Freeman Reargem – March 01, 2022

Youtube How To Download A Entire Channel Of Videos

This detailed guide takes y'all to the realm of command line tools on Windows. Fright not, I'll be with you along the fashion and teach you the youtube-dl utility from scratch. I believe it's the best mode to download an entire Youtube channel, mainly because of its reliability and robustness. Information technology's not some scammy ad-supported bloatware YouTube downloader many people use for single videos and playlists. On the contrary, this is an advanced tool, but I try to do my best to bring the difficulty downwards to an intermediate level. Look baby steps and the usual storytelling instead of slapping you lot with a line of code and leaving you in the lurch!

Why would yous archive YouTube?

Surely yous can't download the whole thing. However, at that place are countless technical reasons to become your tiny part of it!

Abrasive tidbits of the platform

It'southward possible to overcome every single badgerer the YouTube platform imposes on united states of america, by decoupling downloading from viewing. This manner you accept complete control over the experience. Why is that a good matter?

First of all, at that place are no ads whatsoever. While the browser extension uBlock Origin does a fantastic task at ensuring that I don't run across any ads on desktop, e'er, the same cannot be said about my mobile experience. Adguard for Android is fantabulous, though it can't quite block the YouTube ads.
You see no comments or other distracting elements.
Your annal is portable. Take it to a identify with express or no internet. You might not want to exhaust mobile data plans while commuting only would benefit from watching a quality channel.
Offline operation means no buffering. Skip boring parts and seek instantly.
Language learning aficionados could download and watch videos with dual subtitles. Yes, that means both languages shown on the screen at the same time, one at the top, one at the bottom – PotPlayer tin can do this. For case, this video has both Castilian and English subs that are non auto-generated.
Retain videos forever. Some content gets deleted from time to fourth dimension. At that place is no guarantee specific channels or videos will exist 5, 10, twenty years from at present! Therefore, the information hoarder mentality dictates you lot should annal what you similar.
Is the infinite on the video control bar really so deficient that the volume bar needs to hide itself? It'south 1 of my pet peeves with Google's new pattern trends constrict away the functional, often-used buttons and cede them on the altar of minimal material design.

For a ameliorate rampage-watching experience

What if I want to sentinel every video of a channel? Information technology's unrealistic to expect that I'll begin every session by infinite scrolling the videos tab for minutes to observe where I left it… Even then, how will I know that the next video in the queue is the real next one, and not some "recommended for you" nonsense unless they are all in a playlist?

Furthermore, the watched and progress indicators are hit-and-miss at best. Then many times YouTube often forgets that I've already watched a video. The feature that would let you go along where you lot left off doesn't seem to remember long gone sessions. If the videos are offline, I guarantee that you and your video histrion volition do a amend job at tracking seen videos.

Yous wouldn't cherry-pick merely a handful of episodes from serial drama television serial, would you? I've establish that I began to like some content creators so much, that I desire to encounter ALL of their content, in order, without even looking at the title! For me, the best way to exercise that is to download each YouTube channel I love. I'll tell you most some of these binge-worthy channels afterwards.

The repeat sleeping accommodation

YouTube and Facebook (and others) utilize specialized algorithms to approximate what Y'all might like, and therefore not every content from your subscriptions or friends reaches you. And that is an understatement. They employ machine learning (AI), freaking TensorFlow neural networks to analyze your habits – this is a bit agonizing if yous ask me.

For content creators, this is discouraging since they achieve smaller and smaller slice of their audition and sometimes have to resort to paid promotion to target their fan base of operations. Every bit a content consumer, if you rely on automated recommendations, you become stuck in an echo sleeping accommodation that keeps reflecting what you similar and leaves niggling to no room for exploration. When you download a YouTube channel, every single video the content creator e'er fabricated is there, without biases. If you discover a swell aqueduct a bit late, you can nevertheless get back in time and re-alive their videos sequentially.

How did I become into this?

It was almost a decade ago that my YouTube content consumer office manifested. YouTube was very different back then.

I of my first subscriptions was to a pineapple-haired, energetic gentleman with an unlimited wardrobe reviewing viral videos in front of a comic book wall.

Back then, if you typed but the letter r into YouTube search, his proper noun, ray william johnson would come upwardly as the first result. Since then, my sense of taste shifted, and I lookout man and download channels featuring more sophisticated intellectual content.

