So, what's the situation with youtube-dl? How do I get it working? As a separate question, how else can I download something off youtube?
I guess last resort I'll have to dig into the python to figure out why that regex is failing and what else I can do about it, but that's not sustainable.
[1] if anyone is curious, just discovered this from HN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNOu-SEacNU&list=PLDcUM9US4XdPz-KxHM4XHt7uUVGWWVSus&index=5
Man google sucks.
Glad to hear you found a newer version!
I've been having more success with JDownloader2.
I don't mind paying for ad-free content.
Install something with apt, run into an issue... Oh, the version is ancient, and its fixed in official releases.
Then my options are:
- Fight with apt/.deb packaging and try to roll it forward, maybe breaking my system.
- Figure out how to compile it from source, and manually integrate it until its kinda like the system package.
Due to its nature something like youtube-dl needs to be constantly updated, as it's scraping websites that are constantly changing. So best to install it through other mechanisms like pip instead.
$ wget https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp && chmod +x yt-dlp && mv yt-dlp "$HOME/bin/"
(actually this command is in my "install script" that i run when i install a new distro)when something doesn't work, i run `yt-dlp -U` and 8 times out of 10 it automatically upgrades itself to a new version with the fix, if it still doesn't work i wait a few days and usually the fix arrives :)
note: `$HOME/bin` comes first in my `$PATH` so that programs like `mpv` always uses the newer version of `yt-dlp` and not the obsolete version installed by the package manager.
I recommend using a frontend: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedl/wiki/info-guis/#wiki_gui.... GUIs can be better in this situation since they show you all the cmd line options like -embed-metadata, -embed-chapters, and show you all the resolutions you can download at, I would really checkout a frontend if you plan to download multiple files or a playlist
`docker run -it --name ubuntu-mantic -v path/to/your/videodir/:/VideosDir ubuntu:mantic /bin/bash`
Install stuff needed on the container, typically curl python3 etc and the install from GitHub: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation
and you're good to go. I've honestly found this easier than fighting with my host system and constantly reinstalling broken versions etc.
Also YouTube has been doing some changes lately on the the player and a lot of the tools fail to download audio or video.
For example, in the last couple of weeks there have been some issues with a redirect to a 'consent page' : https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/32499