How to download YouTube videos with youtube-dl

 

What is youtube-dl?

youtube-dl is an open source command line tool which can be used to download YouTube videos into your local hard drive. you can check available versions of particular video prior to download and you can select which version is suitable for you. I used to download some speeches from YouTube. what I interested  was only audio. I simply asked youtube-dl to download only audio file related to particular you tube video.

Where can you get youtube-dl from ?

You can download youtube-dl from http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html

if you are using Windows operating system, you need to download youtube-dl windows exe from the above web page.

How to install youtube-dl?

If you are using youtube-dl windows exe, simply copy the youtube-dl.exe into a folder which is in your default system path.

1. click on windows start button
2. type “cmd” in search program and files text box
3. press enter
4. it will start windows command prompt.

Easiest thing is to copy the youtube-dl.exe into C:\Users\user folder in this case. but this is not the only way. but one of the easiest way, if you are not familiar with how to set system path to your own folder.

How to use youtube-dl ?

1. start windows command prompt
2. type youtube-dl and press enter.

you will see the above message, if you have correctly copied the youtube-dl.exe file.

Let’s download your first video with youtube-dl

I want to download following YouTube video. I think you know how to get the YouTube video url.

start your command prompt. type youtube-dl  -F your youtube video url here

press enter

you will get a list of all the available files for downloading. now you can easily  read file sizes,extensions and  quality data.

Say I want to download only the audio file (49k) quality. you have to note down the relevant number for this file from left hand corner in the same row under format column. in this case it’s 139

type again youtube-dl –f  number  your YouTube video url here  in the windows command prompt and press enter. do not forget that this time it’s lower case f

your file will be started downloading. this program supports resume download as well. so do not worry about interruptions of your internet connection while downloading YouTube videos.

If you want to download the available highest quality video from You tube, it’s very simple. simply type

youtube-dl your YouTube url here

at windows command prompt and then press enter. it’s done. youtube-dl will download available highest quality video for you.