Having a computer or mobile device and an internet connection has become a necessity in today’s world. Technology has exposed us to many platforms where we can do business, learn, or entertain ourselves. Thus, Youtube is a popular video-sharing platform created in 2005. It was primarily designed for people who wanted to publish their created videos. Note that Youtube has two types of users, including video creators and viewers. In other words, youtube users are allowed to watch, subscribe, like, share, download or upload videos on the platform. Youtube’s slogan is to broadcast yourself; thus, you can access this site from anywhere and interact with it at any time of the day.
Impacts of Youtube
- Promoting Individual brands: Since youtube has a large audience, business brands can leverage their sales and branding through advertisements (ads) on this platform.
- Improving Education: Users of youtube provide videos where one can learn and solve a problem using the available tutorials.
- Unlocks talents: Youtube is a free space where people can showcase their skills and abilities.
- Entertainment: During your free time, you can watch videos on youtube that will excite and entertain you. Also, you can watch or upload videos using your native language.
Youtube-dl
Youtube-dl is a download manager for content from youtube and other websites. It is a free and open-source tool that you can use to download videos and audio. In other terms, youtube-dl is well-known for downloading fragments of videos and audio and consolidating them into a single file. Several forks exist from the Youtube-dl project, and this includes the yt-dlp.
Yt-dlp
Most websites do not provide a default method of saving videos directly to your hard drive. Thus, open-source projects Yt-dlp come in handy to fill in this gap. Yt-dlp is a youtube-dl fork(a copy of a project folder or repository) with additional features and fixes. It is well and actively maintained while following similar commands to youtube-dl.
Features of yt-dlp
- Multi-threaded fragment downloads: Helps download multiple fragments of videos.
- Based on youtube-dl and youtube-dlc: Have features and patches of youtube-dl and youtube-dlc.
- Integration with SponsorBlock: Users can remove or make sponsor sections using SponmsorBlock API.
- Configurations: Yt-dlp has portable directories which can be loaded to home or root directories.
- It is possible to extract subtitles from streaming media platforms using Yt-dlp.
- New and fixed extractors.
- Multiple paths and output templates.
- Cookies are automatically extracted from web browsers.
Yt-dlp vs Youtube-dl
Yt-dlp and Youtube-dl work similarly and incorporate almost the same code. Yt-dlp gets all the codes and features from youtube-dl. Also, Yt-dlp gets a bit more updates than its counterpart. Keep in mind that if there is a site that can’t work with these tools, developers can add support on the next release of either yt-dlp or youtube-dl.
Installing Yt-dlp on Solus Linux
Start by updating your repositories. Then use your preferred method to install the yt-dlp tool.
sudo eopkg upgradeMethod 1:Install yt-dlp from Binary
To install Yt-dlp on your Solus system, you can apply different methods. In our first method, we will download the yt-dlp from GitHub releases.
a) Using the wget command
Run this command and Yt-dlp will be downloaded successfully.
sudo wget https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -O /usr/bin/yt-dlpb) Using curl
Curl is another alternative to wget which will download Yt-dlp from GitHub to your Solus system.
sudo curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -o /usr/bin/yt-dlpAfter the yt-dlp tool has been downloaded using either of the above methods, change the access mode using the command below.
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/bin/yt-dlpMethod 2: Install Yt-dlp Using PIP
We can also use the PIP package manager to install Yt-dlp on Solus operating system. Simply use the below command.
python3 -m pip install -U yt-dlpUpdating Yt-DLP on Solus
Yt-dlp is a self updater and this is done using this command.
yt-dlp -UBelow is a sample of expected results.
$ yt-dlp -U
Latest version: 2022.05.18, Current version: 2022.05.18
yt-dlp is up to date (2022.05.18)Yt-dlp Version
You can also confirm the version of yt-dlp.
