Downloading youtube videos is always a pita, some use firefox plugins, some install a windows app to snatch loaded flash videos, and some just want to use native shell without X – like me.
For gods sake, there is a debian package called youtube-dl which is available in wheezy and sid, but luckily backported to squeeze-backports as well.
IF using debian squeeze, first add the backports repository like described here.
# echo "deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list # apt-get update
Install it from backports (which is lower priority than your systems repo).
# apt-get -t squeeze-backports install youtube-dl
and run “man youtube-dl” to see all available options.
Below is an example of a 10h set of ASOT 550 which is rather huge.
$ youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zJOJbJeSZc" -o A_State_of_Trance_550_Den_Bosch_-_Blue_Stage_Full_Set.flv Setting language 2zJOJbJeSZc: Downloading video webpage 2zJOJbJeSZc: Downloading video info webpage 2zJOJbJeSZc: Extracting video information [download] Destination: A_State_of_Trance_550_Den_Bosch_-_Blue_Stage_Full_Set.flv [download] 0.1% of 3.20G at 1.05M/s ETA 51:45
After downloading, you’ll get a flash video file (*.flv extension) which can be either played with VLC and comparable players, or encoded with ffmpeg, mplayer, etc. Keep in mind that h264 files will result in *.mp4 extension – so make sure to check that before defining the -o parameter.
For those interested in the origin source – it’s a python script kept updated on github: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/