Wishlist: --download-missing

[etnoy]

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Description of your issue, suggested solution and other information

I am extremely grateful for youtube-dl and it integrates extremely well into my Plex setup that allows me to watch long YouTube playlists via offline Plex syncing on my devices.

I have read the documentation and tried to work this feature out, but as far as I know, the following feature is not implemented: automatic downloading of missing playlist episodes.

The goal is to have youtube-dl being called from a cron script for each playlist that I am watching where I can make youtube-dl go through the playlist and download missing episodes (usually new episodes added at the end of the playlist). The script could then be called daily, which downloads episodes, and these episodes are then in turn synced by Plex to my mobile devices.

Strictly speaking, this feature already exists, but it hammers YouTube and appears to re-download the entire playlist. I believe that if I did this from cron, the excessive traffic would cause YT do block me in some way. Also, I am aware of --playlist-start, however I don't see a way to make a script know which number to give to youtube-dl.

The wish list is then
youtube-dl --download-missing

Please let me know if this can be done in some way already, or if already exists (but I can't find it). Thanks!

[yan12125]

--download-archive should fit your need.

[etnoy]

Thanks for replying quickly. I was not aware of this usage of download-archive, it was not obvious from the documentation. Is there a quick way to append all existing video ID:s of my downloaded videos, or should I go ahead and call youtube-dl again on all playlists I've downloaded so far (>1000 videos)? Thanks again!

[yan12125]

should I go ahead and call youtube-dl again on all playlists I've downloaded so far (>1000 videos)?

Unfortunately yes. You can also create an archive.txt manually. It's format is straightforward:
<site_name> <video_id>.

youtube BaW_jenozKc
youtube UxxajLWwzqY

[etnoy]

Awesome, thanks. I'll probably generate the archive file from a shell script. Keep up the good work!

[etnoy]

For future googlers who find this page: I used the following command to download all video id:s of my playlist:

youtube-dl --ignore-config -s --get-id <playlist> >> archive

and then I used my favorite text editor (vim) to add youtube to the beginning of each line. Worked like a charm!