$ yt-dlp --version
2022.05.18Using Yt-dlp on Solus
After successful installation, proceed to use yt-dlp on Solus
Download quality audio and video
Yt-dlp helps you download a video and audio from youtube. Start by searching for the video you want and then copy the link to the video.
From your terminal, use this command to download your video. Use the link you have copied from youtube.
yt-dlp [link]After pressing the Enter button, you will get such results with details of the video.
$ yt-dlp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3IVOiRFX3o
[youtube] J3IVOiRFX3o: Downloading webpage
[youtube] J3IVOiRFX3o: Downloading android player API JSON
[info] J3IVOiRFX3o: Downloading 1 format(s): 243+251
[download] Destination: Mr Bean harbour chicken [J3IVOiRFX3o].f243.webm
[download] 100% of 12.22MiB in 00:00
[download] Destination: Mr Bean harbour chicken [J3IVOiRFX3o].f251.webm
[download] 100% of 4.37MiB in 00:00
[Merger] Merging formats into "Mr Bean harbour chicken [J3IVOiRFX3o].webm"
Deleting original file Mr Bean harbour chicken [J3IVOiRFX3o].f251.webm (pass -k to keep)
Deleting original file Mr Bean harbour chicken [J3IVOiRFX3o].f243.webm (pass -k to keep)
Check Video or Audio Info
Notably, you can check the available information about the video you want to download.
$ yt-dlp -F https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3IVOiRFX3o
[youtube] J3IVOiRFX3o: Downloading webpage
[youtube] J3IVOiRFX3o: Downloading android player API JSON
[info] Available formats for J3IVOiRFX3o:
ID EXT RESOLUTION FPS │ FILESIZE TBR PROTO │ VCODEC VBR ACODEC ABR ASR MORE INFO
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
17 3gp 176x144 6 │ 2.80MiB 79k https │ mp4v.20.3 79k mp4a.40.2 0k 22050Hz 144p
394 mp4 256x134 25 │ 2.29MiB 65k https │ av01.0.00M.08 65k video only 144p, mp4_dash
160 mp4 256x134 25 │ 3.29MiB 93k https │ avc1.4d400c 93k video only 144p, mp4_dash
278 webm 256x134 25 │ 2.98MiB 85k https │ vp9 85k video only 144p, webm_dash
395 mp4 426x224 25 │ 4.88MiB 139k https │ av01.0.00M.08 139k video only 240p, mp4_dash
133 mp4 426x224 25 │ 6.32MiB 180k https │ avc1.4d400d 180k video only 240p, mp4_dash
242 webm 426x224 25 │ 6.77MiB 193k https │ vp9 193k video only 240p, webm_dash
396 mp4 640x338 25 │ 9.84MiB 280k https │ av01.0.01M.08 280k video only 360p, mp4_dash
134 mp4 640x338 25 │ 15.47MiB 441k https │ avc1.4d401e 441k video only 360p, mp4_dash
18 mp4 640x338 25 │ 23.22MiB 662k https │ avc1.42001E 662k mp4a.40.2 0k 44100Hz 360p
243 webm 640x338 25 │ 12.22MiB 348k https │ vp9 348k video only 360p, webm_dash
Best quality video and audio Download
Yt-dlp has a command that specifies the quality of the video and audio you want. If you want the best quality, use this command:
yt-dlp -f bestvideo+bestaudio [link]Example:
$ yt-dlp -f bestvideo+bestaudio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbuZndbL25A
[youtube] gbuZndbL25A: Downloading webpage
[youtube] gbuZndbL25A: Downloading android player API JSON
[info] gbuZndbL25A: Downloading 1 format(s): 303+251
[download] Destination: AFRICAN HOME - GOOD CHILD [gbuZndbL25A].f303.webm
[download] 100% of 273.38MiB in 00:04
[download] Destination: AFRICAN HOME - GOOD CHILD [gbuZndbL25A].f251.webm
[download] 100% of 13.36MiB in 00:00
[Merger] Merging formats into "AFRICAN HOME - GOOD CHILD [gbuZndbL25A].webm"Playlist in MP4 format Download
With yt-dlp, you can download a playlist from youtube or other websites.
yt-dlp -i -f mp4 --yes-playlist ['link']Here is an example, we will download a playlist with 53 videos.
