybody else.
- gmemstr 5y ago
say_it_as_it_is 5y ago
The killer feature of YouTube-dl is that it has been actively maintained for years. Any competing tool will need to do the same, and it is highly unlikely that others will carry it on.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Fairly unrelated but I've always gotten a kick out of the NSFW issues that users report on youtube-dl's page.

822 points by makeworld 5y ago

Y_Y 5y ago

So how come a fork was necessary?

ozarkerD 5y ago
Devs on yt-dl have been inactive for a few months iirc
- julienpalard 5y ago
  Does not look inactive to me: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/graphs/contributors https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/graphs/contributors
  - nannal 5y ago
    Jun 29, 2021 – Aug 26, 2021: 0 commits
  - rtkwe 5y ago
    It does look like there's little activity in the last couple months and none in the last almost 2 months.
- MrDOS 5y ago
  For longer than that. 846 open PRs, 3.7k open issues. And this long predates the GitHub takedown debacle. This isn't to say that they're totally AWOL: they do a really good job keeping on top of the boring break/fix work, like keeping on top of the ever-changing interfaces of video providers. But they're very conservative about expanding functionality, and even fixing more minor bugs.
  - nonbirithm 5y ago
    And they've closed many issues as duplicates with no further explanation given: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/23860 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/23860
    - rovr138 5y ago
      Have they been duplicates?
      - nonbirithm 5y ago
        The linked issue contains several issues describing the same problem, but what I meant to say was that which duplicate they were of was never made clear. The maintainers seemed to assume that everyone knew what it was and never provided a link to the original issue.
- SevenSigs 5y ago
  my youtube-dl still works fine for youtube.com but I haven't tested many other supported sites...
- the-dude 5y ago
  Wasn't the repo taken down for a while?
  - banana_giraffe 5y ago
    Yes, but it was brought back on November 16, 2020, and there was plenty of activity after that, till this recent drought of dead air.
kunagi7 5y ago
youtube-dl has been inactive for the last 2 months. Most things still work but support of different services is something that needs daily updates to not break. Even if most popular websites still work, pages like Newgrounds are breaking. There's 3.7k open issues right now and nothing gets merged [0]. [0] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues
- krick 5y ago
  It's really stupid that this stuff still happens. I mean, youtube-dl main devs are stepping away, it's understandable. But it would be so much more convenient for everyone, if it was passed over to somebody, who is still interested (yt-dlp devs?) instead of ending up as a bunch of forks nobody knows about, and a dead project everyone continues to use. Just think about how many apps and scripts have youtube-dl hardcoded somewhere in them.
- executesorder66 5y ago
  But still, why a fork? Why not contribute to the original project? Why not ask for maintainership if you need it?
  - slightwinder 5y ago
    Asking is meaningless if nobody answers.

pluc 5y ago

There's this too: https://github.com/deepjyoti30/ytmdl https://github.com/deepjyoti30/ytmdl

TillE 5y ago
A neat tool, but YouTube is generally an abysmal source for music. That's partly deliberate (from record labels) and partly an inevitable consequence of recompression with different lossy formats. Unless something is completely unavailable elsewhere, you'll find far better audio quality from other (original) sources.
- Fogest 5y ago
  That and a lot of music I have found on there has a music video version of the song which can sometimes be slightly different than the original song. It's usually something like a longer intro before the music starts or something like cheering from a crowd or whatever to mimic it being a live performance music video. So you're getting a subpar sound quality combined with a sometimes differing song from the original.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    You can usually find a lyric version with the unedited album track.
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  It's not so much about availability or even quality as it is convenience for a lot of us. Soviet funk here, favorite TV news theme there, C64 remixes over here, NPR tiny desk over this way, and a rendition of the full original vocal lyrics to the M:I theme which is basically only available on YT itself... I can't imagine trying to source this stuff independently and keeping up with it, and if some commercial music crept in I imagine it'd be easier to simply stay on YT and ask what level of quality one subjectively needs for dental drilling, or mindless work, or throne-in-lair-sitting, or whatever it is...
- Macha 5y ago

