I’m looking to download a number of educational youtube videos for future reference. Looking for a reliable way to download videos. OS is Ubuntu. FF extensions and docker containers all good. I don’t really want to install an executable on bare metal unless it is a flatpak.
My goal is for the downloaded videos to be accessed locally via jellyfin. Jellyfin is already sorted.
Thanks in advance for your recommendations!
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I just add “pp” into the URL bar. Between the .com and youtube (youtubepp.com).
Idk if it’s safe or whatever, I get my video, and funny haha pp joke.
I self-host MeTube, and have a shortcut set up for my share-screen. When I see a video I want downloaded, I hit the Share button, and press the custom script that sends the link to be downloaded onto my Emby server.
yt-dlp, full hd quality, best audio, reading from a txt file for every URL
I always use yt-dlp do download youtube videos. It doesn’t require installation, you just download and run it.
I was just looking at this. Do you typically run it behind a VPN or do you expose your actual IP?
No need of VPN. But it wouldn’t harm if you wanted to have more privacy
I use it all the time without any VPN and haven’t had any issues. I watch almost all youtube videos in MPV, which uses yt-dlp to get the video. I download any video I may want to watch again later to my server.
I never used a VPN with it. I’ve been using it for years. I figured I’m getting it directly for YouTube. Google already knows my IP. I figured they wouldn’t care unless I abuse it anyway.
I’ve never used a VPN with it.
I’ve never used a VPN with it either. But it should work, especially with an exit node in a country where Google has no incentive to/is prohibited from interfering with third party viewers.
but unless i am missing some edge case, there isn’t really a reason, downloading video from youtube is perfectly legal, it wouldn’t work otherwise after all
Love the handle, BTW. :)
I think downloading is against Google’s TOS. Whether that makes it illegal is a question for a lawyer.
thank you
maybe, but you are not going to jail for that. at least not today.
okay. Thanks. Gonna give it a go. It seems to be the one everyone is using.
If you want a gui for android take a look at Seal, for Linux Parabolic.
Yeah, I used to use yt-dl(whatever) but Seal is just so much more convenient
It shouldn’t be needed but if you want extra privacy, you can try torsocks.
I used a program based on that and got a block I think. I get errors in the logs saying I need to use the official YouTube app.
Anything to look out for or best practices for a noob? I think I got seen.
If you’re into selfhosting I’ve heard good things about tube archivist. It integrates with jellyfin
Seconded. It downloads metadata, thumbnails, and comments too. Also has a browser extension that adds a download button into YouTube to trigger downloads on the server.
On my phone i use tubular, which is a fork of NewPipe with sponsor block added.
yt-dlp with a couple scripts I wrote, depending on the usecase.
yt-dlp is pretty much the standard program for it https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
It is installable as a python module, so it should be easy to sandbox if you need to (though it requires ffmpeg too). Nowadays I almost view it as a standard unix utility though and wouldn’t think twice about installing the native package
I tend to drop the link into yt1s.com
Sometimes just for audio, sometimes for the full vid.
I’m rarely grabbing more than one video at a time though.
[re-commenting as I meant this to be a top-level comment, not a reply]
Newpipe
https://github.com/trizen/pipe-viewer mobile and desktop
Skytube
Tartube, a gui frontend for yt-dlp
+1
Nice and easy to use too with powerful automation if you want it.
You should listen to all the yt-dlp comments, but I’ve always had trouble getting all the yt-dl variants to just download the best version and subtitles consistently.
I use 4K Video Downloader, and it’s easier to use. It has a 30 video per day limit is all, which is more than I need.
the best version is always the default for me on yt-dlp, that and
--embed-subs
has always worked perfectly for me, weird you’ve had issues with it, this is the first I’ve heard of anyone having that problem.WDYM you’ve had difficulty?? Isn’t it just --embedded-subs or something?
Maybe the command line version is consistent, but day to day I prefer not to do command line. I’ve tried like 5 different GUIs and they all have failed downloads, incorrect formats, and other issues just doing test downloads. I don’t know why, but it’s been a problem every time for me.
Well there’s your problem.
Learn how to actually use a computer.
Huh… That’s really not nice.
True, that guy seems like a jerk
Also, if you only want the highest quality using the command line version is easy as running
yt-dlp “link”
for example:
yt-dlp “https://m.youtube.com/watchv=dQw4w9WgXcQ”
Although it needs ffmpeg too for certain websites that have seperate audio and video streams. Maybe that’s why your previous experiences have been wonky
If you want to use a computer you’re going to need to learn how to use it.
It’s not reasonable to expect maintainers of a very nice Python CLI tool to also maintain a GUI that works perfectly with it. Just look at the manpage if you need to find an option.
deleted by creator
https://cobalt.tools/
Cobalt is an awesome downloader, if the main instance (cobalt.tools) ever goes down or gets blocked by YouTube, there are countless other instances: https://instances.hyper.lol/instances/
It’s really a great project, make sure to promote it, give it a star on GitHub, maybe donate a few bucks (crypto addresses can be found when clicking on the donate button in the app)