Monday, October 19, 2015

Video Downloader `youtube-dl` Gets Support For Separate Audio And Video YouTube DASH Streams

YouTube uses Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) for delivering videos and along with that, it serves the audio and video in two separate streams for some resolutions/formats. For instance, resolutions like 1080p and 480p are available only with separate audio and video streams.

youtube-dl, a popular command line tool for downloading videos from YouTube and other similar websites, was updated recently with proper support for DASH and separate audio and video streams: the tool can now automatically combine / merge / multiplex the audio and video formats offered by YouTube.

Here's an example via cynic.cc for downloading separate audio and video streams from YouTube and combining them automatically using youtube-dl (which uses ffmpeg or avconv under the hood):

"Now, if you want a 480p video in H.264 format, High profile, with 128kbps AAC audio (this used to be Youtube's format 35), you can specify format -f 135+140 on the command-line and it will download both the audio, the video and multiplex it with ffmpeg (or avconv, depending on what you have installed)."

And that's not all, a lot of other improvements and fixes are added daily to this command line download tool.

For instance, since our previous article about youtube-dl, the downloader received support for many websites, including: Vevo, 9gag, discovery.com, vk.com, southpark.de, myspace.com, vube.com, vesti.ru, stream.cz, ndr.de, onf.ca, Dropbox and so on, along with many fixes and improvements.

For those not familiar with youtube-dl, this command line video downloader not only supports hundreds of websites, but it can also extract the audio automatically, download playlists, download and embed subtitles into videos and more.


Install youtube-dl in Ubuntu


The latest youtube-dl 2014.02.17 is available in the Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr repository but it wasn't backported for older Ubuntu versions. Install it via Ubuntu Software Center or by using the following command:
sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

For older Ubuntu versions (though I also recommend it for Ubuntu 14.04), you can install youtube-dl by using the main failsdownloads PPA.

As a reminder, I update youtube-dl from the failsdownloads PPA a few times a week, so if YouTube or another website make changes that break it, run an update and it's very likely that a new youtube-dl version will be available, which fixes the issues.

To add the main failsdownloads PPA and install youtube-dl in Ubuntu and derivatives (Linux Mint, elementary OS and so on), use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/failsdownloads
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

If you don't want to add our PPA, you can manually download the deb from the PPA by visiting THIS link.

For other Linux distributions, you'll find installation instructions HERE.


Using youtube-dl to download videos


To download a video, simply use the following command:
youtube-dl http://VIDEO_URL
where "VIDEO_URL" is the url of the video you want to download.

If you don't use any parameters, youtube-dl tries to download the best format. For YouTube, by default it downloads the best non-DASH format, which usually is 720p mp4 for YouTube.

So here's how to download 1080p YouTube videos using youtube-dl:


How to download 1080p YouTube videos using youtube-dl


1. Firstly, get a list of formats. I'll use a random video link as an example below:
youtube-dl -F http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JZ_D3ELwOQ

This will list all the available formats:
youtube-dl -F http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JZ_D3ELwOQ
[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] 3JZ_D3ELwOQ: Downloading webpage
[youtube] 3JZ_D3ELwOQ: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] 3JZ_D3ELwOQ: Extracting video information
[info] Available formats for 3JZ_D3ELwOQ:
format code extension resolution  note 
171         webm      audio only  DASH webm audio , audio@ 48k (worst)
140         m4a       audio only  DASH audio , audio@128k
160         mp4       192p        DASH video 
133         mp4       240p        DASH video 
134         mp4       360p        DASH video 
135         mp4       480p        DASH video 
136         mp4       720p        DASH video 
137         mp4       1080p       DASH video 
17          3gp       176x144     
36          3gp       320x240     
5           flv       400x240     
43          webm      640x360     
18          mp4       640x360     
22          mp4       1280x720    (best)
As you can see, for 1080p there's only a DASH video available (format 137) and two separate DASH audio files (formats 140 and 171).

2. To get the best video quality (1080p DASH - format "137") and best audio quality (DASH audio - format "140"), you must use the following command:
youtube-dl -f 137+140 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JZ_D3ELwOQ
"-f 137+140" specifies the format: 137 (which means mp4 1080p as you can see above) for video and 140 (which means m4a audio@128k) for audio, as displayed by the command under step 1.

youtube-dl

To see all the available options (extract audio, choose a different video quality, download a video playlist and many many other options), type the following commands in a terminal: "man youtube-dl" or "youtube-dl -h".
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