The quality and production value increased immensely over the by decade. Due to this, many didactics or entertainment channels oftentimes beat regular Telly programming. Surely the format is dissimilar, and the videos are shorter. However, they acquit tremendous value, which is offered for free.

These are all excellent YouTube channels to binge:

Veritasium of Derek Muller
SmarterEveryDay of Destin Sandlin
Nicole Cotroneo Jolly'due south Truthful FOOD TV
Engineering Explained past Jason Fenske
ElectroBOOM of Mehdi Sadaghda
ATHLEAN-X™ of Jeff Cavaliere
Colin Furze, the crazy inventor

The primeval time I decided to download a whole YouTube channel was when I kickoff went skiing. I wanted to broaden the teachings of my coach with a virtual 1. So I took the channel of Ski Schoolhouse past Elate Media with me on the trip. To illustrate my point, I didn't have an unlimited information programme, and even if I did, it would take been deadening to watch the ski lessons. The experience opened my eyes to making content from channels more user-friendly to follow. I look forwards to bringing some of my favorite channels with me the side by side time I fly long haul, equally in-flight entertainment is usually subpar.

Setting upwardly youtube-dl on Windows 10

If you are like how I used to be, the installation role of the docs is Chinese. Information technology runs in the geek family that command line tools are installed… you guessed information technology: from the command line! That steep learning curve prevents the average Joe from using an otherwise fine and like shooting fish in a barrel solution to download a YouTube channel. That's why I want to tell you step past step how to set it up. You lot'll come across that at that place is cipher to install in the traditional sense.

First, download these:

The primary tool, youtube-dl (choose the Windows exe link)
FFmpeg for combining video with audio with the best quality (don't download the source code only choose a build according to your Bone under the Get packages & executable files)

Then perform these deportment:

Create a binder for these tools and your downloads, for example, C:\YouTube
Move youtube-dl.exe there
Excerpt the FFmpeg archive and also motion the bin\ffmpeg.exe and bin\ffprobe.exe files into the C:\YouTube folder

The last time I taught you lot how to download an entire website with wget, and again nosotros need to add some other tool to the surroundings variables. It'll ensure organization-wide availability of the youtube-dl control and everything else nosotros add together to the YouTube folder later.

            "C:\Windows\system32\rundll32.exe" sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables

Hitting Windows+R, paste the above line and hit Enter
Nether theUser variables double-click thePath row
Click New and add the path of that folder, such every bit C:\YouTube
Click OK, OK to close everything
Verify it works past hit Windows+R again and pastingcmd /k youtube-dl – it should not say 'youtube-dl' is not recognized

The recommended options of youtube-dl

As usual, I've read the readme file so you don't necessarily take to. Based on my experience, these are useful to download an private YouTube channel.

`-format`

            -format ("bestvideo[width>=1920]"/bestvideo)+bestaudio/best

The format parameter is the heart of this whole guide. The combination volition outset look for the best video at or to a higher place full Hard disk drive width, and only resort to the next all-time formats if the desired quality is not available. I've been recommending this quality setting on Reddit and StackOverflow, after finding that by default, youtube-dl prefers a lower resolution video but because it has a higher bitrate than the larger resolution version. However, it'south not a bug, every bit confirmed by the developer. Regarding audio, I was not so picky. Finally, the default /best at the end is only there for videos where video and sound don't exist separately.

`--download-annal archive.txt`

Employ this to avoid re-downloading already grabbed content. Each successful download gets noted in the file so youtube-dl will skip them the side by side time. This setting is essential if you want to update your archive periodically. The archive file volition reside in your YouTube folder and will serve equally a log or history for every download you perform, on any channel.

`-output`

            --output %(uploader)s/%(upload_date)s.%(title)s.%(id)s.%(ext)s

Speaking from experience, I can say that it's helpful to save the output similar this. Else it's just chaos. The above means that:

Videos are placed in folders named afterward their channel.
File names offset with the date of the videos.
The video title is included (without special characters, see the next option).
YouTube video ID is there so I can apace find it online if I want to comment or exit a rating.
An extension such as .mkv is mandatory.

You tin can format the saved video'due south filename however you want.

`--restrict-filenames`

This should be common sense considering foreign messages in the video titles tin can conflict with the immune characters on the organization.

`--merge-output-format mkv`

Most oft, video and audio streams volition make it separately, then it's merely logical you get to decide the output container. FFmpeg will create this, and Matroska (.mkv) seems like a adept choice.

