Request for Youtube-dl command line assistance

[peteinoz]

Hey all,

I'm needing to download from a batch list of YouTube URLs, with the following criteria for the downloaded files:

- m4a (audio only - best quality, which YT-DL should default to of course)
- file name the same as YouTube title
- embedded thumbnail
- embedded YouTube description (in comments - and limited to the first 60 characters, if this can be done!)
- no _s replacing spaces in file names
- and NO skipping of items with identical titles - appending an extra number to the file name is fine

I'd be more than ecstatic to have a command line that fulfills all these requirements. The best I could come up with was

youtube-dl -c --extract-audio --audio-quality 0 --title --write-description --write-thumbnail --batch-file batchlist.txt

which grabbed the audio file, but saved the thumbnail and description as separate files without embedding them. I believe --embed-thumbnail is an acceptable command but --embed-description is not.

It shouldn't be a lot to ask of a Gui, but MediaHuman YouTube Downloader falls short (won't write metadata), TVDownloader only saves as mp3 and falls over with metadata also, Tartube and Videomass write the metadata beautifully with the full file description in "comments" but want to skip identically-named files and also for some reason replace spaces in file names with underscores... and I can't work out from Readme on GitHub what commands are required for description/metadata inclusion (and not to skip or overwrite files with identical titles)... I've looked very hard for the answers.

I'm using Windows 10 so didn't try any other Gui options.

I am very thankful to whoever can help.

EDIT: I tried DLG as well.

[codehound]

Hey all,


- m4a (audio only - best quality, which YT-DL should default to of course)

** Don't take that for granted using --audio-quality 0 in your syntax. If you want m4a - specify it.

Maybe better off with ffmpeg. But I'm on my mobile at the moment will look tomorrow unless someone beats me to it.

[peteinoz]

Hey all,


- m4a (audio only - best quality, which YT-DL should default to of course)

** Don't take that for granted using --audio-quality 0 in your syntax. If you want m4a - specify it.

Maybe better off with ffmpeg. But I'm on my mobile at the moment will look tomorrow unless someone beats me to it.

I have ffmpeg and its associates in the same folder as YouTube-dl for command line purposes.

[peteinoz]

To simplify it (and sorry to bump my own thread)... but all I really need is a command to embed a thumbnail and the YouTube description in the file.

Some of the GUIs like Tartube require Atomic Parsley to be installed for those functions, I've got it but I don't know how to call upon it in a command line.

Oh also... I need to download the entire batch and not skip anything in the list (even identically named files).

Thank you everyone!

[codehound]

To simplify it (and sorry to bump my own thread)... but all I really need is a command to embed a thumbnail and the YouTube description in the file.

Some of the GUIs like Tartube require Atomic Parsley to be installed for those functions, I've got it but I don't know how to call upon it in a command line.

Oh also... I need to download the entire batch and not skip anything in the list (even identically named files).

Thank you everyone!

Download atomic-parsley.zip https://mega.nz/file/aGxxUSjY#lQJFYJAB6g3caR21IvPtyNy59sx2vMoqAaQ1V-Wbh40
Extract....and just put AtomicParsley.exe in same folder as youtube-dl

The basic syntax for a single file download (tested) is:

youtube-dl -f m4a --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxxxx"

Append your batch script to the syntax. (There are cleverer people on here that can help you with batch script editing than me.)

[peteinoz]

Download atomic-parsley.zip https://mega.nz/file/aGxxUSjY#lQJFYJAB6g3caR21IvPtyNy59sx2vMoqAaQ1V-Wbh40
Extract....and just put AtomicParsley.exe in same folder as youtube-dl

The basic syntax for a single file download (tested) is:

youtube-dl -f m4a --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxxxx"

Append your batch script to the syntax. (There are cleverer people on here that can help you with batch script editing than me.)

Thanks codehound! Not sure how I missed "--add-metadata" on GitHub. :/ That works great.

To avoid putting the 11-character YT ID (from the URL) in the file name I've added -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s"

As opposed to your command line though, identically named titles from the batchlist are now skipped - the filenames aren't unique and Youtube-dl says "[filename] has already been downloaded". Which isn't correct... they just have the same name. And Youtube-dl actually knows this. It detects the different durations but won't see past the titles to detect that they are different files.

I guess that's what you meant by "batch script editing"?

So here's my command line:

youtube-dl -f m4a --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" --batch-file batchlist.txt

As an example, if the batchlist.txt file contains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r3gf6SnIiA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHb3xCmJfmY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=braQeLkJUvE

only the first item will be downloaded. If I can get it to download all the titles, I'm good to go.

Thanks for your help so far!

[LZAA]

'batch script' :

youtube-dl -f m4a --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r3gf6SnIiA -o 1.mp4
youtube-dl -f m4a --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHb3xCmJfmY -o 2.mp4
youtube-dl -f m4a --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=braQeLkJUvE -o 3.mp4

[peteinoz]

'batch script' :

youtube-dl -f m4a --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r3gf6SnIiA -o 1.mp4
youtube-dl -f m4a --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHb3xCmJfmY -o 2.mp4
youtube-dl -f m4a --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=braQeLkJUvE -o 3.mp4

Hi LZAA and thank you,

Unfortunately that will only work if I already know and can identify the identically-named titles. Those were just an example, the actual batch list is long and consists only of YouTube addresses, and I know for a fact that some titles appear up to seven times.

What I think I need is a command (or argument?) which will cause Youtube-dl to identify a duplicate title in the folder (as it does now) but just go ahead and download it anyway, with a tag or number in brackets, etc., added to the title.

I hold out hope that this is possible. Or something that has the same effect - that is, downloading everything in the list and not giving the "file already downloaded" message.