youtube-dl 2010.04.04: Written in Python; public domain license; excellent documentation; runs under *nix, OS X, Windows; works with latest YouTube changes. First attempt to batch download in bash returned an error:
$ youtube-dl.sh -o %(title)s.%(ext)s --batch-file urls.txt --best-quality --no-overwritesJust had to enclose the output template in single quotation marks:
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('
$ youtube-dl.sh -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' --batch-file urls.txt --best-quality --no-overwritesThe URLs for urls.txt were collected from a YouTube playlist webpage like so:
$ grep -o '/watch?v=.\{11\}' source.htm | sed 's/^/http:\/\/youtube.com/' | uniq > urls.txtwith sed prepending http://youtube.com to grep's output, and uniq culling the duplicates.
UPDATE 1: To specify the desired quality format, use -f #, where # is one of the format values shown in the first row below:
| fmt value | 5 | 6 | 34 | 35 | 18 | 22 | 37 | 38 | 83 | 82 | 85 | 84 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 100 | 101 | 46 | 102 | 13 | 17 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Default container | FLV | MP4 | WebM | 3GP | |||||||||||||||||||
| Video | Encoding | Sorenson H.263 | MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) | VP8 | MPEG-4 Visual | ||||||||||||||||||
| Profile | – | Main | Baseline | High | 3D | – | 3D | – | |||||||||||||||
| Resolution progressive | 224p | 270p | 360p | 480p | 360p | 720p | 1080p | 2304p | 240p | 360p | 520p | 720p | 360p | 480p | 720p | 1080p | 360p | 480p | 540p | 720p | – | ||
| Resolution VGA | WQVGA | HVGA | nHD | FWVGA | nHD | WXGA | WUXGA | HXGA | – | nHD | FWVGA | WXGA | WUXGA | – | – | ||||||||
| Max width (pixels) | 400 | 480 | 640 | 854 | 640 | 1280 | 1920 | 4096 | 854 | 640 | 1920 | 1280 | 640 | 854 | 1280 | 1920 | 640 | 854 | 1920 | 1280 | 176 | ||
| Max height (pixels) | 240 | 270 | 360 | 480 | 360 | 720 | 1080 | 3072 | 240 | 360 | 520 | 720 | 360 | 480 | 720 | 1080 | 360 | 480 | 540 | 720 | 144 | ||
| Bitrate (Mbit/s) | 0.25 | 0.8 | 0.5 | 0.8–1 | 0.5 | 2–2.9 | 3–4.3 | 3.5–5 | 0.5 | 2-2.9 | 0.5 | 1 | 2 | – | – | 0.5 | 2 | ||||||
| Audio | Encoding | MP3 | AAC | Vorbis | AAC | ||||||||||||||||||
| Channels | 1–2 | 2 (stereo) | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Sampling rate (Hz) | 22050 | 44100 | 22050 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Bitrate (kbit/s) | 64 | 128 | 96 | 152 | 96 | 152 | 128 | 192 | 128 | 192 | – | ||||||||||||
(Above table is from Wikipedia's YouTube entry)
UPDATE 2: Video Backup Fusion offers an easy way to save all upload or playlist URLs to a text file (the download function seems to have broken as of May 2014). Source code and binaries available for Windows, Linux, and Haiku. You may want to uncheck "Show video thumbnails" in Settings and change the "Max. videos in list" value to 5000 (the maximum it will accept). Highlight all results, right click, select "Copy url(s)", and paste into your favorite text editor.
UPDATE 3: It's been almost 5 years since this post, but youtube-dl is still going strong, having just been updated yesterday (2015-03-28). Here are two more neat ideas from a HN thread:
/nix | Apr 11, 2010