youtube-dl - Download videos from YouTube (and more sites)

1. get the code of the audio format you'd like to get :
   yt-dlp -F youtubePlaylistUrl
2. then catch them all with a single command :
   yt-dlp -f 251 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOFSvMYz5NQ&list=OLAK5uy_mgkx8APXS-Uwz1I_WzF2X0QzYJTbevhVA'
3. automatically create a directory with the album name + rename files with track numbers and clean track names :
   yt-dlp -f 251 -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" 'https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nWNDw-Jx1u5A2_7ygFAKeiEcVe1mGMk7k'
4. wait, then enjoy !

#!/bin/bash

playlist='https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4A181D94881BD304'
audioformatString='vorbis@128k'
youtubeBaseUrl='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v='

getVideosIdFromPlaylist() {
	playlist="$1"
#	youtube-dl --get-id --max-downloads 3 "$playlist"	for dev/debug only
	youtube-dl --get-id "$playlist"
	}

getFormatCodeOfVideoHavingBestAudioQuality() {
	youtubeVideoId="$1"
	youtube-dl -F "$youtubeBaseUrl$youtubeVideoId" | awk -v needle='audio only.*'"$audioformatString" '$0 ~ needle { print $1 }'
	}

downloadYoutubeTrack() {
	formatCode="$1"
	youtubeVideoId="$2"
	youtube-dl -f "$formatCode" -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(track_number)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" "$youtubeBaseUrl$youtubeVideoId"
	}

for youtubeVideoId in $(getVideosIdFromPlaylist "$playlist"); do
	formatCodeOfVideoHavingBestAudioQuality=$(getFormatCodeOfVideoHavingBestAudioQuality "$youtubeVideoId")
	downloadYoutubeTrack "$formatCodeOfVideoHavingBestAudioQuality" "$youtubeVideoId"
done

As a big fat one-liner :

playlist='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKmw9oS__MM&list=RDRKmw9oS__MM'; audioformatString='opus @160k'; youtubeBaseUrl='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v='; echo 'Retrieving the list of videos IDs, this may take some time...'; for youtubeVideoId in $(youtube-dl --get-id "$playlist"); do formatCode=$(youtube-dl -F "$youtubeBaseUrl$youtubeVideoId" | awk -v needle='audio only.*'"$audioformatString" '$0 ~ needle { print $1 }'); youtube-dl -f "$formatCode" -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(track_number)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" "$youtubeBaseUrl$youtubeVideoId"; done

Alternate method :

1. download all streams marked as 'best quality' (mostly HD videos) :

playlist='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl-VzB3PhTo&list=RDd27mV60APRo'; audioformatString='(best)'; youtubeBaseUrl='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v='; for youtubeVideoId in $(youtube-dl --get-id "$playlist"); do formatCode=$(youtube-dl -F "$youtubeBaseUrl$youtubeVideoId" | awk -v needle="$audioformatString" '$0 ~ needle { print $1 }'); youtube-dl -f "$formatCode" -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(track_number)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" "$youtubeBaseUrl$youtubeVideoId"; done

2. extract audio from all those videos

youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE0F4727AA947BBB9

Will output files named after : youtubeVideoTitle.mp3

youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 -o "%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2E1BB7AF0B48892D

Will output files named after : trackNumber - youtubeVideoTitle.mp3

• from the Debian packages, but the stable version is way behind the SID version (2014.08.05-1+deb8u1 vs 2017.03.26-1 as of today). So you'd better install it from the Debian backports.
• using one of the suggested methods (with some warnings / points of attention) :
  • The pip method (including variants with/without sudo / pip / pip3) installs youtube-dl fine, but I get errors when trying to use it :
    1. sudo -H pip3 install --upgrade youtube-dl

       [sudo] password for kevin:
       Collecting youtube-dl
       	Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/05/d4/64dfe51be0fae772e86be3c83d82ec22d59aa8521d88
       34e10355bf60f9f5/youtube_dl-2020.1.24-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.8MB)
       		100% |████████████████████████████████| 1.8MB 747kB/s
       Installing collected packages: youtube-dl
       Successfully installed youtube-dl-2020.1.24

    2. youtube-dl -F https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JozAmXo2bDE

       Traceback (most recent call last):
       	File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl", line 6, in <module>
       		from youtube_dl import main
       ImportError: cannot import name 'main' from 'youtube_dl' (unknown location)

    3. sudo -H pip3 uninstall youtube-dl
    4. sudo -H pip install --upgrade youtube-dl

       Collecting youtube-dl
       	Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/05/d4/64dfe51be0fae772e86be3c83d82ec22d59aa8521d8834e10355bf60f9f5/youtube_dl-2020.1.24-py2.py3-none-any.whl
       Installing collected packages: youtube-dl
       Successfully installed youtube-dl-2020.1.24

    5. youtube-dl -F https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JozAmXo2bDE

       Traceback (most recent call last):
       	File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl", line 6, in <module>
       		from youtube_dl import main
       ImportError: No module named youtube_dl

  • Finally, the cURL methods looks best .