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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"><head> <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <title>youtube-dl: Download videos from YouTube.com</title> <style type="text/css"><!-- body { font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; } h1 { text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; color: #006699; } h2 { color: #006699; } p { text-align: justify; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; } ul { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; list-style-type: square; } li { margin-bottom: 0.5ex; } .smallnote { font-size: x-small; text-align: center; } --></style></head><body><h1>youtube-dl: Download videos from YouTube.com</h1>
<p class="smallnote">(and more...)</p>
<h2>What is it?</h2>
<p><em>youtube-dl</em> is a small command-line program to download videosfrom YouTube.com. It requires the <a href="http://www.python.org/">Pythoninterpreter</a>, version 2.4 or later, and it's not platform specific.It should work in your Unix box, in Windows or in Mac OS X. The latest versionis <strong>@PROGRAM_VERSION@</strong>. It's released to the public domain,which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.</p>
<p>I'll try to keep it updated if YouTube.com changes the way you accesstheir videos. After all, it's a simple and short program. However, I can'tguarantee anything. If you detect it stops working, check for new versionsand/or inform me about the problem, indicating the program version youare using. If the program stops working and I can't solve the problem butyou have a solution, I'd like to know it. If that happens and you feel youcan maintain the program yourself, tell me. My contact information isat <a href="http://freshmeat.net/~rg3/">freshmeat.net</a>.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the feedback received so far. I'm glad people find myprogram useful.</p>
<h2>Usage instructions</h2>
<p>In Windows, once you have installed the Python interpreter, save theprogram with the <em>.py</em> extension and put it somewhere in the PATH.Try to follow the<a href="http://rg03.wordpress.com/youtube-dl-under-windows-xp/">guide toinstall youtube-dl under Windows XP</a>.</p>
<p>In Unix, download it, give it execution permission and copy it to oneof the PATH directories (typically, <em>/usr/local/bin</em>).</p>
<p>After that, you should be able to call it from the command line as<em>youtube-dl</em> or <em>youtube-dl.py</em>. I will use <em>youtube-dl</em>in the following examples. Usage instructions are easy. Use <em>youtube-dl</em>followed by a video URL or identifier. Example: <em>youtube-dl"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"</em>. The video will be savedto the file <em>foobar.flv</em> in that example. As YouTube.comvideos are in Flash Video format, their extension should be <em>flv</em>.In Linux and other unices, video players using a recent version of<em>ffmpeg</em> can play them. That includes MPlayer, VLC, etc. Those twowork under Windows and other platforms, but you could also get aspecific FLV player of your taste.</p>
<p>If you try to run the program and you receive an error message containing thekeyword <em>SyntaxError</em> near the end, it means your Python interpreteris too old.</p>
<h2>More usage tips</h2>
<ul>
<li>You can change the file name of the video using the -o option, like in<em>youtube-dl -o vid.flv "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"</em>.Read the <a href="#otpl">Output template</a> section for more details onthis.</li>
<li>Some videos require an account to be downloaded, mostly because they'reflagged as mature content. You can pass the program a username and passwordfor a YouTube.com account with the -u and -p options, like <em>youtube-dl-u myusername -p mypassword "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"</em>.</li>
<li>The account data can also be read from the user .netrc file by indicatingthe -n or --netrc option. The machine name is <em>youtube</em> in thatcase.</li>
<li>The <em>simulate mode</em> (activated with -s or --simulate) can be usedto just get the real video URL and use it with a download manager if youprefer that option.</li>
<li>The <em>quiet mode</em> (activated with -q or --quiet) can be used tosupress all output messages. This allows, in systems featuring /dev/stdoutand other similar special files, outputting the video data to standard outputin order to pipe it to another program without interferences.</li>
<li>The program can be told to simply print the final video URL to standardoutput using the -g or --get-url option.</li>
<li>In a similar line, the -e or --get-title option tells the program to printthe video title.</li>
<li>The default filename is <em>video_id.flv</em>. But you can also use thevideo title in the filename with the -t or --title option, or preserve theliteral title in the filename with the -l or --literal option.</li>
<li>You can make the program append <em>&fmt=something</em> to the URLby using the -f or --format option. This makes it possible to download highquality versions of the videos when available.</li>
<li>The -b or --best-quality option is an alias for -f 18.</li>
<li>The -m or --mobile-version option is an alias for -f 17.</li>
<li>Normally, the program will stop on the first error, but you can tell itto attempt to download every video with the -i or --ignore-errors option.</li>
<li>The -a or --batch-file option lets you specify a file to read URLs from.The file must contain one URL per line.</li>
<li>The program can be told not to overwrite existing files using the -w or--no-overwrites option.</li>
<li>For YouTube, you can also use the URL of a playlist, and it will downloadall the videos in that playlist.</li>
<li>For YouTube, you can also use the special word <em>ytsearch</em> todownload search results. With <em>ytsearch</em> it will download thefirst search result. With <em>ytsearchN</em>, where N is a number, itwill download the first N results. With <em>ytsearchall</em> it willdownload every result for that search. In most systems you'll need touse quotes for multiple words. Example: <em>youtube-dl "ytsearch3:cutekittens"</em>.
