1. Introduction
Surely all of us have tried to find ways to download videos on Youtube for many different reasons.
Today I would like to introduce a simple method to download Youtube video using Python or Command Line that I have read.
※ Although the library stated in the article does not infringe copyrights, we also need to be responsible for the videos downloaded from Youtube.
2. Install 「youtube_dl」 library
First of all, we need to install the youtube_dl library
1 2 | pip install youtube_dl |
3. Download Youtube video with Python
To download a Youtube video, we just need to create and run a python file with the following content.
To download the desired video, just replace the URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=～ in line 5 with the URL of the corresponding video.
※ If you keep the following code, you can download a short video of VTV24 channel
1 2 3 4 5 6 | from __future__ import unicode_literals import youtube_dl ydl_opts = {} with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl: ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfIho5iC370']) |
4. Download Youtube video by Command Line
In addition, after install, we can also download it by the command line. Only with the command as below
1 2 | youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...] |
Options
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 | -h, --help Print this help text and exit --version Print program version and exit -U, --update Update this program to latest version. Make sure that you have sufficient permissions (run with sudo if needed) -i, --ignore-errors Continue on download errors, for example to skip unavailable videos in a playlist --abort-on-error Abort downloading of further videos (in the playlist or the command line) if an error occurs --dump-user-agent Display the current browser identification --list-extractors List all supported extractors --extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported extractors --force-generic-extractor Force extraction to use the generic extractor --default-search PREFIX Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For example "gvsearch2:" downloads two videos from google videos for youtube- dl "large apple". Use the value "auto" to let youtube-dl guess ("auto_warning" to emit a warning when guessing). "error" just throws an error. The default value "fixup_error" repairs broken URLs, but emits an error if this is not possible instead of searching. --ignore-config Do not read configuration files. When given in the global configuration file /etc/youtube-dl.conf: Do not read the user configuration in ~/.config/youtube-dl/config (%APPDATA%/youtube-dl/config.txt on Windows) --config-location PATH Location of the configuration file; either the path to the config or its containing directory. --flat-playlist Do not extract the videos of a playlist, only list them. --mark-watched Mark videos watched (YouTube only) --no-mark-watched Do not mark videos watched (YouTube only) --no-color Do not emit color codes in output |
Network Options
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 | --geo-verification-proxy URL Use this proxy to verify the IP address for some geo-restricted sites. The default proxy specified by --proxy (or none, if the option is not present) is used for the actual downloading. --geo-bypass Bypass geographic restriction via faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header --no-geo-bypass Do not bypass geographic restriction via faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header --geo-bypass-country CODE Force bypass geographic restriction with explicitly provided two-letter ISO 3166-2 country code --geo-bypass-ip-block IP_BLOCK Force bypass geographic restriction with explicitly provided IP block in CIDR notation |
Where can not download video
- Chances are there has been a change on the youtube side, so you cannot download the video
- Such times need to wait for the update from the youtube_dl library
- After the update is available, you can use the following command to update to the latest version.
1 2 | pip install -U youtube_dl |
5. Conclusion
youtube_dl is an interesting library for beginners to the Python language.
From using this library one can continue with other newer programming ideas (creating a tool that automatically collects Youtube videos for example)
Have a good time programming, as well as watching YouTube videos!