That may be correct, but the download page explicitly says "Remember youtube-dl requires Python version 2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+ to work." and links to python's website. I tried renaming Python.exe and it still worked, so I have no idea what's up with it.
youtube-dl.exe does not need a separate Python installation.
I think you missed the point; the point is: it says it does. Houshalter even quoted it.
Yes, your software's download page is part of the user experience also.
I've been using it for years now and it's great. Not only for Youtube videos, but also for a lot of other video hosters, up to and including TV stations such as the German ZDF or the French Arte. To fully use its features you should install ffmpeg though. Youtube-dl will automatically use it if it's in the PATH, and then can download Youtube videos with higher frame rates and resolutions (they store video and audio i…
I like this command to extract audio from youtube videos: youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3
I like to keep it in original audio format (usually AAC) instead of mp3, because with mp3 conversion, there is also some loss of quality due to re-compression.
I've used this tool a ton of times and it is a standard install on my multimedia fetching VM. I really want to take the time to allow for a Sonarr[0]-for-youtube (and other supported sites) app that uses this on the backend. For example I love CGPGrey but don't want to constantly be downloading new videos (But I do want to watch them through my Plex setup). Some channels have convenient playlists I can download (and keep downloading) but I normally want to change the naming to a convention I specificy.
Honest question: why would you want to download a video from YouTube? The main use case I can think of is you want to watch videos offline on a mobile device but don't want to pay for a YouTube Red subscription.
Also, YouTube red is only available in some countries.
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 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.
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 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.
Honest question: why would you want to download a video from YouTube? The main use case I can think of is you want to watch videos offline on a mobile device but don't want to pay for a YouTube Red subscription.
a.) Long car trips across many state lines with poor coverage and/or limited data plans.
b.) People who work in offices or live in places that block YouTube, so they just run the script from some kind of VPS.
Honestly, those are the only scenarios I've seen in the wild. It's not like we are still living in the days of Napster.
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.
It isn't quite possible to block youtube-dl but not other ways of accessing YouTube. However, if you're downloading a lot of videos from one IP address, Google will blobk your IP from accessing YouTube. I know this because it happened to me after I ran a service to allow people to make gifs from YouTube videos, and the way I got them was with youtube-dl. After a while (about two years) they blacklisted my IP.
That's my main use of youtube-dl for years now. I'm extracting audio from old french movies available on youtube, work a small sound extract with audacity and then post the result on soudcloud[1]. [1] A bit of self-promotion here, if you are interested this is my soundcloud playlist https://soundcloud.com/melicerte/sets/extraits-de-vieux-film...