Revision of Watch YouTube videos using youtube-dl from Thu, 12/04/2014 - 05:25

Trisquel includes Gnash by default, so YouTube videos should work most of the time. However, watching YouTube videos this way requires the user to run proprietary [JavaScript https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html] and ActionScript and also requires more system resources than downloading the videos and viewing them with a video player such as Totem or SMPlayer.

YouTube videos can be downloaded on Trisquel via youtube-dl. youtube-dl is free software and is capable of downloading videos from YouTube and other video websites.

Installing youtube-dl

• Open up Terminal

• Use the following command to download the youtube-dl program:

   sudo aptitude install youtube-dl
  

• Update to a more recent version (do this step whenever youtube-dl stops working due to changes in the YouTube website):

   sudo youtube-dl -U
  

• The first time you update youtube-dl using this method you will need to run it as root:

   sudo youtube-dl
  

Now you can use the youtube-dl command to download YouTube videos. First find out which formats are available by using this command (replace the shown URL with the URL of the video you wish to download):

 youtube-dl -F https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p9IU4zp7mU

The output will look like this:

[youtube] Confirming age
[youtube] 8p9IU4zp7mU: Downloading webpage
[youtube] 8p9IU4zp7mU: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] 8p9IU4zp7mU: Extracting video information
[youtube] 8p9IU4zp7mU: Downloading DASH manifest
[info] Available formats for 8p9IU4zp7mU:
format code extension resolution  note 
139         m4a       audio only  DASH audio   48k , audio@ 48k (22050Hz), 788.95KiB (worst)
140         m4a       audio only  DASH audio  127k , audio@128k (44100Hz), 2.06MiB
141         m4a       audio only  DASH audio  255k , audio@256k (44100Hz), 4.13MiB
160         mp4       192x144     DASH video  112k , video only, 1.79MiB
133         mp4       320x240     DASH video  245k , video only, 3.94MiB
134         mp4       480x360     DASH video  309k , video only, 4.57MiB
135         mp4       640x480     DASH video  545k , video only, 8.59MiB
17          3gp       176x144     
36          3gp       320x240     
5           flv       400x240     
43          webm      640x360     
18          mp4       640x360     (best)

In order to download the WebM format (which is preferred as it is not patent-encumbered) run the following command (the " -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' " part tells youtube-dl to save the video using the video's original title - more saving options can be found by running "youtube-dl -h"):

 youtube-dl -f 43 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p9IU4zp7mU -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s'

youtube-dl will then start downloading the video. The output will look something like this:

[youtube] 8p9IU4zp7mU: Downloading webpage
[youtube] 8p9IU4zp7mU: Extracting video information
[youtube] 8p9IU4zp7mU: Downloading DASH manifest
[download] Destination: Richard Stallman - DRM.webm
[download] 100% of 3.88MiB in 00:16

Alternative way for installing/upgrading youtube-dl

There is another way to have youtube-dl installed, using pip python package manager/installer:

sudo aptitude install python-pip

sudo pip install youtube-dl

Upgrading is as simple as

sudo pip install -U youtube-dl