`--ignore-errors`

Let's make things unstoppable! 🙂 It's especially useful when you set out to download a huge YouTube aqueduct and get out your computer on for the dark. You don't want to wake up seeing that information technology stopped early 😢 because of somesilly mistake, such as this bummer:

                          Downloading video 296 of 335 [youtube] FJnbLzOh--c: Downloading webpage [youtube] FJnbLzOh--c: Downloading video info webpage Error: This video contains content from SME, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

`--no-playlist`

Information technology's very easy to accidentally use a link that refers to a playlist in addition to the single video you chose. I employ this in the single video download script, to preclude unintentionally downloading an entire playlist.

`--write-sub`

Instruct the tool to write subtitle files adjacent to the videos.

`--embed-subs`

If instead, you lot want to embed subtitles in the video itself, this is the switch to use.

`--sub-lang es,en`

If you lot desire subtitles, this is how you specify the language. This is for Spanish and English language, if available.

Earlier you brainstorm downloading

You demand some disk space when yous download a long-continuing YouTube channel. Ane hour of video time is somewhere between 500MB and 1GB of file size. Many channels take hundreds or thousands of videos. I know these are rookie numbers, just to give yous an idea:

Download speeds aren't super fast either. Sometimes they are a crawl, I'm not sure why. Perchance the speed is optimized for streaming at the pace of viewing. It all depends on the content and how popular it is. I presume that YouTube duplicates trending videos across multiple servers.

Download an entire YouTube channel with this youtube-dl control

Yous'd typically need to run the command in the binder where you desire to download the desired YouTube channel. While y'all could open a command prompt and navigate there manually, I have a amend idea. Since you lot probably want to update the archive later on when new videos come, why not salve the command to a batch file?

Formulate the download task equally a batch file

Create a new file in Notepad or a text editor, and place the below snippet in information technology. Relieve information technology as something similarjob-colinfurze.bat in the C:\YouTube folder, next to youtube-dl. All that's left is to run information technology!

            cd /D "%~dp0" youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/user/colinfurze/videos --format ("bestvideo[width>=1920]"/bestvideo)+bestaudio/best --download-archive annal.txt --output %%(uploader)s/%%(upload_date)s.%%(championship)southward.%%(id)south.%%(ext)southward --restrict-filenames --merge-output-format mkv --ignore-errors Pause

Substitute the channel URL for your target channel.
It has my recommended settings from the previous section.
The double percent signs are for escaping in a batch file. When calling the command straight, y'all need just a unmarried percent sign.
The kickoff line ensures the videos volition exist downloaded in the binder of the batch file when information technology is run every bit a scheduled job. You'll see this in every snippet here.
The PAUSE part helps it remain open once finished so you tin assess what happened. Otherwise, it instantly closes. When scheduled, it doesn't crusade whatever harm.
You can either double click the batch file, or merely enter its name (in this example task-colinfurze) in the Run dialog (Windows+R). Get a taste of how easy this is to utilise later the guided setup!
You lot'll larn in the next section how to reuse the configuration if you desire to download more than one YouTube aqueduct.

Saving the settings to a config file

If you feel that this isn't going to be a one fourth dimension attempt for you, it's worth preparing a config file for time to come (re)use. These are the core settings which should apply every time, whether you download a channel, a playlist, or a single video from YouTube. We can withal overwrite these when needed. Add the following to a file chosen config.txt and put it in the C:\YouTube folder, side by side to youtube-dl.

            --format ("bestvideo[width>=1920]"/bestvideo)+bestaudio/all-time --download-archive archive.txt --output %(uploader)southward/%(upload_date)s.%(championship)s.%(id)due south.%(ext)south --restrict-filenames --merge-output-format mkv --ignore-errors

Past having this, you don't demand to remember to use these options and your command becomes shorter in the batch file. For instance, in thejob-EngineeringExplained.bat this would exist:

            cd /D "%~dp0" youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/user/EngineeringExplained/videos --config-location config.txt Break

Come across? Much nicer! Utilise this snippet as a template to create a batch file for every YouTube channel you want to download. Then you tin run these jobs individually or even schedule them (run across after).

Do you need merely a single video?

