yttool

A tool for extracting info from youtube:

• print all comments for a video
• print a video's description + info
• print all subtitles for a video
• print out an entire livechat replay.
• list all items in a playlist
• list all videos for a channel or user
• list all video's matching a query

install

You can install this from the official python repository using pip:

pip3 install youtube-tool

This will add a command yttool to your python binaries directory, and probably also to your search path. So you can run this like:

yttool ....arguments....

Note: depending on your local python installation(s), you may have to type one of pip, pip3, or maybe even: pip3.8.

You can also 'install' this by executing the yttool.py file directly from the source directory:

python3 yttool.py  ....arguments...

requirements

This script needs python 3.8 or later to run. The python3.8 specific feature I am using is the new := walrus operator.

usage

list all subtitles attached to a video.

This will output the subtitles in all available languages.

yttool --subtitles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJOuzqu3MUQ

Or list the subtitles prefixed with timestamps

yttool -v --subtitles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJOuzqu3MUQ

You can also extract the subtitles in a format suitable for creating .srt subtitle files:

yttool --srt --subtitles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJOuzqu3MUQ

Or you can filter by language, for example only output the english subtitles:

yttool --language en --subtitles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xY06PT5JDE

Or only output the automatically generated subtitles:

yttool --language asr --subtitles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xY06PT5JDE

comments

List all the comments for this Numberphile video:

yttool --comments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJOuzqu3MUQ

livechat replay

Print out an entire livechat replay:

yttool --replay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE0u_jIDh0E

follow an active livechat

Note: this does not yet work!

Print messages from a livechat as they come:

yttool --livechat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEIk7gwjgIM

list a playlist contents.

List all the video's contained in this System of a Down playlist:

yttool --playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSKnqXUHTaSdXuK8Z2d-hXLFtJbRZwPtJ

The output will look like this:

CSvFpBOe8eY - System Of A Down - Chop Suey! (Official Video)
zUzd9KyIDrM - System Of A Down - B.Y.O.B. (Official Video)
L-iepu3EtyE - System Of A Down - Aerials (Official Video)
iywaBOMvYLI - System Of A Down - Toxicity (Official Video)
DnGdoEa1tPg - System Of A Down - Lonely Day (Official Video)
LoheCz4t2xc - System Of A Down - Hypnotize (Official Video)
5vBGOrI6yBk - System Of A Down - Sugar (Official Video)
SqZNMvIEHhs - System Of A Down - Spiders (Official Video)
ENBv2i88g6Y - System Of A Down - Question! (Official Video)
bE2r7r7VVic - System Of A Down - Boom! (Official Video)
F46r-_jPPHY - System Of A Down - War? (Official Video)

The first 11 characters are the video id, you can load the corresponding video by typing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vBGOrI6yBk in your browser's URL bar.

Or list all video's from a channel:

yttool -l https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoxcjq-8xIDTYp3uz647V5A

Or when you don't know the channelid, you can get the same with the username:

yttool -l https://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile

list query results

This:

yttool -q somequery

Will list first couple of the video's matching that query.

Just the id's

You can also call yttool with only the video id as an argument:

yttool --info CSvFpBOe8eY

How to use with a proxy?

For example if you would like to use TOR, you would do this:

yttool --proxy socks5://localhost:9050 --info https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll-_LV9U1tA

Note that setting a socks proxy via the https_proxy environment variable does NOT work very well with python's urllib library.

How does it work?

This script does not use the official youtube API, instead, it uses youtube's internal api, which is what is used on the youtube website itself. This does mean there is no guarantee that this script will keep working without maintenance. Youtube will keep changing the way it works internally. So I will need to keep updating this script.

The advantage of using the internal API, is that there are apparently no limits to how many requests you can do. And you don't have to bother with any kind of registration.

These are the main internal api urls I am using:

• comments: https://www.youtube.com/comment_service_ajax
• livechat: https://www.youtube.com/live_chat_replay/get_live_chat_replay
• search: https://www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/search
• playlists: https://www.youtube.com/browse_ajax

Also, you can get youtube to respond with json instead of html by adding a &pbj=1 argument to most urls, and add http headers: x-youtube-client-name: 1 and x-youtube-client-version: 2.20200603.01.00 to your request. Also the user-agent header needs to be of the right format, see my script for a working example.

Then, for search you need to add a innertubeapikey. Which I have currently hardcoded in my script, as i did with the client-version. A future improvement would be to automatically extract these from the current youtube front page.

