22 ms·

YouTube-dl's first release since June 2021

339 points by pdimitar 5y ago

2Gkashmiri 5y ago
a lot of people have moved over to dlp so yeah
- schleck8 5y ago
  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  i haven’t tested, but does yt-dlp play nicely with mpv the same way the original does?
  - gourlaysama 5y ago
    Yes, it works the same. Since mpv 0.34 it even looks for yt-dlp first, and fallback to youtube-dl otherwise. Before that you had to set an option, or just symlink youtube-dl to yt-dlp.
    - teddyh 5y ago
      > Before that you had to set an option What option?
      - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
        --script-opts=ytdl_path=/path/to/yt-dlp Symlinking either into ~/.config/mpv/ (or wherever your mpv config is) should also work.
    - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
      mpv packages in linux distros seem to be pulling in yt-dlp now too; at least on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, the mpv package recommends yt-dlp and not youtube-dl. On one hand I'm sad to see youtube-dl's demise. But its prompt replacement gives me hope for the strength of the community to overcome whatever challenges the IP industry might present.
    - hprotagonist 5y ago
      great. One `pipx` shuffle and `mpv-build` later, and we’re off to the races.
- rjsw 5y ago
  Original youtube-dl got throttled by youtube, dlp currently doesn't. Can't work out from the release notes if this is fixed.
  - hericium 5y ago
    I think yt-dlp uses multiple simultanous connections, just like you could do with youtube-dl and, for example, aria2[1] youtube-dl --external-downloader=aria2c --external-downloader-args '--min-split-size=1M --max-connection-per-server=16 --max-concurrent-downloads=16 --split=16' xlvbT8dv5Gc [1] https://aria2.github.io/ https://aria2.github.io/
    - CyberShadow 5y ago
      No. Also, I tried that with youtube-dl but it doesn't work reliably (throttling still takes effect, with all but one connection simply timing out). [1] yt-dlp uses a different method than youtube-dl (I believe it uses the API used by the Android app, instead of by the youtube.com website). [1]: https://github.com/CyberShadow/turbotuber https://github.com/CyberShadow/turbotuber
      - hericium 5y ago
        > I believe it uses the API used by the Android app, instead of by the youtube.com website Clever.
        oldcigarette 5y ago
        Clever is rarely a good idea. If this isn't a public it might just be totally broken instead of throttled.
        duskwuff 5y ago
        If they're accurately reproducing the behavior of the Android app, Google can't change or remove that API without breaking versions of the app that people already have installed. (And a lot of Android users will hang on to old versions of apps basically forever.)
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Does anyone know if the two groups tried working together at one point? I know they have some disagreement over sponserblock, but beyond that was there any attempt to recruit the dlp people?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
xd1936 5y ago
Curious to watch how youtube-dl takes from yt-dlp and vice-versa.
yakubin 5y ago
For a long time now for me youtube-dl downloads YouTube videos at 50kb/s, which makes it impractical to use in conjunction with mpv. I need to leave youtube-dl running in the background for several hours to then watch the video in mpv. Now from the comments I've found out about yt-dlp[1] which claims to fix this issue[2]. Will check it out. [1]: <https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp> [2]: <https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326>
- db48x 5y ago
  It’s not a bug. Youtube deliberately throttles downloads unless the client can answer a math question.
  - sp332 5y ago
    I didn't know about this. How does it work? youtubedown gets around the throttling by opening a bunch of connections at once.
  - trulyme 5y ago
    Is this a quasi-captcha because of some legal reasons? I would assume math problems are easy to solve for a computer (easier than for most of the humans, actually).
    - stefan_ 5y ago
      It's just a flippant way of saying "hiding the URL or parameters behind running JavaScript that serves no other purpose than obfuscation". See also this commit: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/404f611f1c4aa516fbc4301aa7b8f734ee4bc67b https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/404f611f1c4aa516fbc4... Of course this is easy to solve, but every layer of obfuscation they add generally requires someone to go and work around it in yt-dlp. It's mutually assured time waste on both sides.
      - OneLeggedCat 5y ago
mwattsun 5y ago
So there is a bug in the Twitter video download. When Twitter went to 280 chars it started showing up. 280 chars is too long for a file name (on Windows at least.) I sent YouTube-dl a pull request with a fix but not only did they not accept it, they brushed me off in a way that gave me the impression they didn't want fixes from the outside. I'm fairly old and this was my first attempt at contributing to open source. Is this the way it goes typically? I imagine they get a lot of people with b.s. pull requests so they get jaded. It's understandable I suppose. The bug still exists in yt-dlp. I run a local copy with my fix for those times when I need it.
- frafra 5y ago
  I am sorry to hear that; you have been unlucky indeed, as it is not like that usually. I would suggest you to submit the same patch to yt-dlp. My only PR for youtube-dl has been waiting for ~2.5 year (#21837), so I proposed the same patch to yt-dlp, which has been quickly merged after a brief review (#1920). I found yt-dlp developers friendlier indeed, and I get notified if there is an issue or a PR that I could be interested in reviewing or contributing to. Sometimes developers are volunteers, have too much to do, and they can get frustrated. Having good procedures is critical, like testing/CI, pre-commit with blake8 and such instead of asking to read a very long list of rules, using GitHub merge queue, involve previous contributors automatically, share the burden with others as much as possible, etc.
  - mwattsun 5y ago
    Yes, I imagine it depends on the project. I read both good stories and bad about it. I haven't let it discourage me. I'll consider resubmitting to yt-dlp. Thanks!
- CannisterFlux 5y ago
