How to download Youtube videos on Windows with youtube-dl and start using the command line

This is how the normal flow works when you want to run a specific program that requires another program. Think about Flash, Games, Java.. You need to install other pieces of software to support then. For example for the youtube-dl you would also need to download Python and other dependencies.

Most people prefer User Interfaces because it looks easier, a few clicks and you’re done. But the command-line is a very powerful ally. The good guys at youtube-dl provided us with a direct executable that has everything it needs to work directly out of the box without you requiring to install python and other dependencies to make it work.

Go ahead and download it from https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl.exe

For the purpose of our tutorial you will want to save the executable to your Desktop. In normal circumstances I would advise you to create a special folder and save it there but to keep it simple we’ll use the desktop. You can also create a special folder on the desktop or anywhere else and save it there.

Then when it’s done downloading you need to open a Windows Command line, you can do that in multiple ways Either with a key combination Windows+R and then when a new window pops up you type cmd Or you click the start button and type cmd and open it

You’ll see a black console looking something like this:

There are a few things to notice. Your current directory is your username’s home directory. Mine’s residing on the C: partition. You can then type cd Desktop which will change the directory to Desktop. Then you can type youtube-dl.exe --help to get a list of command modifiers you can give to the youtube-dl program.

For our purpose we’ll download the full game soundtrack of Grim Fandango from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km6bLtiSSq4

You can now download any youtube video using. It usually saves the video in mp4 format.

To download audio only use the following command

But notice you''ll get an error (unless you already the required libraries installed)

If you want to download audio or encode the download in other types of formats you actually need to install ffmpeg

Before we can start enjoying the conversion functionality of youtube-dl we need to install ffmpeg wich is a very nifty powerful tool which encodes audio-video in the commandline as well. Youtube-dl uses it to encode audio-video without you noticing it. You can skip this step if you only want to download the .mp4

Download ffmpeg static builds from https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/ Then unzip it into C:\\ and you’ll notice a very long name, rename the folder to ffmpeg.

In the commandline you’d use ffmpeg by always providing the full path, type the following to view the codecs available

What we actually want is to just use ffmpeg everywhere we are.

To acheive that we need to set the path variable (you can type path in the cmd to what it contains). NOTE that the following command will truncate (eliminate) all other path functions from your path.

IF you want to set the path in a safe way using : http://adaptivesamples.com/how-to-install-ffmpeg-on-windows/

Or you can copy the contents from the ffmpeg\\bin folder to C:\\windows and you can save a lot of time and issues. Note, you need to be admin..

Now run this again and wait untill it encodes it to mp3

Magic stuff happened! We now have a mp3!

Some will say "but your blog is about Linux.. and you’re going Windows??" Yes.. It’s about Linux, and I want all windows users to start using Linux. Linux is much easier.. It’s faster. It’s much more customisable.. It’s the thing your grandma should be using so you don’t have to reinstall her pc every 1 month.

But warning, Linux is addicting!

Well, you can easily download it on Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint by just typing the following:

Which will take care of downloading the program for you along with any dependencies.

You can then use the youtube-dl commandline anywhere you would like to download and save the

Grim Fandango is a very nice tune, if you like the tune consider helping the developers out by buying the game including the full orchestrated tune ffrom https://www.humblebundle.com/store/grim-fandango-remastered

If there are enough requests in the future I might do the following