It'southward the icing on the cake that this tool works with over a thousand sites! Seriously, attempt it! Information technology's the ~~souvenir~~ tool that keeps on giving. Mayhap not to archive entire accounts from lesser-known platforms, merely it's fabulous for downloading single videos! The point is that the tool figures out the actual URL to the video file. You don't demand to care about it, just utilize the link you'd share with a friend.

This is where a little setup and using a config file volition pay off. Y'all'll see the ^ graphic symbol in the examples from now on. In example y'all are wondering, that tells the batch file that new lines are nonetheless part of the same command. Create a new text file called dl-single.bat in your C:\YouTube binder with the post-obit content:

            @echo off cd /D "%~dp0" setlocal enableDelayedExpansion set /p video="Paste the video link to download: " youtube-dl ^ --config-location config.txt ^ --output SingleDownloads/%%(upload_date)s.%%(title)s.%%(id)s.%%(ext)due south ^ --no-playlist ^ !video! PAUSE

With that out of the way, anytime you desire to download a single video from simply nigh whatsoever site, you'd:

Hit Windows+R
Write dl-single (or information technology'll be there from concluding time) and printingEnter
Paste the video link to download and hit Enter once more

Detect single video downloads in theC:\YouTube\SingleDownloads folder.

Download a complete YouTube playlist

The solution is not much unlike from single videos. The youtube-dl tool excels at batch downloading, just it isn't simply to download a YouTube channel. Ane important affair to notation is that the setup from config.txt puts each video in a folder that represents its uploader's channel. So if you download a YouTube playlist of 100 videos – each from a different possessor – that's going to have a detrimental bear on on your neatly organized YouTube binder. Therefore, I propose using the playlist creator and playlist name equally the folder instead of the channel in the output selection. If y'all want this, so create a text file inC:\YouTube, call it dl-playlist.bat and add together the following to information technology:

            @repeat off cd /D "%~dp0" setlocal enableDelayedExpansion set /p video="Paste the playlist link to download: " youtube-dl ^ --config-location config.txt ^ --output %%(playlist_uploader)s-%%(playlist_title)southward/%%(upload_date)south.%%(title)s.%%(id)s.%%(ext)due south ^ !video! PAUSE

From now on, whenever y'all want to download a YouTube playlist, merely:

Hit Windows+R
Write dl-playlist and pressEnter – information technology might already be there as a contempo command if you press Downward
Paste the playlist link to download and hit Enter once more

You'll find playlists this way:C:\YouTube\Veritasium-Misconceptions.

What if you want sound but?

We've all used YouTube as a music player at some point. Unless you are interested in the music video, sometimes it doesn't brand sense to salvage the video stream when you just want to hear the content. Except when you download Romy Wave, even if you but heed to / sentry her in the background… Music, mixes, podcasts, y'all name information technology, this part helps you go an offline version for yourself.

Within C:\YouTube folder, create thedl-music.bat file with the following snippet. It downloads or extracts the sound runway of oneunmarried music video at a time, and places it in a Music subfolder.

            @echo off cd /D "%~dp0" setlocal enableDelayedExpansion set /p video="Paste the music video link to download: " youtube-dl ^ --config-location config.txt ^ --output Music/%%(title)s.%%(id)s.%%(ext)s ^ --format bestaudio/best ^ --extract-sound ^ --no-playlist ^ !video! Pause

Music playlist variant

The options differ for music playlists. Each playlist volition have its own folder inside Music. Save it as dl-mplaylist.bat later pasting this into information technology:

            @repeat off cd /D "%~dp0" setlocal enableDelayedExpansion set /p video="Paste the music playlist link to download: " youtube-dl ^ --config-location config.txt ^ --output Music/%%(playlist_uploader)due south-%%(playlist_title)south/%%(championship)southward.%%(id)southward.%%(ext)s ^ --format bestaudio/best ^ --extract-audio ^ !video! Pause

Usage (I'm sure you're getting proficient at this past now):

Striking Windows+R
Write dl-music or dl-mplaylist for singles and playlists, respectively, and pressEnter
Paste the link to download and hit Enter once more

Don't be alarmed that you lot'll likely get no mp3 files considering the new trend is a codec called Opus. A decent music player like foobar2000 will have no problem with this new format. It's not the scope of this article to help transcode annihilation into to mp3, not that you should.

Keep your archive in sync with automation

Upward until writing this commodity, I resorted to running the YouTube channel download jobs manually every now and so. Information technology's because I wasn't on the edge of my seat for new videos. In that location are a couple of things you need to know before you blindly schedule these jobs.

