youtube-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.x (x being at least 4), and it's not platform specific. It should work in your Unix box, in Windows or in Mac OS X. The latest version is 2010.06.06. It's released to the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.
I'll try to keep it updated if YouTube.com changes the way you access their videos. After all, it's a simple and short program. However, I can't guarantee anything. If you detect it stops working, check for new versions and/or inform me about the problem, indicating the program version you are using. If the program stops working and I can't solve the problem but you have a solution, I'd like to know it. If that happens and you feel you can maintain the program yourself, tell me. My contact information is at rg03.wordpress.com.
In Windows, once you have installed the Python interpreter, save the program with the .py extension and put it somewhere in the PATH. Try to follow the guide to install youtube-dl under Windows XP.
After that, you should be able to call it from the command line as youtube-dl or youtube-dl.py. I will use youtube-dl in the following examples. Usage instructions are easy. Use youtube-dl followed by a video URL or identifier. Example: youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar". The video will be saved to the file foobar.flv in that example. As YouTube.com videos are in Flash Video format, their extension should be flv. In Linux and other unices, video players using a recent version of ffmpeg can play them. That includes MPlayer, VLC, etc. Those two work under Windows and other platforms, but you could also get a specific FLV player of your taste.
If you try to run the program and you receive an error message containing the keyword SyntaxError near the end, it means your Python interpreter is too old.
You can change the file name of the video using the -o option, like in youtube-dl -o vid.flv "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar". Read the Output template section for more details on this.
Some videos require an account to be downloaded, mostly because they're flagged as mature content. You can pass the program a username and password for a YouTube.com account with the -u and -p options, like youtube-dl -u myusername -p mypassword "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar".
The simulate mode (activated with -s or --simulate) can be used to just get the real video URL and use it with a download manager if you prefer that option.
The quiet mode (activated with -q or --quiet) can be used to supress all output messages. This allows, in systems featuring /dev/stdout and other similar special files, outputting the video data to standard output in order to pipe it to another program without interferences.
The default filename is video_id.flv. But you can also use the video title in the filename with the -t or --title option, or preserve the literal title in the filename with the -l or --literal option.
You can make the program append &fmt=something to the URL by using the -f or --format option. This makes it possible to download high quality versions of the videos when available.
For YouTube, you can also use the special word ytsearch to download search results. With ytsearch it will download the first search result. With ytsearchN, where N is a number, it will download the first N results. With ytsearchall it will download every result for that search. In most systems you'll need to use quotes for multiple words. Example: youtube-dl "ytsearch3:cute kittens".
youtube-dl honors the http_proxy environment variable if you want to use a proxy. Set it to something like http://proxy.example.com:8080, and do not leave the http:// prefix out.
Note that if you directly click on these hyperlinks, your web browser will most likely display the program contents. It's usually better to right-click on it and choose the appropriate option, normally called Save Target As or Save Link As, depending on the web browser you are using.
The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file names. The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a single file, like in youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv "http://some/video". However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced when downloading each video. The special sequences have the format %(NAME)s. To clarify, that's a percent symbol followed by a name in parenthesis, followed by a lowercase S. Allowed names are:
As you may have guessed, the default template is %(id)s.%(ext)s. When some command line options are used, it's replaced by other templates like %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s. You can specify your own.
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