
Youtube-dlc – Download videos from YouTube or other video platforms - theidel
https://github.com/blackjack4494/youtube-dlc
======
outadoc
Isn’t youtube-dl already updated all the time to keep up with scraping
changes? I don’t understand why this would claim to be more maintained?

~~~
capableweb
Seems to have been originally spawned from this discussion: "Youtube-dl is
dying?" [https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
dl/issues/26462](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/26462) citing
many PRs are not getting merged.

Anecdote: youtube-dl still works for all the sites I'm using it for.

~~~
Arcorann
I use youtube-dl to download from Nico Nico Douga, which means having to
restart the download every few minutes because the program doesn't send
heartbeat requests. There's been a PR to fix this for a couple of years now
[1], and a more recent updated PR to add encrypted video support [2], both of
which are still open. Meanwhile, the corresponding PR on youtube-dlc [3] is
actively being looked at.

[1] [https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
dl/pull/18230](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/18230)

[2] [https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-
dl/pull/23824](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/23824)

[3] [https://github.com/blackjack4494/youtube-
dlc/pull/55](https://github.com/blackjack4494/youtube-dlc/pull/55)

~~~
raziel2p
It makes sense that it's easier to give <100 PRs attention than 25k+. If the
DLC project grows, you can't know if the same won't happen again.

Not saying forks should never happen - streamlink and KeepassXC are examples
of great forks off the top of my mind - but you can't judge just on anecdotal
stale PRs.

~~~
masklinn
> It makes sense that it's easier to give <100 PRs attention than 25k+.

ydl has 700 open PRs, not 25k+. ydl hasn't had 25k+ PRs in its lifetime
either, it's had 4k: GH issues and PRs are the same object, so the sequence is
shared.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Doesn't change the point. All of the fork's 55 PRs except 2 and most of the
issues were made by the forker himself as well.

It's not like the forker inherited all the open issues/PRs, they just dropped
them all.

Getting popular and having the masses leave a bunch of issues/PRs is hard.
Reviewing code is hard and takes more expertise than writing it. A lot harder
than reviewing your own PRs on a motivated (for now) fork.

~~~
yorwba
> It's not like the forker inherited all the open issues/PRs, they just
> dropped them all.

That's wrong, most of the recent commits in the fork are merging branches from
a lot of other repos. GitHub doesn't have a mechanism for inheriting a
project's pull requests when you fork, but that doesn't mean they're
automatically "dropped", since you can still merge the corresponding branch.

[https://github.com/blackjack4494/youtube-
dlc/commits/master](https://github.com/blackjack4494/youtube-
dlc/commits/master)

------
dannyw
Fantastic. This is the beauty of open source. `youtube-dl` has had quite a
number of breaking issues, where fully working PRs were raised and tested but
not merged for weeks and with no communication.

I am glad to see `youtube-dlc`. Please, support the self updater as well (if
it is not supported already). For my archival servers, I have a cron job that
updates every day, I hope I can do that with youtube-dlc too.

~~~
theidel
Yes that is exact one of the reasons why I created this fork. The self updater
should hopefully work in a future release. To be honest I haven't dealt with
that yet. But feel free to open an issue so it's on my TODO-list.

------
dewey
YouTube-dl as a name is already confusing enough because it works for so many
sites and YouTube is just one of them. Why complicate it even further in your
fork by renaming it to YouTube-dlc (The "c" stands for community I guess) when
dlc already stands for so many other things.

~~~
theon144
I assume it's going to be hard enough for the community to know about this
fork in the first place, signaling direct continuity is definitely a reason to
name the fork so similarly.

Besides, Mozilla has nothing to do with Mosaic, XBMC had nothing to do with
Xbox for years...

~~~
_underfl0w_
Incidentally, XBMC has since rebranded as "Kodi" a fee years back.

------
kairumination0
As a casual end user of youtube-dl, I find that as long as I keep it up-to-
date it is highly reliable and meets all my needs on every O.S.

~~~
mercer
I built a web app that is basically a wrapper around youtube-dl. By default it
downloads and audio version that I can then just open with VLC on my Android
phone and listen to in the background.

It's incredible how many links I can just throw at it, and things just work.
Every once in a while I need to update the binary, but I can't blame that on
youtube-dl.

------
brailsafe
Seems like this is derived from a dissatisfaction with maintenance, but all
I'm seeing is that they're maintaining things just fine. Yes, there are a lot
of open PRs, but there are also quite a few merged, reviewed, and closed PRs.
While I do support forks in the spirit of FOSS, I disagree that YT-dl is being
poorly maintained and find that it continues to work well for my needs.

To the person who started the fork, what happened when you inquired about the
apparent problem via email?

~~~
theidel
I wrote an email to all three core maintainers (one of them even twice) and to
some of the inactive maintainers. There was no reply at all. However one
reacted on github where I addressed the maintaining issues but basically just
ignored it and all those who had similar concerns.

Well I am not the only one being frustrated about how things go. Especially
the lack of communication. It's basically non-existent. At least the PRs that
are merged are mostly either adult related or youtube. If your site is not
even known to the maintainer - good luck. That will never be merged tho it may
be one of the biggest sites in asia or so.