banana_giraffe 5y ago

One of the nice features added to yt-dlp recently: It integrates with sponskrub to call into the SponsorBlock database and with the right options will strip the sponsor segments from downloaded videos. Edit: Correct typo

themodelplumber 5y ago
dlc? Don't tell me that's a different one...
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  dlc is abandoned and dlp integrates its features.
  - stinos 5y ago
    So dlc is a fork of dl, but dl itself has actually a bunch of fairly recent commits which dlc does not have. And dlp nor dlc are 'forks' in the Github sense of forking. So how does one figure out whether recent dl commits are in dlp? And does this matter? Is this the downside of 'if you don't like it then just fork it and fix it'?
    - nnt38 5y ago
      Just get dlp its the most up to date version
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - pukkandan 5y ago
      Other than a few commits [1], everything in youtube-dl is already in yt-dlp. You can see upto which upstream commit is merged into yt-dlp in the changelog [2] [1] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/21 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/21 [2] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/Changelog.md#20210707 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/Changelog.md#20...

Ansil849 5y ago

So does anyone know what happened to youtube-dl? Development seems to have just abruptly ceased with no explanation.

dwrodri 5y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the drama surrounding the DMCA takedown issued on the main git repository scared away a lot of contributors. Here's some coverage from the EFF, in case you missed it: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/github-reinstates-youtube-dl-after-riaas-abuse-dmca https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/github-reinstates-yout...
- arp242 5y ago
  Quite the opposite; number of contributions increased: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/graphs/contributors https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/graphs/contributors Just seems a case of the same what usually happens: main author loses interest, has other stuff to do, etc. and no one really takes up the slack.
  - Mathnerd314 5y ago
    Also there are a lot of PRs that got ignored. A fair amount of the stuff in yt-dlp is just merging PRs from yt-dl.

polote 5y ago

Why don't they split youtube-dl in two parts: - The extractors part (all the scrappers basically) - The cli tool What would be wonderful is that the extractors part is splitted out, so that anyone can use it without using youtube-dl. That would be much easier to update it too, each extractor is independent, so it is only a question, does this scrapper (extractor) works or not. The next step would be to have a multi-language format to describe a scrapper, instead of being coded in Python. But no idea if this is possible or maybe that would make things much more complex

FiloSottile 5y ago
That is mostly already the case, you can invoke the extractors through the Python API or through the CLI and do the download yourself. Extractors regularly require custom logic, so they can’t be described in anything else than a programming language.
- polote 5y ago
  Being two different projects has advantages, especially when one part (need to) moves much faster. The fact that some requires custom logic doesn't prove that you need a programming language, it is just custom logic compared to the standard framework.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    If you’re implementing custom logic, why not just make it easy on yourself and use a proper programming language. Trying to invent custom logic systems gives us cmake.
aexl 5y ago
I have proposed this some years ago (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/14646 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/14646), but it didn't get much attention from the maintainers. It has been previously rejected in 2013 already (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/1185 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/1185).

Scaevolus 5y ago

> NEW FEATURES > Cookies from browser: Cookies can be automatically extracted from all major web browsers using --cookies-from-browser BROWSER[:PROFILE] Very nice. Having to manually copy cookies to get past login walls is annoying.

mschuster91 5y ago
As much as I like this feature, it is scary on the other side how easy it is to essentially steal cookies - what yt-dlp can, so can malware. Why don't OSes have some sort of system-wide secret store linked to an user's account (like the macOS Keychain) and an application's code-signing certificate? That would at least prevent easy file-dump attacks, moving the barrier to "execute something in the browser process context" instead.
- qqii 5y ago
  Linux does right? I believe this is how android works but you can set something up manually by creating a seperate user and changing the permissions on the browser cache/data folder, then run the browser as one user and yt-dlp as a seperate one. There might be a more modern and streamlined solution for Linux, but in Windows land they also introduced Controlled Folder Access into defender.
- q-rews 5y ago
  It’s annoying that this has been downvoted because having your identity in easily-readable files on your computer is literally worse than saving passwords in a text file: Passwords will prompt 2FA, notifications and whatnot; Cookies might just work, albeit temporarily.
  - avhception 5y ago
    While I see the problem with malicious applications pillaging your users home directory, let's not forget that being able to tinker and hack together things is also one of the greatest strengths of the desktop platform.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

haven't paid attention to this since all the drama last year but again - what are all of you using youtube-dl for? Archiving your channel subs?