$ yt-dlp -i -f mp4 --yes-playlist 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp0f0zTPLec&list=PL081AC329706B2953'
I].mp4
[download] 100% of 10.43MiB in 00:00
[download] Downloading video 53 of 53
[youtube] Kn_AIiV6Cp0: Downloading webpage
[youtube] Kn_AIiV6Cp0: Downloading android player API JSON
[info] Kn_AIiV6Cp0: Downloading 1 format(s): 18
[download] Destination: HTML5 Tutorial - 53 - Saving Data While Visiting Other Websites [Kn_AIiV6Cp0].mp4
[download] 100% of 11.17MiB in 00:00
[download] Finished downloading playlist: HTML5 Tutorials PlaylistDownload the best quality Video with a specific resolution
While downloading your videos or audios on Solus using yt-dlp, you can specify the resolution you want. In the example below, yt-dlp will download a video with a resolution of 1080.
yt-dlp -f 'bestvideo[height<=1080]+bestaudio/best[height<=1080]' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS7Pww5RYC0Downloading Audios with Yt-dlp
If you want audio from youtube, yt-dlp is here for you. Replace the link below with the link to the audio you want.
yt-dlp --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5pJfgxDWpwEmbed subtitles to video file
You can include the subtitles of the video you want with the help of yt-dlp.
yt-dlp -f 'bv[height=1080][ext=mp4]+ba[ext=m4a]' --embed-subs --merge-output-format mp4 [LINK]-o '%(id)s.mp4'Here is an example. Keep in mind that this will work if the subtitles for the file already exist.
$ yt-dlp -f 'bv[height=1080][ext=mp4]+ba[ext=m4a]' --embed-subs --merge-output-format mp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8rj4BTNU0Y-o '%(id)s.mp4'
[youtube] Y8rj4BTNU0Y: Downloading webpage
[youtube] Y8rj4BTNU0Y: Downloading android player API JSON
[info] Y8rj4BTNU0Y: Downloading 1 format(s): 137+140
[info] Writing video subtitles to: A Box Of Faith FULL OFFICIAL MOVIE [Y8rj4BTNU0Y].en.vtt
[download] Destination: A Box Of Faith FULL OFFICIAL MOVIE [Y8rj4BTNU0Y].en.vtt
[download] 100% of 78.46KiB in 00:00
[download] Destination: A Box Of Faith FULL OFFICIAL MOVIE [Y8rj4BTNU0Y].f137.mp4
[download] 100% of 914.32MiB in 00:21
[download] Destination: A Box Of Faith FULL OFFICIAL MOVIE [Y8rj4BTNU0Y].f140.m4a
[download] 100% of 83.39MiB in 00:02
[Merger] Merging formats into "A Box Of Faith FULL OFFICIAL MOVIE [Y8rj4BTNU0Y].mp4"
Deleting original file A Box Of Faith FULL OFFICIAL MOVIE [Y8rj4BTNU0Y].f140.m4a (pass -k to keep)
Deleting original file A Box Of Faith FULL OFFICIAL MOVIE [Y8rj4BTNU0Y].f137.mp4 (pass -k to keep)
[EmbedSubtitle] Embedding subtitles in "A Box Of Faith FULL OFFICIAL MOVIE [Y8rj4BTNU0Y].mp4"You can access the videos and audio you have downloaded from your files manager.
Conclusion
In case you are struggling to download videos and audios from youtube or other sites, yt-dlp which is an alternative to youtube-dl is perfect for the task. This article has taken you through the definitions, installation, and usage of this outstanding tool on Solus. Go ahead and enjoy watching downloaded videos from your Solus system after downloading them using Yt-dlp. If you have any queries, leave a comment.
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