------
lbeltrame
The repository provides no reasons that brought the need for a fork. Can
someone provide additional information?

~~~
theidel
This is something I was going to address but wasn't my main focus in the
beginning. But I made another write-up on reddit
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ir8ic6/youtube...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ir8ic6/youtubedlc_an_active_fork_of_youtubedl/)

A tiny conversation about this here as well
[https://github.com/blackjack4494/youtube-
dlc/issues/56#issue...](https://github.com/blackjack4494/youtube-
dlc/issues/56#issuecomment-691440131)

~~~
mumblerino
This feels like when I review incomprehensible code on GitHub:

Mention. it. in. the. code.

Adding a comment here and on Reddit is useless if nobody else sees it.

Explaining why a fork exists should be the first thing people read, especially
how “everything is a fork” on GitHub.

~~~
theidel
I second that. But yes you are right it's my fault that I haven't done that
already. Be assured that I will include some information regarding what you
said in the readme.

------
zo1
I fully support this. I know it's hard for maintainers to do stuff for free
and people request too much at times. But it appears that the attitude of the
original maintainers of this project are actively "hostile" and they're not
willing to accept the help from additional maintainers that have contributed
fixes and testing. So a fork was in order, for sure. And from the look of the
comments on the issues on the fork, it seems that people are happy with the
continuity and effort that is being put into the fork.

Open source can be downright hostile and unpleasant at times, so I can
definitely understand the frustration. All sorts of shenanigans happen
constantly.

~~~
theidel
Yes it's stressing and time demanding. But you are absolutely right about how
the maintainers treat other people. At least it is open source. There are
quite some closed-source projects that ran into troubles and basically
disappeared. I am not sure how they will react since the fork gained some
attention now. However it's not my intention to let them look bad in any kind
or act like I am better. All I want is a working solution where contributions
by the community are acknowledged. But my attempt to openly point that out
(issue youtube-dl dying?) basically got ignored and closed.

------
kzrdude
Youtube-dl seems to be widely used behind the scenes, for example in Mpv,
right? This wasn't obvious from using mpv.

~~~
liability
Yes mpv uses youtube-dl via the builtin ytdl_hook.lua script.

[https://github.com/mpv-
player/mpv/blob/master/player/lua/ytd...](https://github.com/mpv-
player/mpv/blob/master/player/lua/ytdl_hook.lua)

------
dxxvi
I'm having issues with youtube-dl and udemy (althought the Internet says it's
possible. If anyone has some tip, I'll be very grateful). Does this one work
with udemy?

~~~
ericol
Try Udeler [1]. For me it has worked flawlessly since I started using it.

[1] [https://github.com/FaisalUmair/udemy-downloader-
gui](https://github.com/FaisalUmair/udemy-downloader-gui)

------
rosstex
The main issue I've found with youtube-dl is that "best" quality doesn't
actually download the best video + audio in all cases, and might take a manual
override. Not sure if youtube-dlc fixes this.

~~~
theidel
Nope. Maybe there is someone with a fix which can be merged. So far most
people filter formats to their needs but that's not an option for basic users
I guess..

------
exabrial
The first rule of YouTube DL is you don't talk about YouTube DL

------
stjohnswarts
One of my favorite pieces of software :) . It definitely comes in handy when
you really need to get that video

------
ftjyefyjw
Windows Defender flags the exe as a Trojan.

------
0-_-0
A GUI-based alternative is JDownloader

~~~
trzeci
I was also using JDownloader mostly, but looks that this comment isn't
popular. Is there something about JDownloader that I'm missing?

~~~
user5994461
It's dodgy software. It got acquired and got some spyware/adware/toolbars
embedded. Don't trust.

Personally, I removed the older version I had, fearing it would auto upgrade
and auto install malware.

It's a download manager for shared hosting sites, mostly used for downloading
movies/shows/games. It can get videos from youtube, dailymotion and a hundred
sites but it's not the main purpose. Users are willing to try anything to get
their latest tv show, there is too much money in bundling adware to ignore.
The software was great once upon a time, then it got popular, eventually the
author sold out.

~~~
0-_-0
There are adware free installers you can find:

[https://jdownloader.org/jdownloader2](https://jdownloader.org/jdownloader2)

~~~
jccalhoun
nice. They kind of hide this from the main download link.

------
wodenokoto
Does curb geoblocking?

------
jzer0cool
Anyone know of an existing online version of this (or another website)?

~~~
theidel
there are actually quite a few that uses youtube-dl. So far I don't know if
anyone uses youtube-dlc. But I already got two messages that they want to
build a webapp/service using youtube-dlc.

------
noxer
One tool that does everything. Its literally backwards. It eventually always
results in one tool that's constantly broken. There should be a tool for each
site if there is a maintainer who actually cares about that site.

~~~
ldarby
This is misapplying the unix philosophy. There would be too much duplicated
functionality between different tools for different sites. It would be like
having different versions of /bin/ls for different file systems.

~~~
ldarby
To follow on, it's a valid point though. /bin/ls can handle different file
systems because many other separate people/projects are responsible for the
file system specific support (in the kernel).

Youtube-dl should be architected to allow many other people to own the site-
specific support (i.e. via a plugin system, with the main "distro" of yt-dl
including some popular plugins, which other people or themselves are
responsible for), if it was like that then probably this fork wouldn't be
necessary.

~~~
theidel
Yes that is a good point. The architecture is not fully suited to the current
situation. There is actually already a base structure so it would only need
the plugin system which pulls the missing extractors/downloader on the fly.
Tho I may see problems here when it comes to windows binaries.

Another advantage would be to easier maintain those extractors as well as all
issues that arise around specific ones. So no more thousands of issues
addressing different extractors in one project.

