video_download.py

Description: GUI for downloading video URLs using yt_dlp library.

Author: Josh Buchbinder
Copyright 2024, Josh Buchbinder

General usage

video_download is a PySide6 (Qt) GUI wrapper around the yt_dlp Python library that can parse a text file containing a list of URLs or an HTML file of bookmarks exported from a browser and attempt to download the video in each URL. See yt-dlp documentation to see what video sites are supported.

Setup

After cloning this repository of code and entering the directory, follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have a recent version of Python 3 installed, at least version 3.10.

2. Optionally create and activate a venv virtual environment to contain the packages for this program:

python -m venv venv

On Windows:

venv\Scripts\activate

On *nix or Mac:

*nix $ source venv/bin/activate

3. Install requirements.txt:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

4. On some platforms, there may be additional dependencies required. On Ubuntu 22 for instance xcb-cursor0 is required for Qt:

sudo apt install libxcb-cursor0

Usage

To run the program, either launch Python 3 with the script as the argument or on some systems you may be able to run the program directly:

python ./video_download.py

./video_download.py

A single URL or a list of URLs can be specified. The URL list can either be a text file (.txt) with a list of URLs (lines beginning with # are ignored) or an HTML file (.html) of bookmarks exported from a browser.

Google "export bookmarks <browser name>" for detail on how to export bookmarks from your browser. Most browsers except for Safari (thanks Apple) use a common HTML file format so unlisted browsers are likely to be supported.

When processing an HTML file of bookmarks, if there are folders you will be allowed to choose which folder of URLs to download.

URL lists (html or txt files) can be dragged and dropped onto the window instead of typing or browsing for their their paths.

If Specify format is not checked, the best quality file that has audio and video will be downloaded. If no such format exists, the best audio only file will be merged with the best video only file. Checking this box and selecting Merge formats and selecting Best audio and Best video will result in the highest quality file available.

The "List formats" button can be used to list the available formats for a single URL. In Format selection you can specify Raw format string and enter the ID shown for a format to download that specific format.

ffmpeg is only required if you select format options that require post processing such as Merge formats.

Notes

Some sites do not include a video identifier in the page URL. Right click on the video window and there may be an option to Copy video URL.

Tested with browsers:
. Brave (Windows)
. Chrome (Windows)
. DuckDuckGo (Windows)
. Edge (Windows)
. Firefox (Windows)
. Opera (Windows)
. Safari (MacOS)
. Vivaldi (Windows)

All settings in the GUI are stored between executions including the window size.

Every site has a limited selection of file types, audio and video codecs. Use the List formats button available when Single URL is selecte at the top to view the available formats for a site based on any video URL.

The file progress bar does not work with some sites. This may be a limitation of the yt_dlp library.