  https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/29989 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/29989 There's this pull request that works on fixing the problem (not merged yet), I don't know if it is yours under a different alias, but you can see the work and edge cases involved for something that a priori seems simple ("just truncate the name!" haha). Also the dude making the PR looks like an external contributor. It seems like normal polite open source interaction there to me, despite what could be perceived as a negative initial reaction. What might come across as dry or brushing off could be genuine concern at unforeseen consequences.
mellosouls 5y ago
Previous discussion on the inactivity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289981
Lamad123 5y ago
Wow!! This is extremely fast..
marttt 5y ago
Is there a command line yt-dl alternative (for youtube to mp3 conversions) that doesn't require Python? Something utilizing basic Unix tools, C or Perl would be perfect. I did find a simple Perl script [1], apparently written in 2020, but it didn't work for me out of the box, possibly due to some simple regex issue. 1: https://calomel.org/youtube_wget.html https://calomel.org/youtube_wget.html
- sp332 5y ago
  Here's a perl one that is actively maintained. https://www.jwz.org/hacks/#youtubedown https://www.jwz.org/hacks/#youtubedown Edit: my browser cached the page so I didn't see the special version lol. Try a private window or https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jwz.org%2Fhacks%2Fyoutubedown https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jwz...
  - skrebbel 5y ago
    I love clicking on jwz links from HN
  - marttt 5y ago
    lol, took me a moment to "get" this. Omitting the hash symbol got me to the actual script: https://www.jwz.org/hacks/youtubedown https://www.jwz.org/hacks/youtubedown Many thanks!
    - sp332 5y ago
      The hash should load the /hacks/ page and then scroll to the element with the "youtubedown" id. This works in every browser from like the last decade... or two.
      - marttt 5y ago
        When I first clicked it, I was greeted with this: https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2016/hn.png#youtubedown https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2016/hn.png#youtubedown Edit: I can confirm that this jwz's script works. Very handy for me. Thanks again!
arprocter 5y ago
Looks like the maintainer is stepping down https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6e70d51011cfb3fb86d84055182 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6...
nouveaux 5y ago
Both youtube-dl and mpsyt suffer from inactive owners who refuse to relinquish control. It is their right to do what they want with their projects. Fortunately, yt-dlp is a better managed project. Unfortunately I only found out about it a couple of days ago.
- Okawari 5y ago
  I've been involved with MPSYT a while back and has been given admin rights to the mps-youtube repository under the mps-youtube organization, but not to pyfa which mps uses. At some point after the owner stopped actively maintaining the project, me and some other contributors at the time was given the ability to merge pull requests. The impression I got from discussions around that time was that we could maintain but weren't supposed to lead the project. I've long since stopped using the tool and therefore lost both interest and knowledge about it to properly maintain it, but I've been reluctant to pass my rights on to someone else. It kind of breaches the mandate I feel I was given. I'm at the point where I'dd b e happy to give the rights to someone if it would keep the project alive. However, I personally think it would be better if someone forks and renames the project. Mostly due to a lot of 3rd party packages being released many years ago which I assume would not be properly updated if the project were to become active again. The only one who can push a new version onto pip is the long inactive owner. If someone wants to make a fork, I'dd merge any PR that updates the readme to a maintained fork.
- shbooms 5y ago
  it seems like the process has begun for the owner/maintainer to step down: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6e70d51011cfb3fb86d84055182 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6... I haven't found anything else related to this yet (i.e. who will be taking over, if anyone)
dmt0 5y ago
Wishlist: an open-source Firefox add-on that does nothing but launch youtube-dl and get a video at top quality with one button click.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Though it does more than that,https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#Open_With_extension https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#Open_With_extension
  - gordaco 5y ago
    Ha, just a couple weeks ago I wrote a small GUI frontend for youtube-dl, to download a video with chapters and create a different .mp3 or .mp4 file per chapter (useful for music compilations). I created it with the express goal of using it with Open With. It's a very useful extension, and I've used it with youtube-dl for ages.
  - Matumio 5y ago
    Thank you, this can replace my own plugin I've hacked together some years ago. (Not published, was mainly a learning exercise.) The most frustrating thing is: my plugin still works fine. But I cannot easily enable it permanently any more. I can temporary load it. But my own Firefox doesn't allow me to trust myself permanently. Maybe I'd have to submit it for signing or use some special version of Firefox... can't be bothered. It feels so disempowering.
  - dmt0 5y ago
    Can't get it to work on macOS, having tried all possible commands. There seem to be open issues about it in openwith repo. But definitely seems like a good option. Thanks!
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    "This add-on is not actively monitored for security by Mozilla. Make sure you trust it before installing." Hm, well I'm sure it's by a well-known and trustworthy author. "The source for this add-on is at https://github.com/darktrojan/openwith https://github.com/darktrojan/openwith." Dark Trojan. Sounds legit.
devrand 5y ago
I think a project like this is extremely difficult to maintain due to the nature of being essentially being a web scraper. They support a ton of sites that each may make changes that suddenly break the tool, completely out-of-band. Maintainers are then stuck with people filing issues, several PRs to fix, and perhaps to inability to even test the fixes (ex. geo restrictions, lack of subscription, language barriers, etc.) all while being pushed to ship a release with the fix ASAP. I think a project like this likely could benefit from the per-website code being maintained separately from the main codebase. This would allow for out-of-band hotfixes and have disjoint groups that are willing/can maintain each site. Of course this introduces other issues, namely versioning and cross-cutting refactors.
- Thorentis 5y ago
  This is what plugin APIs are for.

