Downloading from YoutTube

If you're familiar and not afraid of command line tools, there's a bit "difficult to use" tool called yt-dlp. I haven't used it yet but will probably do so at some point. It downloads videos from hundreds, maybe thousands of other sites besides youtube.

Ok, but for people adventurous and brave here's how it works.

I just tried the command line tool in Windows 10 computer and it works fine. Open the github page I linked and go to "installation" section, there you'll find binary for win64. You need to open the console in windows, for this purpose write "cmd" in the search box.

You then need to browse to the folder where you downloaded yt-dlp.exe. For this purpose use "cd" "cd .." and "dir" commands. When you're in the right folder type





and replace the link with the youtube link you wish to download. The -f mp4 switch tells the program to download in .mp4 format, you can change this too if you want.

Ok, I managed to download that without the -f mp4 switch, 1080p, 173MB, in .webm format. In mp4 format it downloads it in only 720p. I'm not familiar with .webm format, but vlc player plays it just fine. I have to look into this since it's the first time I use this tool.

Ok I think I now know how this tool (yt-dlp) works. One needs to have ffmpeg in the same folder to do the merging of best possible video and audio format available on youtube. This is more complicated than just selecting the highest available bitrates for both. At least if you believe the program's manual page. If one wants to be "smarter" than the default option the program gives, one needs to list the available formats and manually select the bitrates. In the above The Tube video the max available quality if judged by the file size only is in 1080p, merged format is in .mkv, audio is 135k opus. Total size is 250Mb. But it's not any better than the 173Mb one to me. Probably because the source might be compressed to begin with. Or the inner workings of youtube compression are complicated. For the Tube video above there's 23 streams available to select from, part only video, only audio, etc. The already merged ones that one can download without ffmpeg (in .mp4) are only in 720p and 360p. If you want higher than that you need to download ffmpeg that the yt-dlp program then uses for merging to .mkv or .webm formats. It's not hard to do but too much things to type here, PM me if someone's interested. I'm in no means expert on youtube encoding, if someone knows more about it please elaborate.

steve I have grasped the slippery pig of success and now have a back up of the file. 

Let me know if you need a back up of the back up...

I did not. It was cut at the end. Happy Daze.

Well, I must say I am extremely disappointed in the free advice you’ve provided. I mean, I paid no good money for that. My time sir, my time is worth a mint!! I demand restitution! Compensation! Alms!