Ubuntu – using youtube-dl to download entire youtube channel

youtubeyoutube-dl

So I'm trying to download an entire youtube channel using youtube-dl. I know that if you use the -F command, it gives you a list of the quality type of the videos. My question is this: how to download the best quality of all the videos so the download doesnt default to 460p or something low like that.

Best Answer

This answer won't work on older versions of youtube-dl. You need to update youtube-dl to the latest version. You can either install the latest version of youtube-dl locally inside a Python virtual environment (virtualenv), or you can download the latest version of youtube-dl and install it with pip (sudo apt remove youtube-dl && sudo apt install python-pip && pip install --user youtube-dl). youtube-dl is also a snap package. To install it type:

sudo snap install youtube-dl # launch it with snap run youtube-dl

Open the terminal and type:

youtube-dl -f best -ciw -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -v <url-of-channel>

...where <url-of-channel> is replaced by the URL of the channel.

Note: If you are downloading a lot of videos, you should change directories to the directory where you want to save the videos before you start downloading them.

Explanation

-f, --format FORMAT
    video format code. The special name "best" will pick the best quality.

-c, --continue                   
    force resume of partially downloaded files

-i, --ignore-errors              
    continue on download errors, for example to skip unavailable videos in a channel 

-w, --no-overwrites
    do not overwrite files

-o, --output
    Output filename template, this example functions similarly to the old --title option

-v, --verbose
    print various debugging information
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