youtube-dl
You can download video and audio files for offline viewing from a variety of websites using youtube-dl. Be sure to install ffmpeg as well for tagging.
# Grab an HD MP4 (720p or the next best LARGER size).
#
youtube-dl \
--output "%(title)s (%(id)s).%(ext)s" \
--format "bestvideo[width<=1280][height>540][ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestvideo[width<=1920][height>720][ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best" \
--add-metadata "$URL"
# Grab the best quality video and audio. Will often get muxed into an MKV
# container rather than MP4, though sometimes you'll get something like
# WEBM.
#
youtube-dl \
--output "%(title)s (%(id)s).%(ext)s" \
--format "bestvideo+bestaudio" \
--add-metadata "$URL"
# Grab the best single format file less than 200 MB.
#
youtube-dl \
--output "%(title)s (%(id)s).%(ext)s" \
--format "best[filesize<200M]" \
--add-metadata "$URL"
Useful size specs:
| Name | Width | (Max) Height | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 480p | 854 | 480 | DVD quality |
| 540p | 960 | 540 | "Quarter HD", pretty uncommon (except on VHX) |
| 720p | 1280 | 720 | Often just called "HD" |
| 1080p | 1920 | 1080 | Often called "Full HD" |
Most of the time, you'll need a newer version of youtube-dl than is available in your distro's repos... Or that can be installed using pip. The easiest way to get do this is to install youtube-dl at the system level (to make sure that all the dependencies are present), and then to grab the latest youtube-dl source code from GitHub and build it in a Python virtual environment.
virtualenv youtube-dl
cd youtube-dl
. bin/activate
# Run `pip install youtube-dl` here if you DON'T have the package
# installed at the system level. This will pull in all necessary deps
git clone https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl.git
cd youtube-dl
make
# DO NO `make install` however! Instead, just run using ./youtube-dl.
youtube-dl
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youtube-dl