Download videos from Yle servers

Copyright (C) 2010-2017 Antti Ajanki, antti.ajanki@iki.fi

License: GPLv3

Homepage: https://aajanki.github.com/yle-dl/index-en.html

Source code: https://github.com/aajanki/yle-dl

yle-dl is a tool for downloading media files from the video streaming services of the Finnish national broadcasting company Yle: Yle Areena, Elävä Arkisto and Yle news.

Installation

Below are general installation instructions. See a separate page for specialized installation instructions for Debian, Ubuntu and Mac OS X.

1. Install the dependencies

• Python 2.7 or 3.5+
• pip
• pycrypto
• wget
• PHP interpreter
• PHP extensions: bcmath, curl, mcrypt and SimpleXML
• ffmpeg
• setuptools (when installing from the sources)

Optionally for certain types of streams:

• rtmpdump (for downloading Areena audio streams. Version 2.4 or newer, preferably the latest development version from the project homepage at https://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/)

Enable the PHP extensions by appending the following lines with the correct paths in the php.ini:

extension=/path/to/curl.so
extension=/path/to/mcrypt.so

2. Install yle-dl

Easier way (installation without downloading the source codes):

sudo pip install --upgrade yle-dl

Installation from sources. Download the sources and run the following on the source directory:

sudo python setup.py install

Installation with youtube-dl as an alternative downloader backend

By default, yle-dl downloads streams from Yle Areena using the included copy of AdobeHDS.php. If the default downloader does not work for some reason, it is possible to use youtube-dl instead. yle-dl will automatically fall back to youtube-dl if it is installed and downloading with AdobeHDS.php fails.

Follow the above installation instructions (except for the PHP and the PHP libraries) and additionally install youtube-dl:

• Mac OS X: brew install youtube-dl
• Debian/Ubuntu/other operating systems: pip install --upgrade youtube_dl

Using with libav instead of ffmpeg

yle-dl --ffmpeg avconv --ffprobe avprobe ...

Integration tests

python setup.py pytest

Some tests succeed only when run on a Finnish IP address because some Areena streams are available only in Finland. To skip those test, set the environment variable ENABLE_FINLAND_TESTS to 0:

export ENABLE_FINLAND_TESTS=0
python setup.py pytest

Packages for various distros

A list of available packages

Usage

yle-dl [options] URL

or

yle-dl [options] -i filename

where URL is the address of the Areena or Elävä arkisto web page where you would normally watch the video in a browser.

yle-dl options:

• -o filename Save stream to the named file

• -i filename Read input URLs to process from the named file, one URL per line

• --latestepisode Download the latest episodes

• --showurl Print the URL of the stream, don't download

• --showtitle Print stream title, don't download

• --showmetadata Print stream metadata as JSON

• --vfat Create Windows-compatible filenames

• --audiolang lang Select stream's audio language if available, lang = fin (default) or swe

• --sublang lang Download stream's subtitle language, lang = fin, swe, smi, none or all (default)

• --resolution res Maximum vertical resolution in pixels

• --maxbitrate br Maximum bitrate stream to download, integer in kB/s or "best" or "worst". Not all streams support limited bitrates.

• --rtmpdump path Set path to rtmpdump binary

• --adobehds cmd Set command for executing AdobeHDS.php script

• --postprocess cmd Execute a command cmd after a successful download. The command is called with the downloaded FLV file as the first parameter and subtitle files (if any) as the following parameters.

• --proxy uri Proxy for downloading stream manifests. Example: --proxy socks5://localhost:7777

• --destdir dir Save files to dir

• --pipe Dump stream to stdout for piping to media player. E.g. yle-dl --pipe URL | vlc -.

• --backend vals Downloaders that are tried until one of them succeeds (a comma-separated list). Possible values: adobehdsphp (download HDS streams using AdobeHDS.php), youtubedl (download HDS streams using youtube-dl).

• -V, --verbose Show verbose debug output

Type yle-dl --help to see the full list of options.

Any unrecognized options will be relayed to rtmpdump process (when downloading RTMP streams).

Firewall must allow outgoing traffic on ports 80 and 1935.

Examples

yle-dl https://areena.yle.fi/1-1544491 -o video.flv

yle-dl --backend youtubedl https://areena.yle.fi/1-1544491 -o video.flv

yle-dl http://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2010/10/28/studio-julmahuvi-roudasta-rospuuttoon

Playing in mplayer (or vlc and others) without downloading first:

yle-dl --pipe https://areena.yle.fi/1-2409251 | vlc --file-caching=10000 -

Executing a script to postprocess a downloaded video (see the example postprocessing script at scripts/muxmp4):

yle-dl --postprocess scripts/muxmp4 https://areena.yle.fi/1-1864726

Set default values for arguments using alias:

alias yle-dl-defaults="yle-dl --resolution 720p --destdir ~/videos"
yle-dl-defaults https://areena.yle.fi/1-1864726