formerly_proven 5y ago
My experience is that the internet is really bad at forgetting the stuff you want gone, but really good at turning all your bookmarks into 404s and parked domains (another reason why bookmarks are pretty much worthless). So if you don't save it, it'll be gone next time you're trying to look it up. Doubly so if it is something even mildly controversial (now or then).
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > Doubly so if it is something even mildly controversial (now or then). Triply so if it's hosted by a corporation. Looking at you, Microsoft. For all the good[0] things you're doing for developers using your platforms, I'm still angry at the way your documentation links rot. It seems that everything that ever linked to MSDN prior to ~2015 will now have their links redirected to 404 or "buy new Surface" page. Hell, plenty of internal links are broken too. It's particularly apparent when trying to read about C++ and COM (vs. C#/.NET, which seems to be MS's main focus). -- [0] - In a pragmatic, day-to-day dev experience sense. Explicitly not talking about wider ethical issues here.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
Watching videos in my media player rather than my browser. Hardware acceleration has better support in mpv than Firefox.
ronnier 5y ago
I made a tool for myself so I could 1 click download videos to my iphone's camera roll. It's based on youtube-dl. I like to share raw videos and do not like to share URLs. I use this tool to make that easy -- I copy a url and run the iOS shortcut and the video auto saves to my camera roll. https://github.com/rroller/media-roller https://github.com/rroller/media-roller

jrm4 5y ago

Love it. The question, especially for the folks around here. When Github eventually takes a stronger stand against this sort of thing, because it is 100% going to happen, are folks going to properly fight it?

Macha 5y ago
They were DMCAed, they got bad press out of it, they eventually stood up for the developer in exchange for a token concession (deleting test data that referred to copyrighted music and was named in the complaint): https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-youtube-dl-is-back/ https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-yo... , and reversed the takedown unilaterally (which would mean the claimant could take github/microsoft to court if they felt like it). Whether it's a matter of principles or just the bad press from the initial takedown is less clear, but I think it'll be a while before they re litigate this issue.
- totetsu 5y ago
  I still can't access my fork of YouTube DL with all my custom plugin work on GitHub
  - kragen 5y ago
    Why not? Did you forget your GitHub password?
    - totetsu 5y ago
      They blocked everyones forks at the same time as the original.
      - kragen 5y ago
        What does "blocked" mean? Is your fork still "blocked"?

nebula8804 5y ago

Thanks for this post! First I am hearing about this fork! Darn...unfortunately still can't download Joe Rogan Spotify. Guess they haven't found a way around the widevine encryption...(Right now it seems like only a few podcasts are encrypted so other Spotify streams work)

nerdponx 5y ago
It's always strange to think that there is encrypted data flowing through my software, through my operating system, into my hardware, that somehow I, the user, I am unable to access, but that the hardware can handle just fine. How does this work?
- kuschku 5y ago
  You can access it just fine. It’s just processed by very obfuscated code that constantly changes.
- lights0123 5y ago
  With Widevine L3, it does send your OS unencrypted data. You're free to screen record videos or audio record e.g. PulseAudio Monitor channels of your speakers. You just can't easily convert it to a DRM-free format at speeds faster than realtime.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  One way is x86. Intel’s chips have SGX (software guard extensions) that allows code to run in “enclaves” that outside code can’t access. You can send data into the enclave and read what it spits out, but you can’t inspect (debug) it.
- joshspankit 5y ago
  HDCP is one method, as are the “safeguards” built in to the audio and video APIs on macOS (to protect them from losing revenue by recording iTunes Music (before they removed DRM) or screen capturing new movies (thus threatening the contracts with Hollywood).