339 points by pdimitar 5y ago

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

a lot of people have moved over to dlp so yeah

schleck8 5y ago
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
hprotagonist 5y ago
i haven’t tested, but does yt-dlp play nicely with mpv the same way the original does?
- gourlaysama 5y ago
  Yes, it works the same. Since mpv 0.34 it even looks for yt-dlp first, and fallback to youtube-dl otherwise. Before that you had to set an option, or just symlink youtube-dl to yt-dlp.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    > Before that you had to set an option What option?
    - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
      --script-opts=ytdl_path=/path/to/yt-dlp Symlinking either into ~/.config/mpv/ (or wherever your mpv config is) should also work.
  - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
    mpv packages in linux distros seem to be pulling in yt-dlp now too; at least on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, the mpv package recommends yt-dlp and not youtube-dl. On one hand I'm sad to see youtube-dl's demise. But its prompt replacement gives me hope for the strength of the community to overcome whatever challenges the IP industry might present.
  - hprotagonist 5y ago
    great. One `pipx` shuffle and `mpv-build` later, and we’re off to the races.
rjsw 5y ago
Original youtube-dl got throttled by youtube, dlp currently doesn't. Can't work out from the release notes if this is fixed.
- hericium 5y ago
  I think yt-dlp uses multiple simultanous connections, just like you could do with youtube-dl and, for example, aria2[1] youtube-dl --external-downloader=aria2c --external-downloader-args '--min-split-size=1M --max-connection-per-server=16 --max-concurrent-downloads=16 --split=16' xlvbT8dv5Gc [1] https://aria2.github.io/ https://aria2.github.io/
  - CyberShadow 5y ago
    No. Also, I tried that with youtube-dl but it doesn't work reliably (throttling still takes effect, with all but one connection simply timing out). [1] yt-dlp uses a different method than youtube-dl (I believe it uses the API used by the Android app, instead of by the youtube.com website). [1]: https://github.com/CyberShadow/turbotuber https://github.com/CyberShadow/turbotuber
    - hericium 5y ago
      > I believe it uses the API used by the Android app, instead of by the youtube.com website Clever.
      - oldcigarette 5y ago
        Clever is rarely a good idea. If this isn't a public it might just be totally broken instead of throttled.
        duskwuff 5y ago
        If they're accurately reproducing the behavior of the Android app, Google can't change or remove that API without breaking versions of the app that people already have installed. (And a lot of Android users will hang on to old versions of apps basically forever.)
boomboomsubban 5y ago
Does anyone know if the two groups tried working together at one point? I know they have some disagreement over sponserblock, but beyond that was there any attempt to recruit the dlp people?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

xd1936 5y ago

Curious to watch how youtube-dl takes from yt-dlp and vice-versa.

