[SOLVED] Best (firefox) youtube video downloader?

[Flemur]

Edit: solution: despite its bizarre GUI and poor feedback, "Video DownloadHelper" works the best.
Edit2: one of the other programs, without asking or even notifying, created a ~/Downloads directory with 5 sub-directories.

I had been using "Video DownloadHelper" for a long time, and although the new(ish) version seems to work, the GUI is very strange, so
- it's hard to select a given file type/size to download, and
- it's hard to tell what is downloading, and its download progress, and
- it doesn't put any file in the download directory until it's finished (probably copies from /tmp), a bad practice.
- it requires installation of an additional package.

I had also used youtube-dl-gui, but it quit working (or doing anything) a while back...would prefer something built-into the browser (firefox 60 in this case).

Thanks for any recommendations!

[phd21]

Hi Flemur,

There are other posts on this topic in this forum with good information. Since Firefox was updated to the newer versions and since Linux Mint 18.x there are some browser add-ons and applications that work differently, or not at all, or require installing other dependencies for them to work well.

1.) "YouTube-dl" and "Youtube-dlg" have always worked well for me and great for downloading training videos and other videos individually or an entire playlist. But because they have frequent updates, it is recommended to use a PPA for this. Can you give us a link that did not work for you with YouTube-DLG?

FYI: It could be my machine's setup, but I did notice when I searched for something like "best music videos 2018" and a video was playing, if I right-clicked to copy the video's URL web address and pasted that into YouTube-DLG, it did not work, or it would start to download all videos in that category. BUT, if I looked for the music video individually,picked a video, and then right-clicked the playing video to get URL web address for that video, it works perfectly?

YouTube-DL GUI 0.4 Ships With New User Interface, More [PPA] ~ Web Upd8: Ubuntu / Linux blog
http://www.webupd8.org/2017/08/youtube- ... -user.html

Code: Select all

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

Code: Select all

sudo apt update

Code: Select all

sudo apt install youtube-dl youtube-dlg rtmpdump

2.) The "Xtreme Download Manager" (XDM) is great for fast downloading all kinds of stuff including YouTube videos. You do not even need a browser open for this to work. Tip: logout and log back in or restart for this to work...

You Can Now Install Xtreme Download Manager In Any Linux Distribution Easily - NoobsLab
https://www.noobslab.com/2018/02/you-ca ... nload.html



Hope this helps ...

[chrisuk]

I'm a bit different (odd?)... I prefer to use SMTube to browse and play youtube a/v (I try not to run sites in Firefox that need scripts to function, especially ones that use Flash... unless I've no other choice... SMTube gives me another choice and doesn't need Flash), and if I want to download, then copy the link(s) to youtube-dl-gui.

Not much help to you, but neither have ever let me down.

[Hoser Rob]

I've always had good luck with clipgrab. It's a ppa install but at least it's from launchpad, and it works:

https://launchpad.net/~clipgrab-team/+a ... ubuntu/ppa

[kukamuumuka]

I use my own script. youtube-dl, xsel, zenity and xterm must be installed for using that script.
youtube-dl -> http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html

My script:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
video=$(xsel --clipboard)
zenity --question --text "youtube dl, xsel and xterm must be installed, so that script would working. If them are installed choose Yes and continue to download the video?"
if [ $? = 0 ];
then
xterm -e youtube-dl $video && zenity --info --text "Video downloaded!" && xdg-open $PWD
else exit 0
fi
exit 1

[Flemur]

1.) "YouTube-dl" and "Youtube-dlg" have always worked well for me. But because they have frequent updates, it is recommended to use a PPA for this. Can you give us a link that did not work for you with YouTube-DLG?

Hi thanks for answering, I'll check the rest later, but as for youtube-dl -

- the installation instructions are wrong:
https://github.com/MrS0m30n3/youtube-dl-gui

Change directory into youtube-dl-gui-0.4

There is no such directory and they left of "sudo" from "python setup.py install" - but it's pretty easy to guess what they meant. Shouldn't have to, though, it shows they're careless.

Code: Select all

$ youtube-dl-gui 

No messages of any kind, but here's what happens:

youtube-dlg.jpg

"Status Error". Plus there are several different .mp4 files there and there's no way I can see to select the size you want to download.

