Download and Watch YouTube videos from Linux Shell Prompt

last updated in Categories Howto, Linux, News

Publishing your own video on YouTube, or watching other people’s videos, is all the rage these days. Why are we talking about YouTube, in a column about the CLI? Because this week we’re writing about youtube-dl, a clever little CLI tool that’s easy to install and and use to fetch YouTube videos.

Youtube-dl is a Python script, licensed under the “non-copyleft” free software MIT/X11 license. It is not platform-specific; it can run under Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows platforms so long as a recent — 2.4 or later — version of Python is installed. It is a small command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter (2.6, 2.7, or 3.3+), and it is not platform specific. It should work in your Unix box, in Windows or in Mac OS X. It is released to the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.

Update: Check out this bash script – it does same thing without using python.

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.

26 comment

  1. http://bashscripts.org/viewtopic.php?t=210


    #!/bin/bash
    bu="http://youtube.com/get_video.php?";mkdir -p ~/YouTube;cd ~/YouTube;read -p "YouTube url? " ur;read -p "Name? " nv
    wget ${ur} -O /tmp/y1;uf=${bu}`grep player2.swf /tmp/y1 | cut -d? -f2 | cut -d" -f1`;wget "${uf}" -O /tmp/y.flv
    ffmpeg -i /tmp/y.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320x240 ${nv}.mpg;rm /tmp/y.flv; rm /tmp/y1;rm gmon.out; exit

    BASH RULES 🙂

  4. Great information, thanks very much!

    You might try this for Zsh (maybe modern Bournes?):

    ytdl () {
    video_id=${1#http://*youtube.com/watch?v=}
    video_id=${video_id#http://*youtube.com/v/}
    video_id=${video_id%&*}
    player_line=`ftp -o - "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$video_id"|grep /player2.swf`
    base_getter_url=http://youtube.com/get_video.php?
    url=${player_line/*player2.swf?/$base_getter_url}
    url=${url%%"*}
    ftp -o $video_id.flv "$url"
    ffmpeg -i $video_id.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320x240 $video_id.mpg
    echo
    echo mplayer $video_id.mpg
    }

    If you have an ftp with HTTP support.

  7. The ZSH code has a problem:

    ffmpeg version 0.4.9-pre1, build 4718, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
    built on Apr 4 2005 06:01:28, gcc: 3.4.2 [FreeBSD] 20040728
    Input #0, flv, from ‘j0u_F8-oYQE.flv’:
    Duration: N/A, bitrate: N/A
    Stream #0.0: Audio: mp3, 22050 Hz, mono
    Stream #0.1: Video: flv, 320×240, 15.00 fps
    Output #0, mpeg, to ‘j0u_F8-oYQE.mpg’:
    Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg1video, 320×240, 15.00 fps, q=2-31, 500 kb/s
    Stream #0.1: Audio: mp2, 22050 Hz, mono, 56 kb/s
    Stream mapping:
    Stream #0.1 -> #0.0
    Stream #0.0 -> #0.1
    [mpeg1video @ 0x282f4010]MPEG1/2 doesnt support 15/1 fps
    Error while opening codec for stream #0.0 – maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

  8. Here’s the bash script, made more solid. I fixed the ffmpeg call (it doesn’t like making 15fps mpeg files), and kept the flv at the end.

    If you want to use the flv from your own apache server you’ll need to add

    video/x-flv flv

    to /etc/mime.types and restart apache, then go and get flash_flv player from http://www.jeroenwijering.com/upload/flash_flv_player.zip

    unpack it, put flvplayer.swf and flvplayer.html on your site with the .flv, and modify flvplayer.html appropriately

    #!/bin/bash
    bu=”http://youtube.com/get_video.php?”
    tmp=`mktemp`
    touch ${tmp}.flv
    read -p “YouTube url? ” ur
    wget ${ur} -O ${tmp}
    uf=${bu}`grep player2.swf ${tmp} | cut -d? -f2 | cut -d” -f1`
    nv=`cat ${tmp} | grep ‘h1 id=”video_title”‘ | cut -d “>” -f 2 | cut -d “