yakubin 5y ago

For a long time now for me youtube-dl downloads YouTube videos at 50kb/s, which makes it impractical to use in conjunction with mpv. I need to leave youtube-dl running in the background for several hours to then watch the video in mpv. Now from the comments I've found out about yt-dlp[1] which claims to fix this issue[2]. Will check it out. [1]: <https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp> [2]: <https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326>

db48x 5y ago
It’s not a bug. Youtube deliberately throttles downloads unless the client can answer a math question.
- sp332 5y ago
  I didn't know about this. How does it work? youtubedown gets around the throttling by opening a bunch of connections at once.
- trulyme 5y ago
  Is this a quasi-captcha because of some legal reasons? I would assume math problems are easy to solve for a computer (easier than for most of the humans, actually).
  - stefan_ 5y ago
    It's just a flippant way of saying "hiding the URL or parameters behind running JavaScript that serves no other purpose than obfuscation". See also this commit: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/404f611f1c4aa516fbc4301aa7b8f734ee4bc67b https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/404f611f1c4aa516fbc4... Of course this is easy to solve, but every layer of obfuscation they add generally requires someone to go and work around it in yt-dlp. It's mutually assured time waste on both sides.
    - OneLeggedCat 5y ago

mwattsun 5y ago

So there is a bug in the Twitter video download. When Twitter went to 280 chars it started showing up. 280 chars is too long for a file name (on Windows at least.) I sent YouTube-dl a pull request with a fix but not only did they not accept it, they brushed me off in a way that gave me the impression they didn't want fixes from the outside. I'm fairly old and this was my first attempt at contributing to open source. Is this the way it goes typically? I imagine they get a lot of people with b.s. pull requests so they get jaded. It's understandable I suppose. The bug still exists in yt-dlp. I run a local copy with my fix for those times when I need it.

frafra 5y ago
I am sorry to hear that; you have been unlucky indeed, as it is not like that usually. I would suggest you to submit the same patch to yt-dlp. My only PR for youtube-dl has been waiting for ~2.5 year (#21837), so I proposed the same patch to yt-dlp, which has been quickly merged after a brief review (#1920). I found yt-dlp developers friendlier indeed, and I get notified if there is an issue or a PR that I could be interested in reviewing or contributing to. Sometimes developers are volunteers, have too much to do, and they can get frustrated. Having good procedures is critical, like testing/CI, pre-commit with blake8 and such instead of asking to read a very long list of rules, using GitHub merge queue, involve previous contributors automatically, share the burden with others as much as possible, etc.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Yes, I imagine it depends on the project. I read both good stories and bad about it. I haven't let it discourage me. I'll consider resubmitting to yt-dlp. Thanks!
CannisterFlux 5y ago
https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/29989 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/29989 There's this pull request that works on fixing the problem (not merged yet), I don't know if it is yours under a different alias, but you can see the work and edge cases involved for something that a priori seems simple ("just truncate the name!" haha). Also the dude making the PR looks like an external contributor. It seems like normal polite open source interaction there to me, despite what could be perceived as a negative initial reaction. What might come across as dry or brushing off could be genuine concern at unforeseen consequences.

mellosouls 5y ago

Previous discussion on the inactivity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289981

Lamad123 5y ago

Wow!! This is extremely fast..

marttt 5y ago

Is there a command line yt-dl alternative (for youtube to mp3 conversions) that doesn't require Python? Something utilizing basic Unix tools, C or Perl would be perfect. I did find a simple Perl script [1], apparently written in 2020, but it didn't work for me out of the box, possibly due to some simple regex issue. 1: https://calomel.org/youtube_wget.html https://calomel.org/youtube_wget.html

sp332 5y ago
Here's a perl one that is actively maintained. https://www.jwz.org/hacks/#youtubedown https://www.jwz.org/hacks/#youtubedown Edit: my browser cached the page so I didn't see the special version lol. Try a private window or https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jwz.org%2Fhacks%2Fyoutubedown https://web.archive.org/web/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jwz...
- skrebbel 5y ago
  I love clicking on jwz links from HN
- marttt 5y ago
  lol, took me a moment to "get" this. Omitting the hash symbol got me to the actual script: https://www.jwz.org/hacks/youtubedown https://www.jwz.org/hacks/youtubedown Many thanks!
  - sp332 5y ago
    The hash should load the /hacks/ page and then scroll to the element with the "youtubedown" id. This works in every browser from like the last decade... or two.
    - marttt 5y ago
      When I first clicked it, I was greeted with this: https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2016/hn.png#youtubedown https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2016/hn.png#youtubedown Edit: I can confirm that this jwz's script works. Very handy for me. Thanks again!

arprocter 5y ago

Looks like the maintainer is stepping down https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6e70d51011cfb3fb86d84055182 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6...

nouveaux 5y ago

Both youtube-dl and mpsyt suffer from inactive owners who refuse to relinquish control. It is their right to do what they want with their projects. Fortunately, yt-dlp is a better managed project. Unfortunately I only found out about it a couple of days ago.

Okawari 5y ago
I've been involved with MPSYT a while back and has been given admin rights to the mps-youtube repository under the mps-youtube organization, but not to pyfa which mps uses. At some point after the owner stopped actively maintaining the project, me and some other contributors at the time was given the ability to merge pull requests. The impression I got from discussions around that time was that we could maintain but weren't supposed to lead the project. I've long since stopped using the tool and therefore lost both interest and knowledge about it to properly maintain it, but I've been reluctant to pass my rights on to someone else. It kind of breaches the mandate I feel I was given. I'm at the point where I'dd b e happy to give the rights to someone if it would keep the project alive. However, I personally think it would be better if someone forks and renames the project. Mostly due to a lot of 3rd party packages being released many years ago which I assume would not be properly updated if the project were to become active again. The only one who can push a new version onto pip is the long inactive owner. If someone wants to make a fork, I'dd merge any PR that updates the readme to a maintained fork.
shbooms 5y ago
it seems like the process has begun for the owner/maintainer to step down: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6e70d51011cfb3fb86d84055182 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6... I haven't found anything else related to this yet (i.e. who will be taking over, if anyone)

dmt0 5y ago

Wishlist: an open-source Firefox add-on that does nothing but launch youtube-dl and get a video at top quality with one button click.

boomboomsubban 5y ago
Though it does more than that,https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#Open_With_extension https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#Open_With_extension
- gordaco 5y ago
  Ha, just a couple weeks ago I wrote a small GUI frontend for youtube-dl, to download a video with chapters and create a different .mp3 or .mp4 file per chapter (useful for music compilations). I created it with the express goal of using it with Open With. It's a very useful extension, and I've used it with youtube-dl for ages.
- Matumio 5y ago
  Thank you, this can replace my own plugin I've hacked together some years ago. (Not published, was mainly a learning exercise.) The most frustrating thing is: my plugin still works fine. But I cannot easily enable it permanently any more. I can temporary load it. But my own Firefox doesn't allow me to trust myself permanently. Maybe I'd have to submit it for signing or use some special version of Firefox... can't be bothered. It feels so disempowering.
- dmt0 5y ago
  Can't get it to work on macOS, having tried all possible commands. There seem to be open issues about it in openwith repo. But definitely seems like a good option. Thanks!
- DarylZero 5y ago
  "This add-on is not actively monitored for security by Mozilla. Make sure you trust it before installing." Hm, well I'm sure it's by a well-known and trustworthy author. "The source for this add-on is at https://github.com/darktrojan/openwith https://github.com/darktrojan/openwith." Dark Trojan. Sounds legit.

devrand 5y ago

I think a project like this is extremely difficult to maintain due to the nature of being essentially being a web scraper. They support a ton of sites that each may make changes that suddenly break the tool, completely out-of-band. Maintainers are then stuck with people filing issues, several PRs to fix, and perhaps to inability to even test the fixes (ex. geo restrictions, lack of subscription, language barriers, etc.) all while being pushed to ship a release with the fix ASAP. I think a project like this likely could benefit from the per-website code being maintained separately from the main codebase. This would allow for out-of-band hotfixes and have disjoint groups that are willing/can maintain each site. Of course this introduces other issues, namely versioning and cross-cutting refactors.

Thorentis 5y ago
This is what plugin APIs are for.