"Get command" gives:

Code: Select all

youtube-dl --newline -i -o "/mnt/DATA/download/%(title)s.%(ext)s" -f mp4 --ignore-config --hls-prefer-native "https://youtu.be/ftbWW_Bxbx8"

Running that from the command line gives these errors (not shown when running youtube-dlg):

Code: Select all

WARNING: Assuming --restrict-filenames since file system encoding cannot encode all characters. Set the LC_ALL environment variable to fix this.
[youtube] ftbWW_Bxbx8: Downloading webpage
ERROR: Unable to download webpage: <urlopen error [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:590)> (caused by URLError(SSLError(1, u'[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:590)'),))

I know how to fix that: youtube-dl --no-check-certificate (I do the same thing with wget).
So now the command-line returned from "Get Command" works, but youtube-dl-gui still only says "error".

[phd21]

Hi Flemur,

1.) Why not use the simple instructions for installing and keeping YouTube-DL apps updated that I gave you using the PPA versus the GitHub instructions? This is a safe PPA to use, but you can also use their Linux deb files from the PPA, but I do not think that will keep it updated like the PPA would. Since YouTube-DLG requires YouTube-DL, you must have both installed.

Linux Mint 18.x (Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial) direct download links
YouTube-DL
https://launchpad.net/~nilarimogard/+ar ... l0_all.deb

YouTube-DLG
https://launchpad.net/~nilarimogard/+ar ... l4_all.deb

2.) FYI: There is another application called "4K Video Downloader" that also works well.

4K Video Downloader | Free Video Downloader for PС, macOS and Linux
https://www.4kdownload.com/products/pro ... downloader


Hope this helps ...

[Flemur]

2.) The "Xtreme Download Manager" (XDM) is great for fast downloading all kinds of stuff including YouTube videos. You do not even need a browser open for this to work. Tip: logout and log back in or restart for this to work...

Heh. Running it before a reboot, it showed only two video formats at my test site (youtube.com/watch?v=ftbWW_Bxbx8), although there are about 10 or 12 different video files 'n' formats to download.

Also before rebooting, if I click the firefox xdman icon, I'd get a window with a "More formats" button, clicking it would say "pick a format from the ??" (it doesn't show up anymore, so I'm running from my memory) (the xdman window?) and there were no formats to pick.

After rebooting I got one format listed. Now, after trying again, none are shown and I can't get xdman to do anything, either thru terminal "xdman" or thru the firefox button - left-click just gives "Browser monitoring" checked or not.

The complexity and major shortcomings of xdman and youtube-dl make me think that maybe I really belong on the short bus, but jeez, I've never seen such kludgey software to accomplish such a simple task (except for the freedesktop mime implementation!):
-- for a given website, list the video files/formats/sizes available to download
-- select file(s) to download.
-- download them and show the progress of the downloads.

But thanks again...

[Flemur]

Why not use the simple instructions for installing and keeping YouTube-DL apps updated that I gave you using the PPA versus the GitHub instructions?

I don't want to use it because of it's shortcomings: there are 4 different .mp4 files (plus MKV, 3GPP and WEBM) at that youtube site (ftbWW_Bxbx8), but youtube-dl-gui gives one option of "mp4".

[phd21]

Hi Flemur,

1.) YouTube-DL and YouTube-DLG. I updated my last reply on this. YouTube-DLG has various options you can configure, see screenshots, but it will only download video and audio formats that the video provides; meaning I cannot download a 4k resolution video if the video is only available in 720p resolution. I did notice that it can be updated through its application.


2.) I am still learning the new excellent "XDM 2018" fast downloader application and its browsers add-ons. I used the script instructions from the link to install it, then I add it to my startup applications, and reboot afterwards. You can just right-click its icon or run it from the menu, or using a browser add-on. When I first run it, it asks to install the various browser add-ons, and there are some excellent options including under Advanced options for tray icon. It can work even without adding the browser add-ons using its desktop program or system tray icon. You just right-click XDM icon, select download video, or batch download for multiple videos, paste the video's URL address, select find, pick the format you want, and click download, pretty simple and it works.

3.) I use the Slimjet browser most of the time which already has a built-in video download option, and a super fast "turbo Download" option, among many other options. But, its video download options do not provide all the possible video formats that XDM, or YoutTube-DL and DLG, or 4K Video Download, provide, but usually enough for what I wanted. I can always use one of the other video and audio download options if I want to.


Hope this helps ...

YouTube-DLG_Options1.jpg

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YouTube-DLG_Options2.jpg

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XDM from system tray- Screenshot 1

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XDM from system tray- Screenshot 2

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XDM from system tray- Screenshot 3