Youtube-dl cheatsheet

Youtube-dl cheatsheet

Hello fellow coders…

Today I am going to post something different. Its about a command-line based youtube downloader called youtube-dl.

If you dont know about it, please go and check their homepage. This gives you instructions to install it correctly.

So today I am going to post some cheats you will need to download best youtube videos quickly.
One more important thing, there are no configuration settings to be done before or after installing youtube-dl.

Downloading a single video

When you need to download a single youtube video, you just type :
youtube-dl youtube-video-url

This will download the best quality video available. But if you can select specific video quality. I will describe it later.

Downloading a playlist

When you are interested about a certain youtube play list and want to download, youtube-dl gives an easy way to do it. You just have to use :
youtube-dl -cit youtube-playlist-url

Download specific videos from a playlist

When you just need some certain videos to download from a play list, you can use. As an example, if you just need to download from 5th to 10th video. you can use :
youtube-dl --playlist-items 5-10 youtube-playlist-url

Download different quality videos

If you no need to have the best quality video to be downloaded, you can easily select the best quality you want to have using following commands.

  • First find what are the available qualities for a video:
    youtube-dl -F youtube-video-url
    This will give you similar output like this :
[youtube] CRlGDDprdOQ: Downloading webpage
[youtube] CRlGDDprdOQ: Downloading video info webpage
[info] Available formats for CRlGDDprdOQ:
format code  extension  resolution note
249          webm       audio only DASH audio   51k , opus @ 50k, 5.87MiB
250          webm       audio only DASH audio   80k , opus @ 70k, 8.53MiB
140          m4a        audio only DASH audio  131k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.2@128k, 14.99MiB
251          webm       audio only DASH audio  144k , opus @160k, 15.32MiB
242          webm       426x240    240p  112k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 4.96MiB
135          mp4        854x480    480p  130k , avc1.4d401f, 30fps, video only, 6.47MiB
136          mp4        1280x720   720p  227k , avc1.4d401f, 30fps, video only, 10.71MiB
243          webm       640x360    360p  236k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 7.56MiB
244          webm       854x480    480p  358k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 10.64MiB
137          mp4        1920x1080  1080p  576k , avc1.640028, 30fps, video only, 30.06MiB
247          webm       1280x720   720p  668k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 17.77MiB
248          webm       1920x1080  1080p 1445k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 48.80MiB
43           webm       640x360    medium , vp8.0, vorbis@128k, 31.06MiB
18           mp4        640x360    medium  309k , avc1.42001E, mp4a.40.2@ 96k (44100Hz), 35.83MiB
22           mp4        1280x720   hd720  221k , avc1.64001F, mp4a.40.2@192k (44100Hz) (best)

Here you have to be careful, as you can see
248 webm 1920x1080 1080p 1445k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 48.80MiB
if you select this format, it will only download video only, without sound.

  • Downloading the video format you want
    youtube-dl -f 18 youtube-video-url
    Here I will download medium quality video. 360p as I remember.

Downloading as mp3

  • If you are a mp3 audio fan, you can easily download just mp3 format. You can use two ways, first as I explained above, using -F and finding audio only format. Using above sample output :
    251          webm       audio only DASH audio  144k , opus @160k, 15.32MiB

so you just have to use youtube-dl -f 251 youtube-video-url

  • If you just need mp3 audio only, then you have to use
youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 youtube-video-url

Here are some useful threads :
How to download an MP3 track from a YouTube video

Can I directly download audio using youtube-dl?

Written with StackEdit.

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