Download everything from a YouTube video using youtube-dl

Solution 1:

The relevant options you need:

# Filesystem
--write-annotations
--write-description
--write-info-json

# Thumbnail images
--write-all-thumbnails

# Video format
--format bestvideo+bestaudio/best
--merge-output-format mkv

# Subtitle
--all-subs
--write-auto-sub
--write-sub

# Post-processing
--add-metadata
--embed-subs

Copy that to your config file (either /etc/youtube-dl.conf or ~/.config/youtube-dl/config).

Using that configuration, I downloaded this video and youtube-dl wrote the following files:

$ ls
The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile.annotations.xml
The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile.description
The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile.info.json
The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile.jpg
The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile.mkv

I can't post mediainfo's output here because it exceeds the characters limit, but you can see it in github.

I also want to download the video/audio in the highest quality possible, with no quality loss.

youtube-dl downloads videos at the highest quality possible by default, but you can force this behavior using --format bestvideo+bestaudio/best.

Even though it's not YouTube, I did also want to download some of my udemy courses I've bought so I can watch them while I'm on a long road trip.

Please read the article Can I Download a Course to my Computer?:

By default, complete courses are not downloadable from a computer. We do this out of concerns for piracy.

Please note that you can always save courses for offline viewing on the Udemy mobile app. For information on how to download video lectures to your iOS mobile device, please click here. For steps on how to download videos for offline viewing on an Android device, click here.

I have ffmpeg installed, and I heard that you need this for lossless downloads from YouTube, but I'm not sure how to link it with youtube-dl.

youtube-dl uses avconv by default, but --prefer-ffmpeg let you use ffmpeg instead. Anyway, this option is not needed for "lossless downloads". In the example I provided, youtube-dl only used ffmpeg to merge all the downloaded formats into a single mkv file.

Solution 2:

To simply download the video, you can use this:

youtube-dl --all-subs "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYBok-XGsKM"

To select the video quality, you should first use the -F option to list the available formats.

youtube-dl -F "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYBok-XGsKM"

And this is the output for your video:

[youtube] KYBok-XGsKM: Downloading webpage
[youtube] KYBok-XGsKM: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] KYBok-XGsKM: Extracting video information
WARNING: unable to extract uploader nickname
[info] Available formats for KYBok-XGsKM:
format code  extension  resolution note
249          webm       audio only DASH audio   52k , opus @ 50k,  4.19MiB
250          webm       audio only DASH audio   75k , opus @ 70k, 5.42MiB
140          m4a        audio only DASH audio  129k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.2@128k, 10.59MiB
171          webm       audio only DASH audio  131k , vorbis@128k, 7.66MiB
251          webm       audio only DASH audio  135k , opus @160k, 9.58MiB
278          webm       256x144    144p   98k , webm container, vp9, 30fps, video only, 6.59MiB
160          mp4        256x144    144p  114k , avc1.4d400c, 15fps, video only, 9.04MiB
242          webm       426x240    240p  205k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 11.47MiB
133          mp4        426x240    240p  265k , avc1.4d4015, 30fps, video only, 20.11MiB
243          webm       640x360    360p  362k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 21.93MiB
134          mp4        640x360    360p  602k , avc1.4d401e, 30fps, video only, 20.42MiB
244          webm       854x480    480p  662k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 37.82MiB
135          mp4        854x480    480p 1020k , avc1.4d401f, 30fps, video only, 42.62MiB
247          webm       1280x720   720p 1353k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 81.53MiB
136          mp4        1280x720   720p 2013k , avc1.4d401f, 30fps, video only, 84.69MiB
137          mp4        1920x1080  1080p 2438k , avc1.640028, 30fps, video only, 157.71MiB
248          webm       1920x1080  1080p 2593k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 162.48MiB
264          mp4        2560x1440  1440p 6973k , avc1.640032, 30fps, video only, 459.58MiB
271          webm       2560x1440  1440p 7523k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 485.66MiB
313          webm       3840x2160  2160p 19991k , vp9, 30fps, video only, 1.34GiB
36           3gp        320x?      small , mp4v.20.3,  mp4a.40.2
17           3gp        176x144    small , mp4v.20.3,  mp4a.40.2@ 24k
43           webm       640x360    medium , vp8.0,  vorbis@128k
18           mp4        640x360    medium , avc1.42001E,  mp4a.40.2@ 96k
22           mp4        1280x720   hd720 , avc1.64001F,  mp4a.40.2@192k (best)

Here are some useful options for subtitles:

   --write-sub
          Write subtitle file

   --write-auto-sub
          Write automatically generated subtitle file (YouTube only)

   --all-subs
          Download all the available subtitles of the video

   --list-subs
          List all available subtitles for the video

And for thumbnails:

   --write-thumbnail
          Write thumbnail image to disk

   --write-all-thumbnails
          Write all thumbnail image formats to disk

   --list-thumbnails
          Simulate and list all available thumbnail formats

You can also find more information about the quality of video here