Upgrade youtube-dl To Get It Working Again [Download YouTube Videos Via Command Line]

YouTube keeps making changes to the website which breaks all YouTube download applications, including my favourite YouTube downloader called "youtube-dl". For this reason, we've backported the Maverick version for Ubuntu Karmic and Lucid users - and the updated version is available in the WebUpd8 PPA.

But before you install the latest youtube-dl, a little info on this amazing YouTube command line donwloader.

youtube-dl is a python script (comes in a .deb) for downloading videos from YouTube. The recent versions also support downloading videos from video.google.com, photobucket, dailymotion, and metacafe.

But it's not just fixing YouTube that's new in the latest youtube-dl. Here are some recent changes which are not in the Lucid version of youtube-dl:

• add preliminary support for Dailymotion videos
• support for WebM formats (vp8 + vorbis)
• support for youtu.be URLs
• add support for the "original" video format in YouTube
• add a --max-quality option

And a lot more.

I'm not sure, but you might have to add the Gstreamer PPA for WebM support.

To install the latest youtube-dl in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and 9.10 Karmic Koala (but I've only tested it in Lucid), run the following commands in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

You can also manually download the .deb files if you want.

Using youtube-dl is very easy. To download a YouTube video, use the following command:

youtube-dl YOUTUBE-URL

where YOUTUBE-URL is the exact link to the YouTube video, like this (just an example): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF14bWw1NKk

You can download all the available formats, like this:

youtube-dl --all-formats YOUTUBE-URL

For advanced options, type:

youtube-dl --help

If you're not using Ubuntu, you can grab the Python script from HERE.