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<title>youtube-dl: Download videos from YouTube.com</title>
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<h1>youtube-dl: Download videos from YouTube.com</h1>
<h2>What is it?</h2>
<p><em>youtube-dl</em> is a small command-line program to download videos
from YouTube.com. It requires the <a href="http://www.python.org/">Python
interpreter</a>, version 2.4 or later, and it's not platform specific.
It should work in your Unix box, in Windows or in Mac OS X. The latest version
is <strong>2008.01.24</strong>. It's licensed under the MIT License, which
means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like
complying with a few simple conditions.</p>
<p>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 <a href="http://freshmeat.net/~rg3/">freshmeat.net</a>.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the feedback received so far. I'm glad people find my
program useful.</p>
<p><strong>Related projects</strong>:
<a href="../metacafe-dl/">metacafe-dl</a>
<a href="../pornotube-dl/">pornotube-dl</a>
</p>
<h2>Usage instructions</h2>
<p>In Windows, once you have installed the Python interpreter, save the
program with the <em>.py</em> extension and put it somewhere in the PATH.
Try to follow the
<a href="http://rg03.wordpress.com/youtube-dl-under-windows-xp/">guide to
install youtube-dl under Windows XP</a>.</p>
<p>In Unix, download it, give it execution permission and copy it to one
of the PATH directories (typically, <em>/usr/local/bin</em>).</p>
<p>After that, you should be able to call it from the command line as
<em>youtube-dl</em> or <em>youtube-dl.py</em>. I will use <em>youtube-dl</em>
in the following examples. Usage instructions are easy. Use <em>youtube-dl</em>
followed by a video URL or identifier. Example: <em>youtube-dl
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"</em>. The video will be saved
to the file <em>foobar.flv</em> in that example. As YouTube.com
videos are in Flash Video format, their extension should be <em>flv</em>.
In Linux and other unices, video players using a recent version of
<em>ffmpeg</em> 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.</p>
<p>If you try to run the program and you receive an error message containing the
keyword <em>SyntaxError</em> near the end, it means your Python interpreter
is too old.</p>
<h2>More usage tips</h2>
<ul>
<li>You can change the file name of the video using the -o option, like in
<em>youtube-dl -o vid.flv "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"</em>.</li>
<li>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 <em>youtube-dl
-u myusername -p mypassword "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"</em>.</li>
<li>The account data can also be read from the user .netrc file by indicating
the -n or --netrc option. The machine name is <em>youtube</em> in that
case.</li>
<li>The <em>simulate mode</em> (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.</li>
<li>The <em>quiet mode</em> (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.</li>
<li>The program can be told to simply print the final video URL to standard
output using the -g or --get-url option.</li>
<li>Combined with the above option, the -2 or --title-too option tells the
program to print the video title too.</li>
<li>The default filename is <em>video_id.flv</em>. But you can also use the
video title in the filename with the -t or --title option.</li>
<li><em>youtube-dl</em> honors the <em>http_proxy</em> environment variable
if you want to use a proxy. Set it to something like
<em>http://proxy.example.com:8080</em>, and do not leave the <em>http://</em>
prefix out.</li>
<li>You can get the program version by calling it as <em>youtube-dl
-v</em> or <em>youtube-dl --version</em>.</li>
<li>For usage instructions, use <em>youtube-dl -h</em> or <em>youtube-dl
--help.</em></li>
<li>You can cancel the program at any time pressing Ctrl+C. It may print
some error lines saying something about <em>KeyboardInterrupt</em>.
That's ok.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Download it</h2>
<p>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 <em>Save
Target As</em> or <em>Save Link As</em>, depending on the web browser you
are using.</p>
<p><a href="youtube-dl">2008.01.24</a></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>MD5</strong>: 48a7df743398bbfdf2710962000886cb</li>
<li><strong>SHA1</strong>: 05ab118a157dbeedf7430d8445963c0340188c04</li>
<li><strong>SHA256</strong>: 6e98f3abfa79a038e578d45441bb6675ac6d4880bae4b801d5125e364e60d5c5</li>
</ul>
<p id="copyright">Copyright © 2006-2007 Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez</p>
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