19th May2012
Author: Gyro

Download YouTube Videos, Channels and Playlists with Youtube-DL

Today, I found a fantastic YouTube channel with loads of videos that interest me. Since I especially enjoy watching videos when I do not have an Internet connection, I tend to download videos from youtube to watch them later. However, this has always been a pain in the behind to do, especially if you are following a certain channel and would like to have the latest videos…

Well, if you are a Ubuntu user, it takes about 1 minutes to setup and start downloading.


First of all you need "youtube-dl", it's a simple command line tool to download videos from YouTube.

Get it via:
# apt-get install youtube-dl
or find your right download here:
http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl/

Once installed, youtube-dl will download into the folder you are currently in, so I suggest creating folders first. I am giving some examples below on how I am using youtube-dl.

You could download a single youtube video by entering in the console:
# mkdir ~/YouTube/various
# cd ~/YouTube/various
# youtube-dl -citw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV9L5Ht9LgY

To download the youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/celebrateubuntu by entering in the console:
# mkdir ~/YouTube/channels/celebrateubuntu
# cd ~/YouTube/channels/celebrateubuntu
# youtube-dl -citw ytuser:celebrateubuntu

You could download a youtube playlist like http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL512E30EA478B12D9, use:
# mkdir ~/YouTube/playlists/celebrateubuntu
# cd ~/YouTube/playlists/celebrateubuntu
# youtube-dl -citw "http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=PL512E30EA478B12D9" 

You can download multiple videos from different URLs in batch mode! Simply put the links to the videos, channels, and/or playlists in a text file, and youtube-dl does the rest, just pass the text file on as a parameter using -a option.
# mkdir ~/YouTube/ubuntu-videos
# cd ~/YouTube/ubuntu-videos
# youtube-dl -citw -a "ubuntu-videos.txt"

——- Example of ubuntu-videos.txt ——--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZIA0agcd_Y
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL512E30EA478B12D9
ytuser:celebrateubuntu
———————————————-
Once the download is completed, you could run the file again at any time, youtube-dl will only download (new) videos (from the playlists/channels) that have not been downloaded before. You can of course add new links to the file, run it again (in the same folder as before), and youtube-dl will only download new videos. It's a perfect way to keep an offline version of the channels/playlists you like, you could even schedule it to run/update automatically in the background.

Now comes the icing!
You can turn this into a podcast downloader for youtube videos :)
# mkdir ~/YouTube/videos-to-audio
# cd ~/YouTube/videos-to-audio
# youtube-dl -citwk -a "videos-to-audio.txt" --extract-audio --audio-format mp3
This would download the videos and extract the audio into a separate mp3 file. If you do not add the "k" option, the downloaded video will be deleted after the audio extraction. This is a bad idea when using the batch files to update when new videos are available in the channels/playlists, as it would re-download all videos since they are no longer present in the folder.

-citw stands for:
c -- continue interrupted download
i -- ignore errors
t -- use video title in file name
w -- do not overwrite existing files

To view all command/attributes:
# youtube-dl --help

 

Enjoy!

If you still use Windows, there are instructions on how to install youtube-dl on Windows present on the website I linked to above. Alternatively, you can simply google for "free youtube downloader", there are many programs with a gui to choose from, all equally lame. If you use a mac, ask on yahoo for help ;P

The one thing that air conditioners and computers have in common:
They do not work well, if you open Windows.

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8 Responses to “Download YouTube Videos, Channels and Playlists with Youtube-DL”

  • Hi Gyro,

    Thanks a lot for this post. youtube-dl is great, but the documentation don’t show mutch!

  • Jan

    Thanks, you made my weekend! :-)

    I tried “man youtube-dl”, but it only shows half the options, and it doesn’t even mention the “ytuser:xyz” feature, which is what I was looking for.

    • Gyro

      Hi Jan,

      and you have made my day, thank you very much for the coffee!!

      Have a great weekend :)

  • I myself has discovered an amazing online youtube multi video downloader for absolutely free.
    It is surprisingly very fast & lists all the videos from youtube page from :-
    1) Youtube Url
    2) Search term or
    3) Youtube page source code.

    You can fetch the download links of any of the listed video. It displays almost all the available
    “video” & “audio” links (total around 25 download links) seperately.

    So, now downloading “Youtube playlist” or “Youtube Channels” has become a lot easier. No need to
    remember or copy /paste urls of each video every time.
    Even, this website also supports “legacy videos/country-restricted or adult videos”. So, guys check
    this out yourself.

    This amazing website’s url is:
    http://www.ytripper.com/

    • Gyro

      Nice site.

      I gave it a try, and it always comes back with a whole list of videos, so I have to find the video I was actually interested in.

      A bit weird that you can’t just insert the URL of the video you want to get the download links of that video only.

      Still, nice find.

  • thanks for sharing, it very great

  • Karthikeyan Mahalingam

    Hi,

    Kindly, let me know:

    a) A way to download ONLY the video files that has been updated in a youtube – channel / playlist via “youtube-dl” file, here the youtube playlist is already been downloaded need to update it.

    b) Also, let me know a way to download the youtube files with resp.., to it’s youtube playlist names by creating a directories according to it’s playlist name via “youtube-dl” then download the video files.

    Kindly, expecting the answer for my query, Please HELP !!!.

    Thanks,
    Karthikeyan Mahalingam.

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