Information technology's a relatively network-intensive task, so schedule it outside the hours y'all're conferencing or need the bandwidth or low latency.
If the procedure is interrupted, it'll go on without any problems the next time. It'll even resume a half-finished download!
Yous demand to decide how much filibuster you lot tolerate based on the number of channels, their average update frequency, and your watching habits. The more often you run it, the less it has to download at once. Fortunately, a chore runs silently in the background, so an annoying control prompt popup is out of the question.

Using the Task Scheduler

The batch files for downloading a channel are in a way that they work with both transmission and automated kickoff. This part of the guide assumes they already work for you, the initial run is complete, and every video from said channels accept been downloaded. Therefore, you are only waiting for new videos.

Search for and openTask Scheduler in the Offset Menu
On the right-manus side, click Create Basic Task…
Name information technology something meaningful, such as YouTube downloads
Prepare the Trigger (timing) however it's near suitable for you
As an Action, cull Offset a Programme
Browse for ajob'south .bat file, such as theC:\YouTube\EngineeringExplained.bat, and click Open
At Cease, tick the Open the Properties dialog
One time there, within Security options, switch to Run whether user is logged on or not. Oddly, this volition ensure the chore runs hidden from view.
When you click OK, y'all need to provide your Windows password. If y'all don't accept one, you might need to create one. It doesn't accept to make yous miserable if y'all like the no-password login. It'due south possible to skip the Windows 10 login screen (Windows+R andnetplwiz) even if you lot have a password.

Run everything with 1 chore

If y'all don't want individual command when automating your jobs, the following script bundles them. Therefore, i scheduled chore is enough. Call itall-youtube-jobs.bat and put it into theC:\YouTube binder, right where the jobs live. Make sure that the filename of each individual task for a YouTube aqueduct you wish to automatically download has the job- prefix. That's how this chore will observe them.

            cd /D "%~dp0" for %%ten in (chore-*.bat) practise (     @echo Calling %%x...     @echo | phone call %%x )

Keep youtube-dl upwards-to-date

The command that updates the exe, with no questions asked is this:

While you can run that manually anytime from a command prompt (Windows+R, and run cmd), maybe it'due south worth setting up a scheduled task. Yous tin follow the previous instructions, as they are similar. I caveat: for the Action > Start a program, specify the total path like this:C:\YouTube\youtube-dl.exe and for Arguments add -U and that's it.

            Microsoft Windows [Version ten.0.17134.345] (c) 2018 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.  c:\YouTube>youtube-dl -U Updating to version 2018.11.xviii ... Waiting for file handle to be closed ...  c:\YouTube>Updated youtube-dl to version 2018.11.18.

Download the files

For your convenience, you tin can download the ZIP of the binder I created for this commodity (without any videos or .exe files). This is what it looks like:

These are the batch files that include the custom code, and the config file, but you lot even so need to:

Get the software, equally we aren't redistributing them. Without those, the batch files won't download anything from a YouTube channel.
Modify the job-* files to download what yous want, as they are just examples. Recollect, one of them uses the config file, the other has the full control.

What to do with your archive and how to play information technology

Now that you accept offline YouTube videos, you might want a remarkable video histrion. After all, we strive to improve upon the YouTube experience. A prime number candidate for this chore on the desktop is PotPlayer (gratis!). It can open every video in the same binder together equally a playlist. Also, it's very well configurable (think about mouse and keyboard shortcuts) and looks beautiful at the aforementioned time, thank you to skins. A serious video watcher will appreciate the flexibility. This is PotPlayer with the Kardox pare playing Jeff Cavaliere's channel (just well-nigh my everyday activity):

On the other hand, I recommend VLC merely for Android, equally information technology's as well industrial/raw for me on the desktop.

So, there y'all have it! Now you know how to download a YouTube channel, with all the content you want. Are youfix to rampage? I hope I didn't open a can of worms… Because it'll crave even more of your fourth dimension to sentinel it all, now that yous know how much of it is out there. As you lot might imagine, information technology was challenging to write this article because of the plethora of distractions from YouTube itself. 🙂

What channels are Yous downloading? Share it in the comments!

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Posted by: willhitelact1964.blogspot.com

Youtube How To Download A Entire Channel Of Videos UPDATED