Note about the structure of youtube video id's

Youtube's id's are structured in several ways:

A videoid is 11 characters long, when decoded using base64, this results in exactly 8 bytes. The last character of a videoid can only be: 048AEIMQUYcgkosw --> 10x6+4 = 64 bits

A playlist id is either 24 or 34 characters long, and has the following format:

id's containing a 'playlist' id.

• "PL" or "EC" -- custom playlist, or educational playlist.
• "BP" and "SP" also seem to have some kind of function.
• playlistid can be:
  • either 32 base64 characters --> either a 6x32 = 192 bits
  • or or 16 hex characters --> either a 16x4 = 64 bits
• www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL
• www.youtube.com/course?list=EC
  • no longer works very well, the layout of the course page is broken, with lots of overlapping text.

id's containing a channel id

A channel-id is 22 base64 characters, with the last character one of: AQgw, so this decodes to 21x6+2 = 128 bits

• "UC" -- user channel

  • www.youtube.com/channel/UC

• "PU" -- popular uploads playlist

  • quick way to load: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxxxx&list=PU

• "UU" -- user uploads playlist

  • quick way to load: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxxxx&list=UU

• "LL" -- liked video's for user

  • quick way to load: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxxxx&list=LL
  • or www.youtube.com/playlist?list=LL

• "FL" -- favorites

  • www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxxxx&list=FL

• "RDCMUC" -- mix for channel

  • www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxxxx&list=RDCMUC

• prefixes CL, EL, MQ, TT, WL also seem to have a special meaning

Other playlist types

These take

• "TLGG<22chars>" -- temporary list - redir from watch_videos

  • When decoded, the last 8 bytes are digits for the "ddmmyyyy" date.

• "RDEM<22chars>" -- radio channel

  • 22chars is NOT a channel-id
  • www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxxxx&list=RDEM<22chars>

• "RD" -- mix for a specific video.

• "OLAK5uy_<33chars>" -- album playlist.

  • id's start with: klmn : 0b1001xx
  • id's ends with: AEIMQUYcgkosw048 --> 2 + 31x6 + 4 = 192 bits
  • www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_<33chars>

• "WL" -- 'watch later'

  • www.youtube.com/playlist?list=WL
  • www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxxxx&list=WL

• "UL" -- channel video mix

  • www.youtube.com/watch?v=<11charsvidid>&list=ULxxxxxxxxxxx
  • This works only when there are exactly 11 characters after 'UL'

• "LM" -- music.youtube likes

• "RDMM" -- music.youtube your mix

• "RDAMVM" -- music.youtube band mix

• "RDAO<22chars>"

• "RDAMPL" + prefix+playlistid

• "RDCLAK5uy_" + 33chars

• "RDTMAK5uy_" + 33chars

• prefixes EL, CL also seem to have a special meaning.

post id's

• 26 characters: Ug<17chars>4AaABCQ
  • id's start with [wxyz] : 0b1100xx
  • id's end with [BFJNRVZdhlptx159] : 0bxxxx01 -> 2 + 15*6 + 4 = 96 bits

Youtube url's

Domains:

youtu.be
youtube.com

UrlPath:

/watch?v=<videoid>&t=123s&list=<listid>
/v/<videoid>
/embed/<videoid>
/embed/videoseries?list=<playlistid>
/watch/<videoid>
/playlist?list=<playlistid>
/channel/<channelid>
/user/<username>
/watch_videos?video_ids=<videoid>,<videoid>,...

protoc

Some id's are base64 encoded protobuf packets, like: clickTrackingParams, continuation.

Research tool

I added a tool: ytdump.py, which i use to investigate youtube json dictionaries.

TODO

• DONE extract 'listid' from video links for playlist view.
• DONE list a channel's video's
• DONE list a user's video's
• handle radio links
• DONE extract live-chat comments
• Filter out duplicates from the livechat replay dump.
• DONE make my tool work with an actual live chat.
• DONE youtube search results.
• generalize the way continuations are used.
• add upload date and duration in the video lists.
• DONE automatically update the innertubeapikey and clientversion
• get original filename from studio.youtube.com/video//edit
• playlist editor / organiser
• community post listing
• list all on video messages, like cards, etc.
• list video markers, like in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2KdE-cYMJk
• list other videos from the same channel.
• add time, likes to comments
• repair the --replay option.

AUTHOR

Willem Hengeveld itsme@xs4all.nl