yt-dlp

What is it?

I recently came across this tool called yt-dlp which is a fork of youtube-dl. In case you didn’t know, youtube-dl is a command line based tool for downloading youtube videos.

Why would you want to download youtube videos? Sometimes they get taken down or sometimes you want to watch them later where there is no internet. Maybe you want to pull the audio from one and listen to it while driving like a podcast. There are many reasons to want a copy of a video from youtube.

Being able to download and watch a video at your conveinence is something that isn’t seen as often nowadays. Everyone is so acclimated to this streaming culture that they have an always-on mentality that shatters in the absence of internet. YouTube being a place of many educational videos makes it a wealth of knowledge and a vital resource for those wanting to learn. Having the ability to download a video and watch it in underdeveloped areas can prove useful in educating out of reach areas.

While I can spend all day spouting off reasons and justifications for yt-dlp, it is simply a tool for downloading videos from the internet. It works for many sites other than youtube and will not attempt to download DRM protected videos. It has an option to do batch downloads, split audio from downloads, and even edit metadata. This is an essential tool for any tech person that enjoys their data hoarding or tech videos.

How I use it

I personally use yt-dlp to download long format videos that I might use as a refernce. This can be 5 hour long python tutorials or 6 hour long tutorials on REACT. It can also be used to download old DRM free shows from Tubi. Living on the coast we often lose internet or power from a mix of storms and corporate greed preventing preventative maintainance. In times without the internet it is nice to be able to pull up a collection of old b-movies from tubi or relaxing videos for my dog from youtube.

I have used this to split audio from videos, such as from level1techs news show. In their show, the video is mostly just the level1 team sitting around a desk and small bits of news articles floating in the corner of the screen. While I do love seeing the different backgrounds every week, it isn’t vital to the content of the show. The show is about news and that can be listened to the same as a podcast.

Rating

★★★★★

This tool has done as promised with most of what I ask of it. It is an amazing program with over 1000 contributors on github.