Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

rg3.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 338 posts

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#211

Post by Houshalter »

Quequau wrote: post #126
Houshalter wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It strikes me that with Microsoft working with Canonical to bring an Ubuntu like command line to Windows that it probably includes something like apt. This doesn't completely address your larger point but it probably would make the process easier.

Yes it seems to me that the problem with open source projects on Windows is they all expect the user to figure out their often complicated installation procedure (and then the installation of all their dependencies...)

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#212

Post by amelius »

It would be nice if there was a "shadow" version of youtube on bittorrent. So instead of using youtube-dl, you could just pull the file from bittorrent. Besides this being faster in most cases, it would also mean that a big part of our cultural heritage is no longer locked inside google's silo.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#213

Post by Namrog84 »

zeeZ wrote: post #176
chriswarbo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not easy because it's an command line. > Not a single family member would touch this here. > It's sad but understandable. I can understand why many people will avoid using commandlines. The part I don't understand is how they're quite comfortable when those commandlines are surrounded by "Forward", "Back", "Stop" and "Reload" buttons; or when they have an "I'm feeling lucky" button underneath. In the case of t…

You missed a couple steps at the beginning there: - Select browser icon - Double click browser icon - Click into search box - Type "youtube" - Disregard suggestions, hit enter - Click on first thing that says YouTube

Yes. This exactly. I know many that don't type in url or even search on YouTube. They just click around. One time a family member asked if all the videos after they watched mine(I sent direct link) were mine as well. They apparently watched 5+ videos thinking they were mine but just happened to be displayed in sidebar and other.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#214

Post by reedlaw »

throwaway7767 wrote: post #159
reedlaw wrote: post #143

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.

> 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. Well, ubuntu is a company. It was always their intention to become profitable at some point, even if they were willing to operate at a loss to build their market. I very much doubt debian would go the same way if it got the same level of…

What made Ubuntu special was making Linux and other free software easier to use. But when it became too easy they started to take away the "free" part by adding intrusive "features". It's was never a given that as a company they would try to make money that way.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#215

Post by gradys »

dangoldin wrote: post #171
Houshalter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They might also look at the timestamp between the clicks. If they're all together they might realize it's just someone opening multiple tabs at once. If they're a few minutes apart that may mean something else.

They could also tell that you didn't leave the SERP between clicks.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#217

Post by baldfat »

dexterdog wrote: post #201
baldfat wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They already do. That's why it updates pretty much every time I do a homebrew update.

I should have said. They would try harder.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#218

Post by chriswarbo »

rasz_pl wrote: post #178
chriswarbo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not easy because it's an command line. > Not a single family member would touch this here. > It's sad but understandable. I can understand why many people will avoid using commandlines. The part I don't understand is how they're quite comfortable when those commandlines are surrounded by "Forward", "Back", "Stop" and "Reload" buttons; or when they have an "I'm feeling lucky" button underneath. In the case of t…

>youtube-dl actually has quite sane defaults not really, if you copy url of a clip in a playlist it will start downloading WHOLE playlist :(

It's debatable whether that should be the default or not; compare it to, say, printing diagnostic info by default and requiring a special `--download` option.

One thing I always change from the default behaviour is video quality: by default it wastes a ton of bandwidth and disk space getting "HD" versions. I can understand why that's the default, but I don't particularly care about resolution, as it's a pretty negligible contributor to quality compared to the actual content of the video.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#220

Post by JustSomeNobody »

gbog wrote: post #69
mozumder wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is about 2 steps longer than most family member capabilities.

Always the same argument, and still wrong. It depends 100% on the desirability of the expected result. I have seen a non-IT guy do an incredibly complex serie of super user operations on his PC just to install CS. He was very motivated. But if you asked him to install Chrome in place of IE he would even understand what it meant. Same: many people still use peer-to-peer software to download movies, mostly porn. I gues…

I think this nails it.

They want to learn email? They do.

They want to learn to use FaceBook? They do.

If they really wanted to learn to download YouTube videos (Ideally using youtube-dl), they would.

Post reply on HN