YOUTUBE-DL(1)

NAME
youtube-dl - download videos from youtube.com

SYNOPSIS
  youtube-dl [options] url ...

DESCRIPTION
youtube-dl is a script to download videos from youtube.com.

Once it is installed in your system, you should be able to call it from the command line. Usage instructions are easy. Use youtube-dl followed by a video URL or identifier. As an example, consider:

  youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"

The video will be saved to the file "foobar.flv" in that example. Many YouTube.com videos are in Flash Video format and their extension would be "flv". Other videos are encoded in H.264 and these usually have the extension "mp4". In Linux and other unices, video players using a recent version of ffmpeg can play them. That includes MPlayer, VLC, xine, among others.

OPTIONS
youtube-dl accepts options in the following categories

-h, --help
    Print help text and exit.

-v, --version
    Print program version and exit.

-i, --ignore-errors
    Ignore errors during download and continue processing.

-r L, --rate-limit=L
    Limit the download speed to the specified maximum L (e.g., 50k or 44.6m).

-u UN, --username=UN
    Specify the youtube account username UN. Some videos require an account to be downloaded, mostly because they're flagged as mature content.

-p PW, --password=PW
    Like the username, specifies the account password to be PW.

-n, --netrc
    Get authentication data from the standard unix .netrc file on the user's home directory. The machine name is youtube in regarding this usage.

-f FMT, --format=FMT
    Specify the video format (quality) in which to download the video. Note that not all videos are available in all formats.

-b, --best-quality
    Download the best video quality available for the video(s) specified by the user.

-m, --mobile-version
    Synonymous to the option "-f 17", to download videos playable on some mobile phones.

-d, --high-def
    Synonymous to the option "-f 37", to download videos in HD quality (1080p).

-q, --quiet
    Activates quiet mode, avoiding many messages being written to the terminal.

-s, --simulate
    Simulate the operation, but do not download the video. Useful for testing.

-g, --get-url
    Simulate the operation, like quiet mode, but show the URL that would be used to download the video. Can be used with other download tools like wget or aria2c.

-e, --get-title
    Simulate the operation, like quiet mode, but show the title of the video that would be downloaded.

-t, --title
    Use the title of the video in the file name used to download the video.

-l, --literal
    Use the literal title of the video in file name used to download the video. Can contain "weird" characters that are not filtered like with the -t option.

-o TPL, --output=TPL
    Specify a template TPL for the names of the files to be created when they are downloaded. The default filename is video_id.flv. But you can also use the video title in the filename with the "-t" or "--title" option, or preserve the literal title in the filename with the "-l" or "--literal" option.

-a F, --batch-file=F
    Specify the name of a file containing URLs of videos to download from youtube in batch mode. The file must contain one URL per line.

-w, --no-overwrites
    Do no overwrite already existing files.

-c, --continue
    Resume partially downloaded files.

OUTPUT TEMPLATE
The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file names. The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a single file, like in youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv "http://some/video". However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced when downloading each video.

The special sequences have the format "%(NAME)s". To clarify, that's a percent symbol followed by a name in parenthesis, followed by a lowercase S. Allowed names are:

id  The sequence will be replaced by the video identifier.

url The sequence will be replaced by the video URL.

uploader
    The sequence will be replaced by the nickname of the person who uploaded the video.

title
    The sequence will be replaced by the literal video title.

stitle
    The sequence will be replaced by a simplified video title, restricted to alphanumeric characters and dashes.

ext The sequence will be replaced by the appropriate extension (like "flv" or "mp4").

epoch
    The sequence will be replaced by the Unix epoch when creating the file.

As you may have guessed, the default template is "%(id)s.%(ext)s". When some command line options are used, it's replaced by other templates like "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s". You can specify your own.

AUTHOR
youtube-dl was written by Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez and many contributors from all around the internet. This manpage was written by RogA~Xrio Brito <rbrito@users.sf.net>.