Install YouTube-DL in Ubuntu/Linux Mint and Debian

download-mp3-youtube-dl.md

#How to download an MP3 track from a YouTube video You can also download the mp3 directly from youtube without converting using ffmpeg

youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 <video URL>

From the online help:

-x, --extract-audio        convert video files to audio-only files (requires
                           ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe)

Bear in mind as well that youtube-dl defaults to using avconv so you should consider specifying either avconv or FFmpeg at the commandline. From the online help:

--prefer-avconv                  Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running the
                                 postprocessors (default)
--prefer-ffmpeg                  Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running the
                                 postprocessors

Further options for keeping the original video, adjusting the bitrate or quality of the audio and a few others can be seen by looking at youtube -h.

install-youtube-dl.md

#Install YouTube-DL in Ubuntu/Linux Mint and Debian Ubuntu users can download and install latest youtube-dl version from the webupd8 PPA as shown.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

Update: Similarly, instead using any third party PPA, you can use curl or wget command to install latest version of youtube-dl script as shown.

$ sudo curl https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

OR

sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

After downloading the script, set the executable permission.

$ sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

#Update YouTube-DL Youtube-dl itself can be updated to the latest version using the following command.

# youtube-dl -U

Sample Output

Updating to version 2015.09.03 ...
Updated youtube-dl. Restart youtube-dl to use the new version.

#How to Use YouTube-DL to Download Videos To download a video file, simply run the following command. Where “VIDEO_URL” is the url of the video that you want to download.

# youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYvuS9OxdA

Sample Output

[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading webpage
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Extracting video information
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading js player new-en_US-vflCeB3p5
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading DASH manifest
[download] Destination: Amy Macdonald - This Is The Life-iRYvuS9OxdA.mp4
[download] 100% of 10.33MiB in 00:01

To list all available formats of video, use option “–list-formats” with the youtube-dl command.

# youtube-dl --list-formats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYvuS9OxdA

Sample Output

[youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading webpage
[youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Extracting video information
[youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading DASH manifest
[youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading DASH manifest
[info] Available formats for vKtwZmhX0lw:
format code  extension  resolution note
171          webm       audio only DASH audio  113k , vorbis@128k (44100Hz), 1.86MiB
140          m4a        audio only DASH audio  128k , m4a_dash container, aac  @128k (44100Hz), 2.14MiB
141          m4a        audio only DASH audio  255k , m4a_dash container, aac  @256k (44100Hz), 4.30MiB
278          webm       180x144    DASH video   63k , webm container, vp9, 1fps, video only, 946.76KiB
160          mp4        180x144    DASH video  112k , avc1.4d400c, 15fps, video only, 1.86MiB
242          webm       300x240    DASH video  170k , vp9, 1fps, video only, 2.50MiB
133          mp4        300x240    DASH video  247k , avc1.4d400d, 25fps, video only, 4.11MiB
243          webm       400x320    DASH video  288k , vp9, 1fps, video only, 4.07MiB
13           3gp        unknown    small 
17           3gp        176x144    small ,  mp4a.40.2, mp4v.20.3
36           3gp        320x240    small ,  mp4a.40.2, mp4v.20.3
5            flv        400x240    small 
43           webm       640x360    medium ,  vorbis, vp8.0
18           mp4        640x360    medium ,  mp4a.40.2, avc1.42001E (best)

To download a preferred file format, use the option ‘-f’ (video format code). For example, I would like to download mp4 format, So I use format code as ‘18‘ as shown below.

# youtube-dl -f 18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYvuS9OxdA

Sample Output

[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading webpage
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Extracting video information
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading DASH manifest
[download] Amy Macdonald - This Is The Life-iRYvuS9OxdA.mp4 has already been downloaded
[download] 100% of 10.33MiB

To download a list of video files, create a file and place all the YouTube links that you wish to download.

# youtube-dl -a youtube_links.txt

Type the following command in a terminal to list all the avialable options.

# youtube-dl --help

For other distributions, youtube-dl can be downloaded from the youtube-dl download page. http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html