Best Youtube converter/downloader "A must have question"

[Lord Reith]

Youtube-dl doesn't even work anymore for me, just gives an error message with youtube.

It'e been superceded by yt-dlp. Effectively it's the same, just with a different name. Also on github.

Okay I got it to work. The command for downloading just the best audio is:

(yt-dlp.exe path) -f 140 (url of video)

thanks for the suggestion!

[Kando]

Okay I got it to work. The command for downloading just the best audio is:

(yt-dlp.exe path) -f 140 (url of video)

thanks for the suggestion!

Not to be a bother, again, lol, but could you, or some kind soul, post an exact complete 'cmd line' example for downloading just the best audio from a 'you tube' link, if that is possible?

I found a yt-dlp for 'Dummies' on Reddit and have managed to get set-up for this (my first time though, lol), but I haven't managed to get the proper cmd line put together yet. I've downloaded the yt-dlp, and have the yt-dlp and ffmpeg exe files in a C directory as required (supposedly), but can't seem to put together a complete cmd line to download the audio or video from a link.

Signed
Clueless in San Diego

PS: I have used megatools so often I can literally do it by heart now, without notes, lol. Thanx

[Lord Reith]

Okay I got it to work. The command for downloading just the best audio is:

(yt-dlp.exe path) -f 140 (url of video)

thanks for the suggestion!

Not to be a bother, again, lol, but could you, or some kind soul, post an exact complete 'cmd line' example for downloading just the best audio from a 'you tube' link, if that is possible?

Yes, download one of the "yt-dlp.exe" versions depending on your system. The just put that anywhere you like, summon up a command window by typing "cmd" into the windows search box in the bottom left corner, and then type the full path to your exe followed by -f 140 and then the url of the video, like:

C://pennteller/yt-dlp.exe -f 140 https://blahblahyoutubeurl

and that will download just the 128k m4a (because youtube streams video and audio separately). Mine downloaded by default to users>vip but there are also lots of other commands you can add including changing the directory destination.

PS: I have used megatools so often I can literally do it by heart now, without notes, lol. Thanx

I'm no expert in CL but am learning too! It is fun.

[Kando]

Yes, download one of the "yt-dlp.exe" versions depending on your system. The just put that anywhere you like, summon up a command window by typing "cmd" into the windows search box in the bottom left corner, and then type the full path to your exe followed by -f 140 and then the url of the video, like:

C://pennteller/yt-dlp.exe -f 140 https://blahblahyoutubeurl

and that will download just the 128k m4a (because youtube streams video and audio separately). Mine downloaded by default to users>vip but there are also lots of other commands you can add including changing the directory destination.

PS: I have used megatools so often I can literally do it by heart now, without notes, lol. Thanx

I'm no expert in CL but am learning too! It is fun.

Holy cr@p Bat Lord, I actually managed it on the first try, but didn't have a clue where it downloaded to at first, lol. Found it in my personal directory, after going back and looking at the cmd line info, ha, ha. And it worked as advertised, just the music.

Actually managed to figure out how to have it download to a specific folder by adding the download path at the end of the cmd line, just like with megatools. Such as: --path "C:\Megabollocks", just like you showed me with the Megatools.

fyi: I hadn't known to add the .exe location path, but I had read about putting quotation marks around the download link, which is not used in megatools cmd line. It worked, so whatever, lol. Also found out that if you forget to add part of the download folder path name it will create a new folder of the that name and download it there. That had me going for a minute, as I didn't realized where it had downloaded, or what I had done, lol. Just need to write this all down and save in a Notepad file now.

This is really great, as I have wanted to have just the music from many you tube videos for quite some time, but didn't know this was possible.

Thanks LR!

[Lord Reith]

Holy cr@p Bat Lord, I actually managed it on the first try, but didn't have a clue where it downloaded to at first, lol. Found it in my personal directory, after going back and looking at the cmd line info, ha, ha. And it worked as advertised, just the music.

Actually managed to figure out how to have it download to a specific folder by adding the download path at the end of the cmd line, just like with megatools. Such as: --path "C:\Megabollocks", just like you showed me with the Megatools.

Great tip, Robin. Later on we'll power up the Batmobile and get a job coding for Google.

This is really great, as I have wanted to have just the music from many you tube videos for quite some time, but didn't know this was possible.

Yeah, most youtube audio downloaders needlessly download the whole video and convert it to mp3. 128k aac is actually pretty reasonable, certainly for pop music anyway. If it's something I really like I will just pick up a second hand copy of it on ebay.

