4 youtube-dl - download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms
8 youtube-dl [options] url ...
12 youtube-dl is a script to download videos from youtube.com or any other of
13 the supported video platforms.
15 Currently supported sites are: CollegeHumor, Comedy Central, Dailymotion,
16 Facebook, Metacafe, MyVideo, Photobucket, The Escapist, Vimeo, Yahoo!,
17 YouTube, blip.tv, depositfiles.com, video.google.com, xvideos, Soundcloud,
18 InfoQ, Mixcloud, OpenClassRoom.
20 Once it is installed in your system, you should be able to call it from
21 the command line. Usage instructions are easy. Use youtube-dl followed
22 by a video URL or identifier. As an example, consider:
24 youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"
26 The video will be saved to the file C<foobar.flv> in that example. Many
27 YouTube.com videos are in Flash Video format and their extension would
28 be C<flv>. Other videos are encoded in H.264 and these usually have the
29 extension C<mp4>. In Linux and other unices, video players using a
30 recent version of ffmpeg can play them. That includes MPlayer, VLC,
35 B<youtube-dl> accepts options in the following categories
41 Print help text and exit.
45 Print program version and exit.
49 Update this program to the latest stable version.
51 =item -i, --ignore-errors
53 Ignore errors during download and continue processing.
55 =item -r B<L>, --rate-limit=B<L>
57 Limit the download speed to the specified maximum B<L> (e.g., 50k or 44.6m).
59 =item -R B<R>, --retries=B<R>
61 Number B<R> of retries for a given download (default is 10).
63 =item --playlist-start=B<N>
65 The number B<N> of the video in a playlist where we should start downlading
68 =item --playlist-end=B<N>
70 The number B<N> of the video in a playlist where we should stop downloading
71 (default is -1, which stands for the last video in the playlist).
73 =item --dump-user-agent
75 Display how youtube-dl will identify itself (the User-Agent string) to the
78 =item -u B<UN>, --username=B<UN>
80 Specify the youtube account username B<UN>. Some videos require an
81 account to be downloaded, mostly because they're flagged as mature
84 =item -p B<PW>, --password=B<PW>
86 Like the username, specifies the account password to be B<PW>.
90 Get authentication data from the standard unix .netrc file on the user's
91 home directory. The machine name is youtube regarding this usage.
93 =item -f B<FMT>, --format=B<FMT>
95 Specify the video format (quality) in which to download the video.
97 For youtube.com, in particular, the meaning of the format codes is given as:
101 =item WebM video at 480p: 43
103 =item WebM video at 720p: 45
105 =item H264 video in MP4 container at 480p: 18
107 =item H264 video in MP4 container at 720p: 22
109 =item H264 video in MP4 container at 1080p: 37
111 =item H264 video in FLV container at 360p: 34
113 =item H264 video in FLV container at 480p: 35
115 =item H263 video at 240p: 5
121 Note that not all videos are available in all formats and that other
122 sites supported by B<youtube-dl> may have different conventions for
125 By default, youtube-dl will download the best available format; if you want
126 to download the worst format to save bandwidth and time, use C<-f> I<worst>.
130 Downloads all formats for which a video may be available.
132 =item --max-quality=B<FMT>
134 Limit the maximum quality of the videos to downloads to B<FMT>.
138 Activates quiet mode, avoiding many messages being written to the
143 Simulate the operation, but do not download the video. Useful for
148 Simulate the operation, like quiet mode, but show the URL that would be
149 used to download the video. Can be used with other download tools like
152 =item -e, --get-title
154 Simulate the operation, like quiet mode, but show the title of the video
155 that would be downloaded.
157 =item --get-thumbnail
159 Simulate the operation, like quiet mode, but print the URL of of the video's
162 =item --get-description
164 Simulate the operation, like quiet mode, but print the description of the
169 Simulate the operation, like quiet mode, but print the output filename.
173 Do not print the progress bar during downloads.
175 =item --console-title
177 If possible, set the title of the console window with the progress of the
182 Use the title of the video in the file name used to download the video.
186 Use the literal title of the video in file name used to download the
187 video. Can contain "weird" characters that are not filtered like with
190 =item -A, --auto-number
192 When downloading multiple videos from a playlist, automatically number them,
193 in sequence, starting from 00000.
195 =item -o B<TPL>, --output=B<TPL>
197 Specify a template B<TPL> for the names of the files to be created when
198 they are downloaded. The default filename is video_id.flv. But you can
199 also use the video title in the filename with the C<-t> or C<--title>
200 option, or preserve the literal title in the filename with the C<-l> or
203 =item -a B<F>, --batch-file=B<F>
205 Specify the name of a file containing URLs of videos to download from
206 youtube in batch mode. The file must contain one URL per line.
208 =item -w, --no-overwrites
210 Do no overwrite already existing files.
214 Resume partially downloaded files.
218 Store the received cookies to file B<F> (the "cookie jar").
222 Do not append the I<.part> suffix do files that have not yet been completed.
226 Do not use the I<Last-modified> header to set the file modification time.
228 =item --extract-audio
230 Create an audio-only file extracted from the video downloaded. Requires that
231 ffmpeg and ffprobe be installed.
233 =item --audio-format=B<FORMAT>
235 Set the audio format to be used for the extraction. Possible values are
236 I<best>, I<aac>, I<mp3>, with I<best> being the default.
240 =head1 OUTPUT TEMPLATE
242 The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file
243 names. The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when
244 downloading a single file, like in youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv
245 "http://some/video". However, it may contain special sequences that will
246 be replaced when downloading each video.
248 The special sequences have the format C<%(NAME)s>. To clarify, that's a
249 percent symbol followed by a name in parenthesis, followed by a
250 lowercase S. Allowed names are:
256 The sequence will be replaced by the video identifier.
260 The sequence will be replaced by the video URL.
264 The sequence will be replaced by the nickname of the person who uploaded
269 The sequence will be replaced by the literal video title.
273 The sequence will be replaced by a simplified video title, restricted to
274 alphanumeric characters and dashes.
278 The sequence will be replaced by the appropriate extension (like C<flv>
283 The sequence will be replaced by the Unix epoch when creating the file.
287 As you may have guessed, the default template is C<%(id)s.%(ext)s>. When
288 some command line options are used, it's replaced by other templates
289 like C<%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s>. You can specify your own.
293 youtube-dl was written by Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez and many contributors
294 from all around the internet. This manpage was written by Rogerio Brito
295 <rbrito@users.sf.net>.