this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

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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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[–] [email protected] 73 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I always use yt-dlp do download youtube videos. It doesn't require installation, you just download and run it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (5 children)

I was just looking at this. Do you typically run it behind a VPN or do you expose your actual IP?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I've never used a VPN with it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

okay. Thanks. Gonna give it a go. It seems to be the one everyone is using.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If you want a gui for android take a look at Seal, for Linux Parabolic.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Yeah, I used to use yt-dl(whatever) but Seal is just so much more convenient

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Love the handle, BTW. :)

I think downloading is against Google’s TOS. Whether that makes it illegal is a question for a lawyer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Love the handle, BTW. :)

thank you

I think downloading is against Google’s TOS

maybe, but you are not going to jail for that. at least not today.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

It shouldn't be needed but if you want extra privacy, you can try torsocks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

No need of VPN. But it wouldn't harm if you wanted to have more privacy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago

yt-dlp, full hd quality, best audio, reading from a txt file for every URL

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago

+1 for yt-dlp

jdownloader2 also works for this

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago

yt-dlp with a couple scripts I wrote, depending on the usecase.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

For channels I want to preserve, Tube Archivist. For individual videos, yt-dlp.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

WDYM you've had difficulty?? Isn't it just --embedded-subs or something?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Well there's your problem.

Learn how to actually use a computer.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Huh... That's really not nice.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Tartube, a gui frontend for yt-dlp

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

+1

Nice and easy to use too with powerful automation if you want it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

JDownloader 2 has never let me down.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I just go to YouTube to MP3, or whatever it's called these days.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

TubeArchivist with a browser extension to easily download any interesting video I want to preserve.

I have pending to link TubeArchivist to jellyfin for a more convenient frontend for my videos.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

on android: ytldnis
[i only trust the github one]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Seal is another great downloader for Android

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

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)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

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]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I pretty much only do it on my phone, pretty much the only place I watch videos. So I just use either Newpipe or Pipepipe, a Newpipe fork.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I use a yt-dlp frontend like clipgrap or seal

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago