YouTube Downloader

This is a simple python script that uses the pytube package to download videos from YouTube.

Requirements

• Python 3.8 or later will work.
• You need the latest version of pytube. Since YouTube changes some internal settings from time to time, pytube should be modified accordingly to enable downloads from YouTube. If the lastest version does not work, you have several options to fix this.
  • Wait for a pytube update that fixes the issue. However, pytube is not updated quickly, so you should probably try other options.
  • Check the issues tab on pytube repository for a possible fix.
  • Install a recent fork of pytube that works.
  • Check stackoverflow website for a possible fix.
• ffmpeg 6.0 or later is required for merging audio and video files. Usually, the highest quality media like 1080p has separate audio and video files. In such cases, ffmpeg is required for merging the files after download. See the official website for installing it.

Quick Start

All you need is to make a list of video and playlist URLs you want to download and pass it to the download_playlist function.

videos_urls = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G1FuEQqxVI']
download_playlist(videos_urls, 'mp4', '720p')

Put this code snippet into examples.py and run

python examples.py

There are also other examples in examples.py.

Using Tor as Proxy

If YouTube is not accesible from your region due to censorship, you can reliably use Tor to circuvment this issue. Follow the instructions in here for installing Tor. Then, run Tor as below

tor -HTTPTunnelPort 8118

which creates an HTTP proxy for you. If Tor could not connect then you can configure obs4 or snowflake bridges with Tor which can hopefully resolve this issue. After making sure that Tor has connected, while keeping this terminal open, use another terminal and run your python program in it

export https_proxy=https://127.0.0.1:8118
python exmaples.py

which will pass all the traffic of the python program through the HTTP proxy created by Tor.