vidl 3.4.1

Python script to download video/audio, built with youtube-dl

vidl

vidl is a script designed to easily download video/audio from anywere, using youtube-dl. It automatically embeds thumbnails to mp3/mp4/m4a files.

vidl will add metadata to mp3 files if it's found. The --no-md option turns this off. title, artist and year metadata is added, but if the URL is a playlist, it also adds album, album artist, track number, track count. If the title contains " - ", vidl often uses what comes before and after it as artist and title respectively. The --dont-extract-md option turns off this behaviour.

Installation

1. Install Python (3.7 is recommended)
2. Install ffmpeg and ffprobe
3. Run pip install vidl
4. If you're not on macOS or Windows, you need to specify where vidl will download files to in your vidl config file. Run vidl --config-path to see where the config file is. If you're on macOS, I recommend setting up shortcuts for vidl

Uninstall

Run pip uninstall vidl.

If you want to fully uninstall vidl, go to vidl's config file (Run vidl --config-path to see where it is) and delete the folder it's in.

Usage

Examples: vidl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta_ZVS7HkwI

• Downloads the video as mp3, and adds metadata it detects.

vidl mp3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta_ZVS7HkwI --no-md

• Downloads the video as mp3, without adding metadata.

vidl

• Prints vidl's help menu, which looks like this:

  Download Usage:
      vidl [format] [options] <URL>
  
  Download Options:
      format             mp3, mp4, wav or m4a. Default mp3.
      --no-md            Don't add metadata to downloaded files.
      --no-smart-md      Don't extract artist and song name from title.
      --no-dl            Don't download anything. Usually used with -v
      -v, --verbose      Display all logs.
  
  Global Options:
      --version          Display vidl version. "vidl -v" also works.
      -h, --help         Display this help message.
      --config-path      Display the location of vidl's configuration file.
  

Configuration

vidl has a configuration file, which you can find the location of by running vidl --config-path. In it, you can set the download folder and filename template.

If you screw something up, you can delete the file, and the default will be recreated the next time you run vidl.

Custom metadata parsing

This is advanced usage. Knowing some programming is useful for doing this.

vidl has a user_md_parser.py file. By default, it does nothing, but you can configure it to manipulate metadata of songs you download however you like. In my case, I for use this file to detect if a title contains "[NCS Release]", and if it does I set the "Comment" metadata to "NCS".

Documentation for this can be found in the file itself. The file is in the same folder as vidl's config file, which you can find by by running vidl --config-path. If you screw something up, you can delete the file, and the default will be recreated the next time you run vidl.

Set up shortcuts for vidl (macOS)

You'll be able to select any piece of text, press your chosen shortcut and the link(s) in your selected text will be downloaded! A little tedious to set up, but well worth it.

First, we need to create a macOS Service:

1. Open the Automator app.

2. Choose File > New, and select Service.

3. (TLDR; Add Run Shell Script) In the window that just popped up, there are two columns on the left (if not, click the Library button in the status bar). Select Utilities in the first column, and in the second column, drag Run Shell Script into the main part of the window.

4. Make your settings match these:

   

   If you want the shortcut to only work in one app, select that app instead of any application.

5. In the text box in the "Run Shell Script" box, paste in the following script:

   for f in "$@"
   do
       # AppleScript doesn't look for scripts in the same places as the terminal,
       # so we need to make it look in the proper folders.
       export PATH=<VIDL_DIR>:$PATH
       export PATH=<FFMPEG_DIR>:$PATH
       export PATH=<FFPROBE_DIR>:$PATH
       vidl --quiet "$f"
   done
   

   Replace <VIDL_DIR> with the path you get from running dirname $(which vidl) in the terminal. Replace <FFMPEG_DIR> with the path you get from running dirname $(which ffmpeg) in the terminal. Replace <FFPROBE_DIR> with the path you get from running dirname $(which ffprobe) in the terminal.

6. Choose File > Save. Type in vidl.

Almost done, you just need to tie a shortcut to the macOS Service you just created:

1. Open the System Preferences app.
2. Go to Keyboard and select the Shortcuts tab.
3. Select Services from the left column, and locate vidl (should be under Internet). Add your preferred shortcut.

Dev Instructions

Installation

1. Install Python (3.7 is recommended)
2. Install ffmpeg and ffprobe
3. Install Poetry
4. Run poetry install to install Python package dependencies.
5. If you're not on macOS or Windows, you need to specify where vidl will download files to in your vidl config file. Run vidl --config-path to see where the config file is.

I recommend running poetry config settings.virtualenvs.in-project true. This command makes Poetry create your Python virtual environment inside the project folder, so you'll be able to easily delete it. Additionally, it lets VSCode's Python extension detect the virtual environment if you set the python.pythonPath setting to ${workspaceFolder}/.venv/bin/python in your workspace (or global) settings.

Running

Run poetry run python vidl.

To test the package, you can run poetry develop. This adds the vidl package itself to the virtual environment, including the CLI executable. This means you can simply type poetry run vidl.

As an alternative to poetry run <command>, you can run poetry shell to enter the virtual environment's bash CLI, and then run your command on it's own.

ToDo

• For future config possibilities, replace options like --no-md with --md and --!md. Maybe call it defaults instead of config?
  • Add all configs as options, for instance add download_folder option.
  • Add all options as configs, for instance add md option.
  • Add config/option for individual metadata
• Allow passing youtube-dl arguments directly