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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

Youtube-dl is one those things I wish could stay under the radar.

Don’t see why, if anything more people should know about it so shared content can become more redundant as people download it across the world. YouTube is a fairly brittle hub sometimes with all the takedowns.

I suspect the GP is concerned Youtube will take steps to block it.

This scares me a bit too, I watch basically all Youtube content via Youtube-dl. I have a script that runs every night on Mac, so that new content automagically appears in my Movies folder.

Personally, I subscribe to YouTube channels via RSS (a little known but existent feature). Then I download all the videos I want to watch with `youtube-dl -a -`. No buffering, any video window size I want, finer-grained speed playback in VLC, and no Google account required.

Yep, exactly. When I fly i like to buffer a few hours worth of videos

What content fron youtube do you watch on such trips?

AvE. My favorite Canadian redneck destroying tools, arduinos, household gadgets, and political correctness.

would love to know more about this. do you just download new videos from your subscriptions? what sort of script? can you share it? :-)

Launchd + bash script. The channels and playlists to download from are managed in a text file. I really need to get around to throwing this up on Github, I’ll see if I can find some time to do that in the next few days and let you know.

Fair warning, it’s quite macOS specific.

Meh, you can never truly block it out. There will always be a way so long as you can actually see a video on your screen.

If Youtube ever decides to employ encrypted media extensions or similar, youtube-dl will effectively cease as a useful tool. The analog loophole will always exist but that’s not something I want to use day-to-day.

They do block it. Which is why it doesn't work if you install from your OS repo. You need to get it directly from GitHub.

Believe that's the ever changing api rather than active attempts to block it.

Same thing happens with the newpipe android app which somehow manages to be far superior to Google's official YouTube app.

And you need to update it every now and then as the game of cat and mouse plays on.

Glad you welcomed him to the real world. With things as they are now. I will let you continue to teach him.

Works fine from mine

This week yes. Cat and mouse my fellow trucker

I have been a user for many years and it feels like the distro package works at least 51/52 weeks a year, so I'm not sure it's an issue more than with any other package.

Rolling release or every six months?

Rolling release. I don't think that reflects badly on youtube-dl but rather a problem with 6 monthly release distributions.

youtube-dl has an update command built in that bypasses the distribution's update system. Works even on Debian stable.

You could argue this is bad because it bypasses the distro release system, but then, Youtube also updates itself without the distro's approval, so the software that interfaces with it must as well.

Not to mention "they can download our stuff but have to use a CLI" makes rights holders feel like it's a niche application that can't threaten their bottom line so don't worry about taking steps to prevent it.

What needs to stay under the radar are the dozens of downloader sites and GUI apps that offer the same functionality and ten times the convenience.

loudly so the rights holders can hear

Yes that's right, clicking 15 times for every single file is easier than having a script automatically download a series. ;)

I tap on a playlist, tap the download button, and tap the quality I want. I don't know what sort of garbage app you're used to.

Well my tongue was firmly in cheek, I don't think one is particularly harder than the other.

I feel the same, but at the same time, it's a similar process as with adblockers; it's an arms race of obfuscation. If you can view a video in your browser, then it principally follows that you can save it to your hard drive. (Similarly, if you're displaying an ad, it follows that you can not display an ad.)

youtube-dl being more known isn't that hazardous, as long as there's a community of people ready to confront the latest ballast sent to make people's lives more miserable - which there is so far, and I'm honestly incredibly grateful for that.

>Similarly, if you're displaying an ad, it follows that you can not display an ad.

Unless it’s burnt into the video stream.

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