krick 5y ago

I know it sounds incredibly picky, but given it's supposed to be a drop-in youtube-dl replacement, it's quite annoying to suddenly change the name to something as hard to remember as yt-dlp instead of, say, youtube-dlp. I will be mixing it up every time I'll google it, I guess. Not to mention it messes with naming scheme of bash scripts and aliases I already have.

aethanol 5y ago
alias it?
- krick 5y ago
  I alias "youtube-dt <options>" to "yt-<something>". i guess a lot of people do. I won't be surprised if I already have some yt-dlp among the other variations. Also, I already said it's not hte only problem. So suddenly naming the thing itself yt-dlp is a "fuck you".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - gitgud 5y ago
    Please remember it's an open source free project...
- peterburkimsher 5y ago
  Here's the aliases that I typically use. I'm very pleased to see that yt-dlp added --split-chapters, it's great for separating long videos into separate songs! e.g. the Faça Você Mesmo EP from Under Control, a Brazilian punk rock bank https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSHEZ_HdjHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSHEZ_HdjHs alias yt-mp3='yt-dlp --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 --split-chapters --no-check-certificate' alias youtube-mp3='youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 ' alias youtube-mp4='youtube-dl -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/mp4"' alias youtube-mp4-480p='youtube-dl -f "bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]"' alias youtube-playlist='youtube-dl -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/mp4" -ciw -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -v ' #alias ffmpeg-mkv=find . -type f -name "*.mkv" -exec bash -c 'FILE="$1"; ffmpeg -i "${FILE}" -vn -c:a libmp3lame -y "${FILE%.mkv}.mp3";' _ '{}' \; #alias ffmpeg-webm=find . -type f -iname "*.webm" -exec bash -c 'FILE="$1"; ffmpeg -i "${FILE}" -vn -ab 128k -ar 44100 -y "${FILE%.webm}.mp3";' _ '{}' \; #alias ffmpeg-mp3=find . -type f -iname "*.mp4" -exec bash -c 'FILE="$1"; ffmpeg -i "${FILE}" -vn -y "${FILE%.mp4}.mp3";' _ '{}' \;

gillytech 5y ago

This is going to cost me karma but don't waste your time with Joe Rogan.

nebula8804 5y ago
I enjoy some of his podcasts. Yeah some are a waste of time but many have been spectacular.
- gillytech 5y ago
  To be fair I would agree with you that some of his guests are great (e.g. Quentin Tarantino) and I do enjoy the long-form interviewing. But Rogan himself, to me, gives off bad vibes. Not really sincere or actually interested in his guests more than he is interested in himself. I find he'll say he's interested and come back with some show of how cultured and learned he is by bringing some obscure minutiae. I think he should be truly interested in his guest and put them in the spotlight. Sorry to point out the truth but Joe himself is an unaccomplished stoner and promotes lifestyle choices that are repugnant to me. I would never trust him with my kids. So why would I trust him with my time? Others do a much better job of the long form interview and have themselves provided some value to society on their own merits. Tim Ferriss and Jordan Harbinger to name a couple.
  - newbie789 5y ago
    > Joe himself is an unaccomplished stoner… This is an interesting take. I personally find Joe Rogan to be an abhorrent human being that gives a platform to pseudoscientists and white supremacists, but I’ve never heard “his tens of millions of dollars are negated by the fact that he smokes weed” as a criticism. Out of curiosity, what value does Tim Ferris provide to society? I’m not being sarcastic, I just only know him as the guy that wrote the four hour work week book, which I did not find substantive.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      Out of curiosity, who were the "psuedoscientists" and "white supremacists" you're accusing Joe of giving a platform to? Slanderous accusation to just drop and not expand on. Or is that what you call people that you don't agree with their scientific or political beliefs?

