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Show HN: YouTube-DL GUI Powered by Electron

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Re: Show HN: YouTube-DL GUI Powered by Electron

#41

Post by Mindwipe »

r3bl wrote: post #39
Double_a_92 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish the installation was easier. It is reasonable to explain someone to write "youtube-dl -x " to download music from youtube... But having them installing ffmpeg and python, manually copying some exe to a safe place, and adding that as a enviroment variable really cuts the interest off.

That's because you're using Windows, which is really, really not designed with scripts in mind. Point to Ubuntu in the Microsoft Store. Python is preinstalled. You may need to install Python's package manager (I'm not sure does it come preinstalled) with "sudo apt install python3-pip". Install it from Python's package manager with "pip3 install youtube-dl". You could technically skip Python's package manager by just…

Did you honestly write this down thinking it was remotely any easier?

Re: Show HN: YouTube-DL GUI Powered by Electron

#42

Post by Mindwipe »

Udo wrote: post #38
bspammer wrote: post #15

I know this is quite selfish but the more accessible youtube-dl is, the more likely Google is to see it as a business threat, and the more likely they are to add some sort of content DRM. Just something to think about

I agree, ideally youtube-dl would remain obscure, but YT has been on to it for a long time. It's somewhat of an arms race right now. I have to update youtube-dl every few weeks or it will simply stop working. I would not be entirely suprised if Youtube one day just requires actual browser DRM to work at all. That would likely break every single smart TV out there, which is probably the only reason why they haven't ye…

> That would likely break every single smart TV out there, which is probably the only reason why they haven't yet done it.

It wouldn't, support for Widevine has been mandatory in order for Google to let TV manufacturers have a YouTube app for about four years now, and if you play back a Google Play film on the YouTube application on your smart TV it's already using Widevine DRM.

Re: Show HN: YouTube-DL GUI Powered by Electron

#43

Post by butteroverflow »

bspammer wrote: post #15

I know this is quite selfish but the more accessible youtube-dl is, the more likely Google is to see it as a business threat, and the more likely they are to add some sort of content DRM. Just something to think about

Maybe they already have? `youtube-dl` has been breaking a lot for me lately. I've been using the Fedora repo build for many years and don't remember it ever breaking, not once. Now in the last couple of months it had suddenly stopped working 4 or 5 times, which forced me to install the official build from `pip`, which is updated more frequently.

Re: Show HN: YouTube-DL GUI Powered by Electron

#44

Post by Mindwipe »

bspammer wrote: post #15

I know this is quite selfish but the more accessible youtube-dl is, the more likely Google is to see it as a business threat, and the more likely they are to add some sort of content DRM. Just something to think about

It's coming regardless, as soon as Google can get their CDN efficiency to a point where they can do on the fly encryption of the stream (or post encryption insertion if they can figure out a way to do the key management) with the advertising embedded they'll push the switch anyway, to prevent ad blocking.

Re: Show HN: YouTube-DL GUI Powered by Electron

#45

Post by Udo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #40
Udo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, ideally youtube-dl would remain obscure, but YT has been on to it for a long time. It's somewhat of an arms race right now. I have to update youtube-dl every few weeks or it will simply stop working. I would not be entirely suprised if Youtube one day just requires actual browser DRM to work at all. That would likely break every single smart TV out there, which is probably the only reason why they haven't ye…

Which also sounds like a good reason to make copies of everything interesting on YouTube now , while we still can.

Indeed. I'd go further and say that it's generally a good idea to make backups of all the cloud stuff you're using. The assumption that it'll always be there is fundamentally flawed. While there might well be outliers, companies who keep content archived for virtually ever, most platforms will go away at some point.

Personally I think Youtube is a likely candidate for this. They may very well just remove all "legacy" content one day. They have absolutely no idea what to do with the platform, except offer it to music companies to feast on. They're at war with the majority of their content creators, I'd be very surprised if they didn't go for the nuclear option at some point - maybe after a large legal scandal...

Re: Show HN: YouTube-DL GUI Powered by Electron

#46

Post by r3bl »

Mindwipe wrote: post #41
r3bl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because you're using Windows, which is really, really not designed with scripts in mind. Point to Ubuntu in the Microsoft Store. Python is preinstalled. You may need to install Python's package manager (I'm not sure does it come preinstalled) with "sudo apt install python3-pip". Install it from Python's package manager with "pip3 install youtube-dl". You could technically skip Python's package manager by just…

Did you honestly write this down thinking it was remotely any easier?

Then the alternative? Absolutely. The alternative requires finding the latest version of Python, installing it, modifying the environment path, finding the binary for youtube-dl, installing it, and only then figuring out how it works.

"Execute these commands only once and then just type youtube-dl https://example.com. If something breaks, run this command to upgrade the script and retry." If the target audience is someone who you think will feel comfortable doing youtube-dl in a terminal, you may as well point them to the total of three other commands to set things up.

Re: Show HN: YouTube-DL GUI Powered by Electron

#47

Post by TeMPOraL »

r3bl wrote: post #46
Mindwipe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you honestly write this down thinking it was remotely any easier?

Then the alternative? Absolutely. The alternative requires finding the latest version of Python, installing it, modifying the environment path, finding the binary for youtube-dl, installing it, and only then figuring out how it works. "Execute these commands only once and then just type youtube-dl https://example.com . If something breaks, run this command to upgrade the script and retry." If the target audience is s…

AFAIR youtube-dl had an .exe build, I remember setting it up for my mom; it boiled down to unzipping an archive and telling here to drag URLs onto this icon. And the FFMpeg part; that was a PITA, and something she wouldn't have guessed on her own.

Re: Show HN: YouTube-DL GUI Powered by Electron

#49

Post by Crinus »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #10
Quequau wrote: post #9

For me I think the best UI for YT-DL would be in the context menu in Firefox. This is where I am most often when I see stuff I want to use it on and while I always already have a terminal window open, it would be nice not to have to switch windows. I already have a few different configs and aliases for getting stuff in the forms I really want. All I need is an even easier way to pass the URL in and trigger the downlo…

Yup. Me too! Did someone make something like this? The alternative I'm considering is a script for my WM that essentially does "CTRL+L, delay 500ms, CTRL+C, append to a rolling 'to yt-download' list file".

I did something like this a couple of months ago. I wrote a simple firefox extension which adds a button near the url bar which calls youtube-dl to download the current URL on a predefined folder. It needs an intermediate "helper" which is registered via the Windows registry (just make a key for it). All the helper does though is just call youtube-dl.

It sounds complicated but i had never written any firefox addon at all before trying it and it took me less than an hour to write the entire thing just by following the docs. The biggest change was switching from regular firefox to developer edition so i can disable signature checking for addons (the regular firefox doesn't allow that), but so far all that meant is that the red icon globe is now blue and i get more frequent updates.

None of that is available publicly though since it is very configuration-specific - and really all it does is to call 'youtube-dl' - but it is easy to replicate. Also learning to make some "personal" addons might be helpful in the future, similar to how you customize Emacs or Vim.

Re: Show HN: YouTube-DL GUI Powered by Electron

#50

Post by mellosouls »

Xunxi wrote: post #37
mellosouls wrote: post #32

Suggestion to author: as this is presumably intended to be a user-friendly front-end, consider providing installers. I just tried installing on windows following the README and gave up after fixing npm proxy issues and encountering multiple other errors afterwards. I could fix it, but I don't have the time to investigate. Anybody who can fix it, likely won't need a front end like this.

Try https://github.com/MrS0m30n3/youtube-dl-gui/blob/master/READ...

Thanks, I already have that; my suggestion was for the repository in the OP.
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