[Kando]

It's a little tedious, but I have put together a system now and have managed to downloaded several oldies so far, thanks in part to the guy on SH with the 'It Was 60 years Ago Today' thread postings. Quite a few there I have always wanted, but was not likely to go out and buy complete old recordings just for one or two songs at most. Got to give the guy there credit for his incredible number of YT postings, lol.

By the way Bat Lord, do you or anyone else here have any idea how the h@ll the following cmd line is supposed to work. It is supposedly for downloading a better video quality of a YT vid, but I don't see how in the world you get it to do so for any particular YT link, and those espousing this did not bother to elaborate any farther on it. yt-dlp -f "bv*[height<=1080][ext=mp4]+ba[ext=m4a]/b[height<=1080][ext=mp4] / bv*+ba/b"

Try running it through the Batcomputer.

The really funny thing is that the guy who came up with it supposedly doesn't know squat about cmd line stuff. Just played around with things until he worked it out, lol. Another guy writing a 'yt-dlp for dummies' quotes it as a very good, valid command.

[Choking Smoker]

Here's link to the Internet Download Manager I mentioned earlier. I bought it over 20 years ago and it's probably the best software investment I ever made. When you open a Youtube video you get a small button offering you the option to download it and a further window opens to give you the choice of every resolution possible, even HDR if available. These are native downloads from YouTube and not re-encoded, tbh it's hard to see how it could get any better than that! https://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/

[Egg_Crisis]

By the way Bat Lord, do you or anyone else here have any idea how the h@ll the following cmd line is supposed to work. It is supposedly for downloading a better video quality of a YT vid, but I don't see how in the world you get it to do so for any particular YT link, and those espousing this did not bother to elaborate any farther on it. yt-dlp -f "bv*[height<=1080][ext=mp4]+ba[ext=m4a]/b[height<=1080][ext=mp4] / bv*+ba/b"

It looks like it's getting the largest video available, but only if it's mp4 (as there are other formats available).

What I do is...

yt-dlp --list-formats YOUTUBE-URL

Then choose which formats you want, then download in the format

yt-dlp --write-description -f 135+140 YOUTUBE-URL

Where in this example video format 135 has been chosen, and audio format 140.
Make sure you list the video format first, then audio (if you put the audio first it won't work), but to make it easier it's always +140 because there is no higher quality audio format.

The addition of --write-description (which you can omit if you don't want it) also writes the description to a text file (and if there's no description you get a blank file).

Sometimes depending on the video format it's unable to combine them to make an .mp4 so it'll make an .mkv instead, which is perfectly fine if you don't mind it being mkv.

And if you just want the description but not the video

yt-dlp --write-description --skip-download YOUTUBE-URL

If you want to download part of a playlist but not the whole thing, for example tracks 23 to 40...

yt-dlp -f 140 --playlist-start 23 --playlist-end 40 YOUTUBE-PLAYLIST-URL


With regard to higher quality audio...

When you do a list formats you'll see some of the video formats are .webm
These .webm files used to have their audio format as .ogg and were slightly higher quality, although the difference was negligible and often not worth the extra step of downloading then extracting the audio.
But they appear to have stopped using .ogg and now there's a "webm audio only" option of type .opus and I'm told this is sometimes higher quality, so that's something to check out.

[Kando]

Thanks very much, Egg_Crisis, for that detailed explanation of the various download tips. I think I actually understand most of it, lol. That should be quite helpful. I'm probably not a huge YT downloader, but have always wanted to get a few here and there of the better, at least, slightly rare audio and video clips I have come across. This will definitely help me get the ones I do want in decent quality, which is equally important to me.

Edit: I will definitely add some of your post to my YT downloading notebook file.
Very interesting to know that one can possibly get a written description of the YT download out of this as well. I'll be curious to see how that works out, as it would be helpful to me to have that kind of info down the road, so as to possibly inform others about the various downloads, etc.

[Kando]

Dear Mr. Egg_Crisis ( ): Just thought of another question or two, after rereading your comments as I was about to include them in my notes, lol. Please have patience with my small and often critically logically challenged mind, lol.

The following is the typical cmd line that I am currently using:

C:\ytdl\yt-dlp.exe -f 140 "https://www.youtube.com/blah, blah, blah....... "C:\Users\My Name\Documents\Beatles info\Miscellaneous music info and downloads\yt-dlp music downloads"

1. Am I correct in understanding that the (140) from LR's suggestion is automatically downloading the best audio?

2. And, if that is correct is there no way to automatically get the best video, or does one need to always check the YT file first, as you suggested, and then input the best video source discovered?

Thanks
Critically Challenged in SD