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YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

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Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never knew this occurred, how do they do this if I open links in a new tab? Maybe if the website uses Google Analytics they might take this into account, but if they didn't have any other software from Google? I'm quite intrigued. Thanks for that post!

I think just clicking the link and then clicking a different link counts against the first link. It probably doesn't matter if you actually use the back button or not. I don't know how they account for people clicking multiple links in new tabs. My guess is they reorder links sometimes so that users that click multiple links cancel each other out. They just try to maximize the probability you will click on a link and…

Do you have any reference to confirm that google does this? I really doubt it would be a useful heuristic, as just because someone opens another search result does not mean the first one was not valuable.

Not saying they don't, but it seems unlikely and I'd be curious to know if this can be confirmed.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#162
post #35
post #28

The tragedy of this software (and many like it) is that despite working exactly as advertised, easily and with a lot of features, because it's a quiet open source project without any SEO rigging it will never appear in page 1 of any searches by laymen trying to download videos ("save youtube to hard drive", "download youtube videos" et al). The amount of crapware I've had to remove from family member's PCs just becau…

It's not easy because it's an command line. Not a single family member would touch this here. It's sad but understandable.

If you are looking for something to give your family members, almost everyone I know uses the open-source tool jdownloader [0] to download youtube videos.

It's a ponderous java monster but it works great and comes with a huge plugin collection for numerous sites.

The fact that it has a gui makes it really accessibly to non-technical people.

There seems to be talk about AdWare in the installer but I personally never had that problem and you can get around that by downloading the executable .jar.

[0] http://jdownloader.org/home/index?s=lng_en

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#163
post #28

The tragedy of this software (and many like it) is that despite working exactly as advertised, easily and with a lot of features, because it's a quiet open source project without any SEO rigging it will never appear in page 1 of any searches by laymen trying to download videos ("save youtube to hard drive", "download youtube videos" et al). The amount of crapware I've had to remove from family member's PCs just becau…

I treat youtube-dl like Fight Club. I am glad it isn't on the top of searches since I am afraid sites would start trying to stop it from working harder.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#164
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>SEO rigging? That's mostly having links from other reputable sources. If this software is good, other good sites will link to it rising it up in the search results You have tell Google what your site is about, otherwise it's pretty hopeless; you're pretty much well asking Google to guess what terms the site should rank for. The five-minute-basics this site needs are to create a meaningful title tag (getting "YouTube…

Google pretty much ignore or place a very very low value on meta description and titles since it's so easy to game. External links, from high ranking reputable sites is where the most value is at since they are hard to game. Example would be linking to this project page from the wikipedia page for youtube. Also the text used for links is important. Yes google is a mind reader and it does figure what your page is abou…

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Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a tragedy because if it was very popular and easy to use YouTube would likely block it. It's directly competing with their own YouTube Red. Also look at popular Linux distros like Ubuntu. As soon as they reach mass market they lose what made them special to begin with and start experimenting with advertising and so on.

Is it really possible to block youtube-dl? All it does is the same thing Youtube's own HMTL5 player does, except that it saves the video instead of playing it back.

Certain videos will download without audio then I update youtube-dl and that usually fixes it.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#167

i love youtube-dl. i've been interested in doing the same with soundcloud, but i have no idea how to go about learning how their streaming works. any advice for where to start?

Soundcloud is on the list of supported sites for youtube-dl and has worked perfectly for quite a while (unless Soundcloud broke something in the last few months).

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#168
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they knew about it, sure. All it would take is a 3 step (after initial download) instructional with some screenshots: 1. Open Explorer where you downloaded youtube-dl 2. Shift+Right click -> Open command window here 3. Type 'youtube-dl ' and paste url[0], then enter As I said it really is a discoverability problem, one that the organiser of the world's information is neither incentivised nor really expected to add…

I happen to be on a fresh copy of Windows 7 right now, so I'm going to try it. I expect to encounter at least several steps where a nontechnical user would be totally lost or frustrated. 1. Download Python 2.7 and install. Encountered error where the installer stopped with no indication that it had completed or failed. Tried to install again and it messed up the original installer which was hiding in the background a…

1. This would occur with a GUI as well.

Can't comment on the rest as we have yet to get Python installed.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#169
post #28

The tragedy of this software (and many like it) is that despite working exactly as advertised, easily and with a lot of features, because it's a quiet open source project without any SEO rigging it will never appear in page 1 of any searches by laymen trying to download videos ("save youtube to hard drive", "download youtube videos" et al). The amount of crapware I've had to remove from family member's PCs just becau…

I found this neat project that adds a GUI to YouTube-dl. It looks like an easy program for non-technical people to use. https://github.com/MrS0m30n3/youtube-dl-gui

another good gui is this web-based one: http://www.alltubedownload.net/

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#170
post #34

Download mp3 with the maximum possible quality. $ youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 --audio-quality 0 --output "%(title)s.%(ext)s"

Also, a lot of times I'll quickly grab videos from my youtube subs to listen to while I jog: if it's a video then the screen would stay on, so I just grab the audio with `youtube-dl -f 140 .` This downloads just an m4a that works on my iPhone. It's not ALWAYS format 140 (-F to see them all) but usually.
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