YouTube-DL is a popular, open-source tool for downloading and archiving videos on the Internet. Contrary to its name, YouTube-DL doesn’t just support downloading videos from YouTube. It actually supports downloading videos from hundreds of sites with more being added frequently. It also supports downloading videos from direct links.
How do I get YouTube-DL?
You can get YouTube-DL by downloading it from its official site. Alternatively, you can install it through the Python package manager by typing pip install youtube_dl in a command line.
YouTube-DL requires a recent version of Python installed on your system. In addition, YouTube-DL requires ffmpeg or avconv to download videos from some sites.
How do I use YouTube-DL?
YouTube-DL is a command-line program. Once installed, you can use it by typing youtube-dl <video url>. Additional options, such as selecting video quality, downloading subtitles, or downloading only audio, are documented in the project’s README file or by typing youtube-dl --help.
YouTube-DL also provides a Python module for use within scripts.
We hope you enjoyed this introduction to YouTube-DL. Happy archiving!
Note: Data Horde only endorses the use of YouTube-DL for legitimate archiving purposes, and does not condone piracy or other violations of copyright and/or other laws.