Tistron 5y ago

For me, something like this is exactly where Deno would shine. I could just run `deno run <script url> --allow-net=YouTube.com --allow-write=.` and not worry about that it could do anything dangerous. Probably the url list would be a bit more complicated, but I could also just blanket allow net without worrying, since allow-read isn't needed.

xmprt 5y ago
Do you know if generic sandboxing tools exist? I feel like it should be possible to use Docker and some sort of Firewall to isolate your running application from your system if you're worried about it accessing things that it should be able to. And that way you don't need to worry about using deno or relying on the program being written in a certain framework/language.
- NotEvil 5y ago
  Firejail?
dpacmittal 5y ago
While it's great that Deno is sandboxing code, but I feel like this should be a part of the OS and not the language.
- chaorace 5y ago
  Should it also be the OS's job to sandbox JS from the websites you visit? Admittedly, that question is made in bad faith -- I know what you mean, even if what you mean isn't necessarily "sandboxing": permissions! Android and iOS do it right. One OS-level source of truth that manages application-level permissions for the entire machine. When you frame it that way, it becomes clear that Deno asking for rights on a per-run basis is indeed silly, but only in the context of the user experience... not necessarily the core software design.
irae 5y ago
I use little snitch on macOS and it provides me almost the same thing you want universally across all my apps.

prvc 5y ago

>yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork based on the now inactive youtube-dlc. The main focus of this project is adding new features and patches while also keeping up to date with the original project yt-dlc's last commit was only 4 days ago, from the project owner. What are the advantages of each, and what about other forks out there?

sbarre 5y ago
The README covers most of these questions FYI
- prvc 5y ago
  The above quotation is from README.md in the yt-dlp repository, which does list some differences, but I get the sense this is not the full story.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
molticrystal 5y ago
https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc/commits/master https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc/commits/master The previous update was July 25, and the one before that was December 2020. While the July update dealt with the updater, having 2 days of small changes since December is not very active. As far as the advantages, there are plenty of comments now outlining them better than I could. For me there are many additional sites that work with yt-dlp that do not work with the other forks. I found myself using this fork more and more instead of youtube-dl due to the additional support, until I've now made it my default. It does have a compat mode so if you use a lot of youtube-dl switches that yt-dlp may of removed or depreciated in the cleanup, they will still usually work if applicable with this fork as well.

weq 5y ago

Im going to claim original idea that all these other downloders built off ~2006 still get k's of downloads a day even though its been 15yrs since the last update https://sourceforge.net/projects/gvdownloader/files/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/gvdownloader/files/

totoglazer 5y ago
Is Google video still live somewhere?
- capableweb 5y ago
  See https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Google_Video https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Google_Video and https://archive.org/details/googlevideo2011 https://archive.org/details/googlevideo2011

wp381640 5y ago

If you use youtube-dl and haven't noticed that it hasn't been receiving updates it's worth aliasing youtube-dl with this project

dasl 5y ago

youtube has recently been implementing download speed throttling on some video downloads. See: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326 . Youtube-dl does not yet have a solution for this occasional download speed throttling. This yt-dlp fork has a workaround (though not a true fix) for the issue: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326#issuecomment-879256177 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326#issuecom...

makeworld 5y ago
I'm pretty sure you don't even need those flags, and it just uses the non-throttled mdoe by default: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/492 https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/492
- pukkandan 5y ago
  you are correct. That comment is only applicable for the old version. Newer versions will bypass throttling out of the box

kragen 5y ago

Nice to see this. youtube-dl -U keeps telling me: youtube-dl is up-to-date (2021.06.06)

jokoon 5y ago

I noticed Reddit videos are sometimes mp4 iso5, which is an unusual format and refused by WhatsApp status.

codetrotter 5y ago

Not currently available for installation via Homebrew for macOS, as opposed to youtube-dl and youtube-dlc both of which can be installed via Homebrew. However, there is an open pull request for it from just a few hours ago https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/84049 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/84049 So here's to hoping it'll be available there soon :D

mattl 5y ago

How much to get a way to block “hey guys” at the start of a video?

