Download Youtube Videos With Youtube dl CMD on FreeBSD

Have you ever wanted to save your favorite video or audio from the internet to your computer? But how could the website not have a download button? That’s exactly what the free, cross-platform utility youtube-dl is for: it allows you to download audio and video files simply by knowing the address of the page where the file is located.

The youtube-dl application is a small command-line program for downloading videos from YouTube.com, Metacafe.com, Google Videos, Photobucket Videos, Yahoo Video, Dailymotion, and more. youtube-dl is a Python-based utility for downloading videos from various websites. It can be run on Linux, FreeBSD, or Windows operating systems.

This article will discuss how to use youtube-dl, what capabilities this utility provides to users, and what useful features the developer has included. We’re using the FreeBSD operating system for this article.

1. Installing YouTube-dl

On the FreeBSD operating system, you can install youtube-dl in several ways. The quickest way is to use the PKG package, but PKG doesn’t completely install all dependent libraries. The best way is to use the FreeBSD porting system.

As a first step, install the YouTube-dl dependencies.

root@ns6:~ # pkg install tex-xetex tex-formats texlive-base ghc hs-pandoc rtmpdump

Once all the above dependencies are installed, proceed with installing the Youtube dl application.

root@ns6:~ # cd /usr/ports/www/youtube_dl
root@ns6:/usr/ports/www/youtube_dl # make config

If you want to use MP3 audio conversion, make sure multimedia/ffmpeg was created with the “LAME” option enabled. Use the "make clean" command to start the installation.

root@ns6:/usr/ports/www/youtube_dl # make install clean

2. How to Download with YouTube dl

To successfully use this utility, you must correctly type the command in the terminal. The syntax is simple:

youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL…]

Main options:

• -h, –help: Print this help text and exit.
• –version: Print the program version and exit.
• -U, –update: Update this program to the latest version.
• -i, –ignore-errors: Continue on download errors.
• –abort-on-error: Cancel any subsequent video downloads.
• –dump-user-agent: Display the current browser identifier.
• –list-extractors: List all supported extractors.
• –extractor-descriptions: Descriptions of the output from all supported extractors.
• –force-generic-extractor: Force extraction to use a generic extractor.
• –default-search: Use this prefix for unqualified URLs.
• –ignore-config: Do not read the configuration file.
• –config-location: The path to the configuration file.
• –flat-playlist: Do not extract videos from playlists, just list them.
• –mark-watched: Mark videos as watched (YouTube only).
• –no-mark-watched: Don’t mark videos as watched (YouTube only).
• –no-color: Don’t emit color codes in the output.

To download videos, the first step is to create a download folder "/tmp/YTDownload".

root@ns6:~ # mkdir -p /tmp/YTDownload
root@ns6:~ # cd /tmp/YTDownload

Then open the YouTube website, and copy the URL in the address bar menu, as shown below.

After that, run the following command in the terminal.

root@ns6:/tmp/YTDownload # youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMoCmLnak4w'
[youtube] dMoCmLnak4w: Downloading webpage
[dashsegments] Total fragments: 1
[download] Destination: Satu Keluarga Diserang Pria Bersenjata Tajam Terekam CCTV - LIS 21_11-dMoCmLnak4w.f136.mp4
[download] 100% of 9.07MiB in 00:06
[dashsegments] Total fragments: 1
[download] Destination: Satu Keluarga Diserang Pria Bersenjata Tajam Terekam CCTV - LIS 21_11-dMoCmLnak4w.f140.m4a
[download] 100% of 1022.10KiB in 00:00
[ffmpeg] Merging formats into "Satu Keluarga Diserang Pria Bersenjata Tajam Terekam CCTV - LIS 21_11-dMoCmLnak4w.mp4"
Deleting original file Satu Keluarga Diserang Pria Bersenjata Tajam Terekam CCTV - LIS 21_11-dMoCmLnak4w.f136.mp4 (pass -k to keep)
Deleting original file Satu Keluarga Diserang Pria Bersenjata Tajam Terekam CCTV - LIS 21_11-dMoCmLnak4w.f140.m4a (pass -k to keep)
root@ns6:/tmp/YTDownload #

The youtube-dl utility will be useful for anyone who wants to download music and videos from sites that don’t offer download functionality. It has many flexible settings and only one drawback: poor graphics.