<li><em>youtube-dl</em> honors the <em>http_proxy</em> environment variableif you want to use a proxy. Set it to something like<em>http://proxy.example.com:8080</em>, and do not leave the <em>http://</em>prefix out.</li>
<li>You can get the program version by calling it as <em>youtube-dl-v</em> or <em>youtube-dl --version</em>.</li>
<li>For usage instructions, use <em>youtube-dl -h</em> or <em>youtube-dl--help.</em></li>
<li>You can cancel the program at any time pressing Ctrl+C. It may printsome error lines saying something about <em>KeyboardInterrupt</em>.That's ok.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Download it</h2>
<p>Note that if you directly click on these hyperlinks, your web browser willmost likely display the program contents. It's usually better toright-click on it and choose the appropriate option, normally called <em>SaveTarget As</em> or <em>Save Link As</em>, depending on the web browser youare using.</p>
<p><a href="youtube-dl">@PROGRAM_VERSION@</a></p><ul> <li><strong>MD5</strong>: @PROGRAM_MD5SUM@</li> <li><strong>SHA1</strong>: @PROGRAM_SHA1SUM@</li> <li><strong>SHA256</strong>: @PROGRAM_SHA256SUM@</li></ul>
<h2 id="otpl">Output template</h2>
<p>The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file names.The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a singlefile, like in <em>youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv 'http://some/video'</em>.However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced whendownloading each video. The special sequences have the format<strong>%(NAME)s</strong>. To clarify, that's a percent symbol followed by aname in parenthesis, followed by a lowercase S. Allowed names are:</p>
<ul><li><em>id</em>: The sequence will be replaced by the video identifier.</li><li><em>url</em>: The sequence will be replaced by the video URL.</li><li><em>uploader</em>: The sequence will be replaced by the nickname of theperson who uploaded the video.</li><li><em>title</em>: The sequence will be replaced by the literal videotitle.</li><li><em>stitle</em>: The sequence will be replaced by a simplified videotitle, restricted to alphanumeric characters and dashes.</li><li><em>ext</em>: The sequence will be replaced by the appropriateextension (like <em>flv</em> or <em>mp4</em>).</li></ul>
<p>As you may have guessed, the default template is <em>%(id)s.%(ext)s</em>.When some command line options are used, it's replaced by other templates like<em>%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s</em>. You can specify your own.</p>
<h2>Authors</h2>
<ul><li>Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez: program core, YouTube.com InfoExtractor,metacafe.com InfoExtractor and YouTube playlist InfoExtractor.</li><li>Danny Colligan: YouTube search InfoExtractor, ideas and patches.</li><li>Many other people contributing patches, code, ideas and kind messages. Toomany to be listed here. You know who you are. Thank you very much.</li></ul>
<p class="smallnote">Copyright © 2006-2007 Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez</p></body></html>
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