Pre-requesite

1. The yt-dlp library is installed on PC.
2. The ffmpeg library is installed on PC.

Download a Youtube video

1. Get the media available
   • Open a terminal at a suitable folder and issue the command below.
   • > yt-dlp -F <URL for the YT video>
   • for example: yt-dlp -F https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZyGYUMZAeg
   • This lists all video and audo files available for download. Each of these files has an ID.
2. Select the audio and video media
   • > yt-dlp -f <video_ID>+<audio_id> <URL for the YT video>

Download a Youtube Playlist

1. Get the playlist ID
   • Example for https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDzeHZWIZsTryvtXdMr6rPh4IDexB5NIA
   • the ID is PLDzeHZWIZsTryvtXdMr6rPh4IDexB5NIA
2. Open a terminal at a suitable folder and issue the command with options below.
   • the option -f bestvideo*+bestaudio  is to ensure best possible quality video and audio format is selected.
   • -F or --list-formats will list all the available formats, from which we can select the custom format by specifying index (eg: -f '399+599')
   • -o %(playlist_index)02d-%(title)s.%(ext)s  is to save the videos with two-digit index prefix.

yt-dlp "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRBClVey5BqwtEiRey4KILfmyDg6hOglw" --yes-playlist --format 'bestvideo*+bestaudio' --output "%(playlist_index)02d-%(title)s.%(ext)s"

Download a Youtube video as Song (MP3)

• Get the video ID vid, and set audio format, audio quality, extract section from timestamp 5:01 to 16:43
  • > yt-dlp -x --embed-thumbnail --audio-format mp3 --audio-quality 320k --download-sections "*5:01-16:43" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vid
  • more above the –-download-sections REGEX parameter:
    • Download only chapters that match the regular expression.
    • A "*" prefix denotes time-range instead of chapter. Negative timestamps are calculated from the end.
    • The "*from-url" can be used to download between the “start_time” and “end_time” extracted from the URL. Needs ffmpeg.
    • This option can be used multiple times to download multiple sections, e.g. --download-sections 10:15-inf" --download-sections "intro"

Download multiple YouTube videos from URLs in a text file

• The file links.txt contains the urls of the youtube videos, one video per line.
  • > yt-dlp --batch-file="links.txt" -f "bestvideo[height<=1080] [ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[height<=1080][ext=mp4]/best" --embed-thumbnail --output "%(title)s.%(ext)s"

Reference

1. Downloading YouTube Playlist in CLI using yt-dlp by Deepak Devanand
2. The Easiest Way to Download Songs from YouTube Videos by Marin Todorov