1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
|
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>youtube-dl: Download videos from YouTube.com</title>
<style type="text/css"><!--
body {
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: small;
}
h1 {
text-align: center;
text-decoration: underline;
color: #006699;
}
h2 {
color: #006699;
}
p {
text-align: justify;
margin-left: 5%;
margin-right: 5%;
}
ul {
margin-left: 5%;
margin-right: 5%;
list-style-type: square;
}
li {
margin-bottom: 0.5ex;
}
.smallnote {
font-size: x-small;
text-align: center;
}
--></style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>youtube-dl: Download videos from YouTube.com</h1>
<p class="smallnote">(and more...)</p>
<h2>What is it?</h2>
<p><em>youtube-dl</em> is a small command-line program to download videos
from YouTube.com. It requires the <a href="http://www.python.org/">Python
interpreter</a>, version 2.4 or later, and it's not platform specific.
It should work in your Unix box, in Windows or in Mac OS X. The latest version
is <strong>@PROGRAM_VERSION@</strong>. It's released to the public domain,
which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.</p>
<p>I'll try to keep it updated if YouTube.com changes the way you access
their videos. After all, it's a simple and short program. However, I can't
guarantee anything. If you detect it stops working, check for new versions
and/or inform me about the problem, indicating the program version you
are using. If the program stops working and I can't solve the problem but
you have a solution, I'd like to know it. If that happens and you feel you
can maintain the program yourself, tell me. My contact information is
at <a href="http://freshmeat.net/~rg3/">freshmeat.net</a>.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the feedback received so far. I'm glad people find my
program useful.</p>
<h2>Usage instructions</h2>
<p>In Windows, once you have installed the Python interpreter, save the
program with the <em>.py</em> extension and put it somewhere in the PATH.
Try to follow the
<a href="http://rg03.wordpress.com/youtube-dl-under-windows-xp/">guide to
install youtube-dl under Windows XP</a>.</p>
<p>In Unix, download it, give it execution permission and copy it to one
of the PATH directories (typically, <em>/usr/local/bin</em>).</p>
<p>After that, you should be able to call it from the command line as
<em>youtube-dl</em> or <em>youtube-dl.py</em>. I will use <em>youtube-dl</em>
in the following examples. Usage instructions are easy. Use <em>youtube-dl</em>
followed by a video URL or identifier. Example: <em>youtube-dl
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"</em>. The video will be saved
to the file <em>foobar.flv</em> in that example. As YouTube.com
videos are in Flash Video format, their extension should be <em>flv</em>.
In Linux and other unices, video players using a recent version of
<em>ffmpeg</em> can play them. That includes MPlayer, VLC, etc. Those two
work under Windows and other platforms, but you could also get a
specific FLV player of your taste.</p>
<p>If you try to run the program and you receive an error message containing the
keyword <em>SyntaxError</em> near the end, it means your Python interpreter
is too old.</p>
<h2>More usage tips</h2>
<ul>
<li>You can change the file name of the video using the -o option, like in
<em>youtube-dl -o vid.flv "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"</em>.
Read the <a href="#otpl">Output template</a> section for more details on
this.</li>
<li>Some videos require an account to be downloaded, mostly because they're
flagged as mature content. You can pass the program a username and password
for a YouTube.com account with the -u and -p options, like <em>youtube-dl
-u myusername -p mypassword "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"</em>.</li>
<li>The account data can also be read from the user .netrc file by indicating
the -n or --netrc option. The machine name is <em>youtube</em> in that
case.</li>
<li>The <em>simulate mode</em> (activated with -s or --simulate) can be used
to just get the real video URL and use it with a download manager if you
prefer that option.</li>
<li>The <em>quiet mode</em> (activated with -q or --quiet) can be used to
supress all output messages. This allows, in systems featuring /dev/stdout
and other similar special files, outputting the video data to standard output
in order to pipe it to another program without interferences.</li>
<li>The program can be told to simply print the final video URL to standard
output using the -g or --get-url option.</li>
<li>In a similar line, the -e or --get-title option tells the program to print
the video title.</li>
<li>The default filename is <em>video_id.flv</em>. But you can also use the
video title in the filename with the -t or --title option, or preserve the
literal title in the filename with the -l or --literal option.</li>
<li>You can make the program append <em>&fmt=something</em> to the URL
by using the -f or --format option. This makes it possible to download high
quality versions of the videos when available.</li>
<li>The -b or --best-quality option is an alias for -f 18.</li>
<li>The -m or --mobile-version option is an alias for -f 17.</li>
<li>Normally, the program will stop on the first error, but you can tell it
to attempt to download every video with the -i or --ignore-errors option.</li>
<li>The -a or --batch-file option lets you specify a file to read URLs from.
The file must contain one URL per line.</li>
<li><em>youtube-dl</em> honors the <em>http_proxy</em> environment variable
if you want to use a proxy. Set it to something like
<em>http://proxy.example.com:8080</em>, and do not leave the <em>http://</em>
prefix out.</li>
<li>You can get the program version by calling it as <em>youtube-dl
-v</em> or <em>youtube-dl --version</em>.</li>
<li>For usage instructions, use <em>youtube-dl -h</em> or <em>youtube-dl
--help.</em></li>
<li>You can cancel the program at any time pressing Ctrl+C. It may print
some error lines saying something about <em>KeyboardInterrupt</em>.
That's ok.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="otpl">Download it</h2>
<p>Note that if you directly click on these hyperlinks, your web browser will
most likely display the program contents. It's usually better to
right-click on it and choose the appropriate option, normally called <em>Save
Target As</em> or <em>Save Link As</em>, depending on the web browser you
are using.</p>
<p><a href="youtube-dl">@PROGRAM_VERSION@</a></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>MD5</strong>: @PROGRAM_MD5SUM@</li>
<li><strong>SHA1</strong>: @PROGRAM_SHA1SUM@</li>
<li><strong>SHA256</strong>: @PROGRAM_SHA256SUM@</li>
</ul>
<h2>Output template</h2>
<p>The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file names.
The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a single
file, like in <em>youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv 'http://some/video'</em>.
However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced when
downloading each video. The special sequences have the format
<strong>%(NAME)s</strong>. To clarify, that's a percent symbol followed by a
name in parenthesis, followed by a lowercase S. Allowed names are:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>id</em>: The sequence will be replaced by the video identifier.</li>
<li><em>url</em>: The sequence will be replaced by the video URL.</li>
<li><em>uploader</em>: The sequence will be replaced by the nickname of the
person who uploaded the video.</li>
<li><em>title</em>: The sequence will be replaced by the literal video
title.</li>
<li><em>stitle</em>: The sequence will be replaced by a simplified video
title, restricted to alphanumeric characters and dashes.</li>
<li><em>ext</em>: The sequence will be replaced by the appropriate
extension (like <em>flv</em> or <em>mp4</em>).</li>
</ul>
<p>As you may have guessed, the default template is <em>%(id)s.%(ext)s</em>.
When some command line options are used, it's replaced by other templates like
<em>%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s</em>. You can specify your own.</p>
<h2>Authors</h2>
<ul>
<li>Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez: program core, YouTube.com InfoExtractor,
metacafe.com InfoExtractor and YouTube playlist InfoExtractor.</li>
<li>Many other people contributing patches, code, ideas and kind messages. Too
many to be listed here. You know who you are. Thank you very much.</li>
</ul>
<p class="smallnote">Copyright © 2006-2007 Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez</p>
</body>
</html>
|
