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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

#51

Post by r3bl »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #47
r3bl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Windows exe requires Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86) and does not require Python that is already embedded into the binary.

Yeah, that makes sense. Things have changed since last time I went through that pain.

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

#52

Post by progval »

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…

> I would not be entirely suprised if Youtube one day just requires actual browser DRM to work at all.

maybe not at all, but I definitely can see them offering the option to (some?) authors.

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

#53

Post by rakoo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #30
rakoo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always weary about having timers in a script, because it often turns out to not be the correct amount. What about something like: - bookmark url in a specific "YouTube-dl" folder - watch tht folder from a daemon - when the folder changes, do the stuff automatically I'm sure there's a way to read bookmarks from outside the browser ?

I don't like timers either, but that seems to me the most direct way of exfiltrating the URL of the tab I'm currently looking at. Unfortunately, browsers aren't exactly interoperable. Bookmarks don't seem that easy to exfil either. Firefox for instance (just checked) stores bookmarks, along with browsing and download history, in an sqlite database, that it keeps locked , so sqlite3 won't read from it. Maybe there's a…

If you're going to go with Youtube's Like, you should be able to use the API (https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/videos/list, "my liked videos") and get the results you want there. The advantage of using Youtube's Like is that you can use any player from anywhere to do it.

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

#54

Post by paol »

butteroverflow wrote: post #43
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.

youtube-dl is one of those rare programs that you shouldn't download from a repository. Do this instead:

- Download from the project page and put it anywhere in your path (it's a single file)

- Subsequently do 'youtube-dl -U' whenever you want to update. It updates itself in-place with the latest release (there's usually 2 or 3 released per week)

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

#55

Post by aasasd »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #29
TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

Suggestion to author: allow pasting and downloading more than one link at a time, and selecting audio/video + desired formats. Suggestion to everyone else: learn the CLI. Then you can do things like me last night. My wife collected a list of classical music videos she wants to play to our kid, and all I did was: youtube-dl -x --audio-format "mp3" --audio-quality 0 -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -a music.txt to get the whole…

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.

Might be the use-case for Chocolatey or something like that, if more than just youtube-dl is going to be used in console.

(Dunno which package managers are alright in Windows.)

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

#57

Post by toomanybeersies »

fock wrote: post #27
TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

Suggestion to author: allow pasting and downloading more than one link at a time, and selecting audio/video + desired formats. Suggestion to everyone else: learn the CLI. Then you can do things like me last night. My wife collected a list of classical music videos she wants to play to our kid, and all I did was: youtube-dl -x --audio-format "mp3" --audio-quality 0 -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -a music.txt to get the whole…

First thought on this project: hey, why electron yt-dl works perfectly from the command line, I type the programm, paste the url. Second thought: might be nice for selecting from the myriad of options. Well...

Not everyone is familiar or comfortable with the command line.

A lot of my friends don't use youtube-dl for this exact reason. They end up messaging me, asking me to download files for them.

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

#58

Post by gdfasfklshg4 »

Mindwipe wrote: post #42
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…

> 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.

But it probably isn't used in the YouTube apps and using it would require pushing an update. Smart TV manufacturers are not famous for pushing updates promptly.

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

#59

Post by benj111 »

fock wrote: post #27
TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

Suggestion to author: allow pasting and downloading more than one link at a time, and selecting audio/video + desired formats. Suggestion to everyone else: learn the CLI. Then you can do things like me last night. My wife collected a list of classical music videos she wants to play to our kid, and all I did was: youtube-dl -x --audio-format "mp3" --audio-quality 0 -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -a music.txt to get the whole…

First thought on this project: hey, why electron yt-dl works perfectly from the command line, I type the programm, paste the url. Second thought: might be nice for selecting from the myriad of options. Well...

You've just summed up the gui/command line dichotomy.

It's something we could do better at bridging the gap between.

Tbh things like this, a gui front end for a terminal app seem the best way forward. I don't know why they aren't used a lot more in open source, it just seems to match up so much better to the open source model of a random person developing a project and no one taking over when that person loses interest. The front ends are the sexy bits where you get more churn but also more interest. The boring back end doesn't attract, but also doesn't need so much attention.

I suppose you could argue we do it at the library level, I still think there's room to do it at this level also.

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

#60

Post by TeMPOraL »

aasasd wrote: post #55
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.

Might be the use-case for Chocolatey or something like that, if more than just youtube-dl is going to be used in console. (Dunno which package managers are alright in Windows.)

Chocolatey is the way to go. Once you have it installed, it's just `choco install youtube-dl` and `choco install ffmpeg`.

This is how you get Chocolatey: https://chocolatey.org/install.

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