[conspire] YouTube downloading software (was: get back to me first)

[Rick Moen]

I should also acknowledge Micah Lee's really useful posting on this
subject.  Thanks, Micah!

This is my compendium of links relative to my suggestion to Bruce
Coston, just posted
(http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/2011-May/006225.html) that he
deal with his video streaming problem with YouTube and similar sites
through use of downloaders, which in turn _can_ also permit, if he
wishes, losing that dreadful Adobe Flash plugin software and substituting
open-source compatibles (gnash, swfdec, GPLFlash).

Here's the laundry list, which I hope will prove useful.  Remember, you
should usually favour distro packages where available, rather than going
to upstream links (such as those cited).  All codebases mentioned are
genuine open source.


clive is a Flash video extraction tool in Perl for user-uploaded video hosts
such as Youtube, Google Video, Dailymotion, Guba, and Metacafe. It can be
chained with 3rd party tools for subsequent video re-encoding and
playing and playing.
http://home.gna.org/clive/

clive-utils is a collection of add-on tools to parse RSS feeds, parse
video pages, and manage login passwords related to video sites.
http://code.google.com/p/clive-utils/

cclive is a rewrite of clive in C++ for lower system load.
http://cclive.sourceforge.net/

abby is a Qt-based graphical front end in C++ for clive and cclive.
http://code.google.com/p/abby/

youtube-dl is a (command-line) Python script for downloading Flash or
WebM (vp8 + Vorbis) video clips for YouTube.com, Google Video,
Photobucket, Yahoo Video, Dailymotion, DepositFiles, and some other
sites.  You provide the clip's URL, and youtube-dl saves the clip as a
local file with file extension .flv.
http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl/

For maximum compatibility with even the more difficult (DRM-obscured)
YouTube clips, you should also install the rtmpdump program to decrypt
files served using Adobe's proprietary 'RTMP' protocol.  See:
http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl/documentation.html

YouTube Downloader GUI is a Qt/kdelibs front-end for youtube-dl:
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Youtube-Downloader-GUI-28348.shtml

Qttube is a similar Qt front-end for youtube-dl:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QtTube

Flash Video Downloader is a Firefox extension to download Flash video
clips from YouTube, Dailymotion, Break.com, and many other sites.
http://www.flashvideodownloader.org/

Easy YouTube Downloader is a Firefox (and Chromium / Chrome) extension
to download YouTube videos in FLV, 3GP, MP3, MP4 and 720p HD and 1080p
Full-HD qualities.
http://www.yourvideofile.com/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/easy-youtube-video-downl-10137/

quvi is a command-line tool in C for parsing Flash video links out of
YouTube and similar sites.
http://quvi.sourceforge.net/

PyTube is a Python app that searches and downloads YouTube video clips
and encodes them using FFMpeg:
http://pytube.sourceforge.net/
(gone from:  http://bashterritory.com, http://www.getdeb.net/app/PyTube,
http://www.marcosrodriguez.me/pytube/)

pytube (different codebase) is a Python script for YouTube and MetaCafe 
that de-obscures the video clip's URL from its obscuring Javascript, so
that you can download it.
http://code.google.com/p/pytube/

Note:  There was for a long time a Python / gtk+2 graphical application
_also_ called Pytube, but unfortunately everyone relied on someone else
to host it, and it it appears to have vanished from the Internet.

Utube Ripper (formally Youtube Downloader for Linux) is an application
written in Gambas that works exclusively on Linux. It's useful to
download and convert Youtube videos in a simple and efficient way.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/utube/

(g)vdown is an application that can download videos from video sharing
websites like YouTube, Google Video, MyVideo and so on.
It is written in Python.
It has a commandline interface (vdown) and a PyGTK interface (gvdown).
http://code.google.com/p/vdown/

gnetvideoplayer a player and downloader for YouTube and Stage6 videos,
and depends on wget, MPlayer, and GtkMediaPlayer. 

Get YouTube Video is a KDE service menu usable with Konqueror to
download YouTube Flash video clips.
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Get+YouTube+Video+(improved)?content=41456

gnetvideoplayer is a C program for GNOME to extract Flash from YouTube.
https://forxa.mancomun.org/frs/?group_id=108

youshell is a Python script to search and download Flash video clips
from YouTube and load them into Mplayer.
http://code.google.com/p/youshell/

Elltube is a graphical Python / Qt4 YouTube Flash downloader and
converter.  http://elltube.sourceforge.net/

MP3 Rocket is a Java program to download YouTube and other clips
http://www.mp3rocket.com/


Articles:
http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/442454-youtube-tools-for-the-linux-desktop
http://arun.wordpress.com/2007/01/29/download-youtube-videos-the-linux-way/
http://www.junauza.com/2010/01/download-youtube-videos-from-linux.html
http://maketecheasier.com/download-youtube-videos-for-offline-viewing-on-linux/2009/02/09/
http://linux.byexamples.com/archives/302/how-to-wget-flv-from-youtube/
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/youtube_and_gnu_linux_download_and_convert_videos_easy_way#