  9. #!/bin/bash
    bu=”http://youtube.com/get_video.php?”
    tmp=`mktemp`
    touch ${tmp}.flv
    read -p “YouTube url? ” ur
    wget ${ur} -O ${tmp}
    uf=${bu}`grep player2.swf ${tmp} | cut -d? -f2 | cut -d” -f1`
    nv=`cat ${tmp} | grep ‘h1 id=”video_title”‘ | cut -d “>” -f 2 | cut -d “

  10. nv=`cat ${tmp} | grep ‘h1 id=”video_title”‘ | cut -d “>” -f 2 | cut -d “lt” -f 1`

    *** i can’t post a less than symbol, so change the lt in that command to a less than symbol

    echo “Title ${nv}”
    wget “${uf}” -O ${tmp}.flv
    ffmpeg -i ${tmp}.flv -r 30 -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 1500k -s 320×240 “${nv}.mpg”
    mv ${tmp}.flv “${nv}.flv”
    rm ${tmp}
    exit

  14. does anybody know how he arrived to the get_video.php ? i mean how did he know that that php file existed on youtube servers?

  15. Uhm…youtube has changed their code. now this script doesn’t work any more, from something like 20th August – 20007. Anyone can help fix the code? savetube.com has done it

  17. #!/bin/bash

    ### mr-paul
    ### paul@sci.ubu.ac.th

    if [ “$1” = “” ]; then
    echo -e “nUsage: getyoutube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHvAXLBMWGIn”
    else
    url=$1
    name=${url:(-11)} ### get the last 11 chars
    #echo $name

    fullscreenURL=$( wget -q -nv $url -O – | grep &video_id= )
    echo $fullscreenURL
    title=${fullscreenURL##*=} ### delete to last occurance of ‘=’
    title=${title/’;/} ### replace ‘; with nothing ${title:(-2)} or #{title#(-2)} do not work’ 🙁
    echo $title

    videoID=${fullscreenURL:54} ### cut first 53 chars
    videoID=${videoID/’;/} ##
    echo $videoID

    wget -q -nv “http://www.youtube.com/get_video?$videoID” -O “$title.flv”
    fi

  19. There’s now a software tool to allow linux users to download youtube videos to a preferred directory, in a variety of formats (mpeg, wmv, mp4, flv, avi), specifying the resolution… all in a GTK theme’d graphical tool.

    Check it here:
    http://yourtubedownloader.awardspace.com/

    Feedback most appreciated, via the forums or by email.

  23. usage: utube NAME youtubeurl

    #!/bin/bash
if [ $# -ne 2 ]
then
echo “Usage : $0 ”
echo “e.g : $0 steve_jobs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA”
else
todnload=$(youtube-dl -g -b $2 | xargs wget –spider 2>&1 | grep Location: | awk '{print $2}')
#echo -e “Got the file…n$todnload”
axel $todnload -q -o ~/$1.flv
echo “Download Completed…”
ffmpeg -i $1.flv -r 50 -ar 48000 -ab 196000 -b 300k -croptop 0 -cropbottom 0 -cropleft 0 -cropright 0 $1.mp4
echo "Cleaning up..."
rm ~/$1.flv
rm ~/videoplayback?ip*
echo "Done! Enjoy watching $1"
fi
  24. #!/bin/bash
# checking whether you have youtube-dl
if [ ! -x `which youtube-dl`  ];then
echo “Error! youtube-dl isn’t installed.”
exit 0
fi

#checking whether you have vbrfix
if [ ! -x `which vbrfix`  ];then
echo “Error! vbrfix isn’t installed.”
exit 0
fi

#download video(s)
for URL in $*; do
youtube-dl -t “$1&fmt=18″
done

#process
for VIDEO in `ls *.flv`; do
OUTPUT=${VIDEO:0:${#VIDEO}-4}”.mp3″
ffmpeg -i $VIDEO -acodec copy $OUTPUT
#move video
mv $OUTPUT /home/$USER/music
vbrfix /home/$USER/music/$OUTPUT /home/$USER/music/$OUTPUT
rm -rf vbrfix.log vbrfix.tmp
#clean-up
rm -rf $VIDEO
done
echo “Done.”

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