sodality2 5y ago
Sponsorblock can skip sponsors, self-promos, subscribe reminders, intro animation, and end credits. (crowd-sources the timestamps) https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
- mattl 5y ago
  Alas not really watching a video on a browser.
  - sodality2 5y ago
    Android? Youtube vanced offers this built-in.
    - aero-glide2 5y ago
      Need to check out vanced, NewPipe keeps breaking.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      Never heard of YouTube Vanced. I see it's not open source. The feature list is interesting, but it doesn't say anything about tracking/telemetry. Does the app track you (and how much), independently of YouTube tracking? I'm currently happy with NewPipe - which is essentially a youtube-dl GUI, and has to be updated just as often, which is damn annoying because FDroid is still completely broken UX-wise - but I have less tech-savvy people around me, who would very much like an alternative to the official YouTube app.
      - sodality2 5y ago
        Newpipe works as well. Youtube vanced cannot be open source as it is just a nodded youtube client, which isn't open source. I cannot speak on tracking but I tracked its DNS requests and nothing out of the ordinary.

DarthNebo 5y ago

Nice, sponsor scrub!

nikisweeting 5y ago

I wonder if I should switch ArchiveBox to use this… is it available as easily via apt/pip/brew/Pkg/etc as YouTube-dL? Otherwise vendoring is always a pain.

dewey 5y ago
Doesn't look like yet, but at least for brew there's a pending MR: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#installation https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#installation

svnpenn 5y ago

I have a similar tool here https://github.com/89z/mech https://github.com/89z/mech

Bellamy 5y ago

I pay for YouTube premium, but this beautiful piece of software automatically strips out the commercials from the videos and it seems I can download any video from YouTube even without logging in. My question is the following: What is benefit of setting my credentials to the config file?

ObscureScience 5y ago
From the description I understood it as better quality audio stream.
scns 5y ago
I would highly advise against that, after all the stories about G accounts suspended without explanation && recourse.
truth_ 5y ago
My friend downloaded whole of Pluralsight's database using yt-dl. Config files are necessary for sites that require the user to access the content.

database64128 5y ago

I just updated my youtube-dl GUI to support yt-dlp. https://github.com/database64128/youtube-dl-wpf https://github.com/database64128/youtube-dl-wpf Currently it's WPF based and therefore only supports Windows. I'm considering porting it to Avalonia so I can also use it on my Linux desktop. The reason I made this GUI is mostly for manual format selection. The automatic 'bestvideo+bestaudio/best' doesn't always result in the best format combination. So I always select AV1 + Opus manually and use the WebM container. The GUI also includes some opinionated defaults like embedding metadata, thumbnail, subtitles.

paulcarroty 5y ago

Actually it works with mpv: create `~/.config/mpv/script-opts/ytdl_hook.conf` file with content `ytdl_path=yt-dlp`.

thomasfl 5y ago

Why can't YouTube and Alphabet simply provide a download button or a public API? When you are running the worlds largest digital museum of rare video footage, you have some obligations to the society.

selfhoster11 5y ago
Apparently, copyright law makes this an unwise proposition. But the least they could do is offer the Internet Archive with some privileged access so all this can be mirrored and viewed when it's out of copyright in 80 years.
- caractacus 5y ago
  It's not copyright law, it's the agreements that YT has with copyright owners. No one is going to license their content to YT if the site allows anyone to download whatever is there.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    If it wasn't for copyright law, there wouldn't be copyright owners. So copyright law is ultimately responsible for the status quo.
- alerighi 5y ago
  They could at least let you download videos for which the author specified a free license, such as Creative Commons, or videos that are public domain. There are a lot of these videos so why not?
  - thomasfl 5y ago
    Just discovered that several video sharing sites, like pexels.com, have a download button on videos with creative commons license. They are off course useless for professional YouTubers, but great for everybody else.
gmemstr 5y ago

say_it_as_it_is 5y ago

The killer feature of YouTube-dl is that it has been actively maintained for years. Any competing tool will need to do the same, and it is highly unlikely that others will carry it on.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

Fairly unrelated but I've always gotten a kick out of the NSFW issues that users report on youtube-dl's page.