YouTube Download Shell Script

by john

Reading through Maximum PC’s list of 50 skills every real geek should have I noticed ‘Downloading flash video’ from sites like YouTube was on the list. So, cunningly avoiding the many easy ways to do it, I decided to put together a quick shell script, after all it can’t be that hard, you just need to look at the HTTP headers…

Well it turns out YouTube don’t make it that easy, but after a bit of prodding I ended up with something that will at least save a YouTube video to an flv file:

View/download youtube.sh

This will probably only work till the YouTube site changes, so if it’s broken blame them and not my shoddy coding ;)

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3 Comments

  1. Excellent script. Simple, yet not an insane “one-liner” with no error checking.

    #1 rarecactus

  2. I can’t play result.flv in any media player (totem, wvlc, mplayer, kmplayer) what to do now? I’m using Mandriva2007.Thanks b4.
    This is it: can’t find audio codex 0×0…

    #2 newbie

  3. I’ve only used VLC, but it works fine with Debian Lenny. You could perhaps try testing with an flv file from http://www.mediacollege.com/adobe/flash/video/tutorial/example-flv.html

    Also check you are able to play mp3s in your media player as I think that’s the audio codec used.

    #3 john

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