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====== Youtube-dl ======
Great tool for downloading from [[youtube]], and elsewhere.

It's [[github>ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29965|currently unmaintained]], so I've switched to a fork called [[yt-dlp]] to get around slow speeds downloading from Youtube.

===== Useful Arguments =====

^ ''-F'' | List available formats for the video. |
^ ''-f\_[code]'' | Format, use code from ''-F'' list. Default is highest quality. |
^ ''-i'' | Ignore errors. Sometimes comes in handy when trivial errors are holding things up. |
^ ''-o'' | Lets you set a template to format the filenames of the output. |
^ ''-v'' | Verbose process info. Good if something's going wrong. |
^ ''-w'' | Don't overwrite files. |

===== Configuration =====
You can put any argument in the file ''~/.config/youtube-dl/config'', and it will add them any time it runs.

So it's an easy way to specify a common download location and naming template, for example.

Mine just looks like this:

<file config>
#	Output template
--output ~/Downloads/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s
</file>

===== Uses =====

==== Video ====
YTDL will automatically grab the best-quality version, so often ''youtube-dl [url]'' is sufficient. 

If you want to choose which format with ''-f'' it likely will be ''video only'', so you have to pick an audio  stream too, you can grab them both and have them merged by using a [;us symbol, eg: ''ytdlp -f 123+456 [youtube id]''

==== Getting Audio from Videos ====

Good for getting music on there, though if you can find it somewhere else in a not-video format it'll probably be better quality?  Still, this comes in really handy when you just want to share a song or something.

  - ''youtube-dl -F [url]'' to list formats, then
  - ''youtube-dl -f [number] [url]'' to download selected.
    * __OR__ ''youtube-dl %%--%%audio%%-%%format best -x'' will just grab the best quality one.
    * Either option'll be a silly format like .m4a or .opus, so if you want to convert it to .mp3 or .ogg (for example) use [[ffmpeg]]\\ ''ffmpeg -i [filename.m4a] [filename.mp3|ogg]''

==== Channel ====
You can grab all the videos from a channel too!

''youtube-dl [url]''

So just like normal, but you add the channel's URL instead of the video's.

  * https://askubuntu.com/questions/856911/using-youtube-dl-to-download-entire-youtube-channel

===== GUI =====

Been researching making or installing a web interface to combine with a YTDL setup on [[qnap_ts-231p|my NAS]]. Here're some links:

  * [[https://oleksis.github.io/youtube-dl-gui/|yt-dlg]] - [[Python]].
  * [[github>Rudloff/alltube]] - Seems overly complicated?
  * https://old.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/8hu6me/how_to_download_youtube_using_qnap/
  * https://old.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/lipv1p/help_with_youtubedl_installation/
  * https://old.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/8hu6me/how_to_download_youtube_using_qnap/
  * https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=134916
  * [[https://tartube.sourceforge.io/|Tartube]]

===== Links =====
  * https://youtube-dl.org/
  * [[github>ytdl-org/youtube-dl]]
  * [[yt-dlp]] - Fork with more features, and project activity.

{{tag>software cli guide open-source youtube}}