[Tutorial] Downloading Music/Videos from the net

[griimnak]

In this day and age, videos are scrubbed from the net so fast that it's becoming increasingly necessary to download/save them.
Unfortunately with most large scale sites, it's not as simple as just finding an mp4 link and hitting CTRL+S to save it.

In this thread, I'll share a few personal tricks and tools I use to download videos and music from various sources around the internet.


The big sites
Ever use youtube-dl before?
Well these days, there's a more efficient and active fork called YT-DLP which you can grab

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.
This will cover most mainstream social media sites including but not limited to, youtube, twitter, tiktok, bitchute, vimeo.

Usage:
Firstly, I suggest reading through

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for options that suit your preferences.

Basic usage:
This will download a video in it's original format.

$ yt-dlp 'videourl'

My preferred usage:
This will attempt to download the video in the best quality offered if available, and merge the final output into an mp4 file.
(Demonstrating with a random tiktok link)

$ yt-dlp --format "bestvideo+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestvideo+bestaudio/best" --merge-output-format mp4 --output testvid.%(ext)s 'https://www.tiktok.com/@nastyatyman/video/7071925639011503361?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1'

.mp4 and m3u8/.ts
Moving on, what about sites that yt-dlp doesn't cover?

Most sites delivering content themselves today deliver them via raw mp4 or .m3u8/.ts stream.
All we need is browser devtools and ffmpeg which you can grab here:

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In this example, I'll be using a random CNN video.
First step, find the m3u8 steam master url in devtools:

Spoiler: Screenshot

Once you have the url, just paste it into ffmpeg as shown below.

My preferred usage:

$ ffmpeg -i 'https://clips-media-lln.warnermediacdn.com/cnn/clips/2022-03/714523-b746d3ba589a40489a9ecb011d1f3612/ts/media-1/stream.m3u8' -codec copy desiredfilename.mp4

voila.

Wrapping up
I wrote a crappy lil wrapper that I personally use for mp3 and mp4 conversion with thumbnail embedding, so I'll leave it here if anyone finds use in it.

Spoiler: Python

import os
import time

print('''                      __       __   ___ 
                    /'__`\    /\ \ /\_ \
   ___ ___   _____ /\_\_\ \   \_\ \\\//\ \ 
 /' __` __`\/\ '__`\/_/_\_\_  /'_` \ \ \ \
 /\ \/\ \/\ \ \ \_\ \/\ \_\ \/\ \_\ \ \_\ \_
 \ \_\ \_\ \_\ \ ,__/\ \____/\ \___,_\/\____\
  \/_/\/_/\/_/\ \ \/  \/___/  \/__,_ /\/____/
       mp3dl   \ \_\  youtube-dl wrapper script for
                \/_/         mp3 conversion.
''')

mode = input('Choose mode: "music" or "video": ')
url = None

if mode == 'video':
    while True:
        url = input('[viddl] Paste YouTube, Twitter, Tiktok, Anime or Bitchute video url: ')
        os.system('yt-dlp --retries infinite --format "bestvideo+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestvideo+bestaudio/best" --merge-output-format mp4 "{}" --embed-thumbnail --postprocessor-args "-id3v2_version 3" -o videos/{}.%(ext)s'.format(url, time.time()))

elif mode == 'music':
    while True:
        url = input('[mp3dl] Paste YouTube or Soundcloud url: ')
        os.system('yt-dlp --sleep-interval 1 -ciw --retries infinite -f bestaudio "{}" --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 --embed-thumbnail --postprocessor-args "-id3v2_version 3" -o music/%(title)s.%(ext)s'.format(url))

else:
    exit('{} is not a valid mode, type "music" or "video"'

Hopefully this helps you in this digital age of information.
If you have anything to add to this post, feel free to leave a reply and I'll be sure to add edit it in, cheers!

 

[Macemore]

Nice writeup, thanks! My question is this superior to using a free browser plugin to save the video? I archive things instinctively and just use a browser plugin that works for most sites.

 

[griimnak]

Nice writeup, thanks! My question is this superior to using a free browser plugin to save the video? I archive things instinctively and just use a browser plugin that works for most sites.

Thanks man and yeah, I've tried a few extentions/gui apps myself but I personally feel like the quality & control doing it this way is better. I'm pretty picky and want everything to have thumbnails embedded and be in mp4 format, the yt-dlp options satisfy that need easily.

When I download albums from music.youtube.com I use:

--sleep-interval 1 -ciw --retries infinite -f bestaudio --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 --embed-thumbnail --postprocessor-args "-id3v2_version 3"

When I download HD video content I use:

--format "bestvideo+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestvideo+bestaudio/best" --merge-output-format mp4 --embed-thumbnail --postprocessor-args "-id3v2_version 3"

 

[Macemore]

Thanks man and yeah, I've tried a few extentions/gui apps myself but I personally feel like the quality & control doing it this way is better. I'm pretty picky and want everything to have thumbnails embedded and be in mp4 format, the yt-dlp options satisfy that need easily.

When I download albums from music.youtube.com I use:

--sleep-interval 1 -ciw --retries infinite -f bestaudio --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 --embed-thumbnail --postprocessor-args "-id3v2_version 3"

When I download HD video content I use:

--format "bestvideo+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestvideo+bestaudio/best" --merge-output-format mp4 --embed-thumbnail --postprocessor-args "-id3v2_version 3"

Thanks dude this is awesome! Sounds like you're doing it the right way, especially with embedded thumbnails.

 

[DDDDec]

thanks!!! haha i do the same by using extensions, will try this way out so i can get thumbnails for when i upload them.

 

[TesoMayn]

I prefer using

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over just ffmpeg, as it has support for many sites, so you don't need to search for the HLS URL, and if you need to, you use use hls:// or hlsvarient:// (replace the http(s)://)

 

[Ceto]

Would be better in Node.js <-- My opinion