How to dump youtube live TV stream to file using commandline?

[MKANET]

Thanks for taking a look at this. Unfortunately, it's not possible for me to change my player. It's my media center software which runs my entire home's TV/Audio/Video in every room (SageTV). It has a plugin to allow me to do whatever I want using command-line; which I've used youtube-dl.exe for. Whatever the issue is, it doesnt look like its by accident that youtube-dl.exe is able able produce media file that's playable until the "real" end of the media file; which could go on indefinitely.

I have a feeling this might not be a file permissions issue. Whatever the issue is, it only affects liveTV videos produced with your executable, not video clips with a defined ending. if it was a permissions issue the same behavior would occur with video clips as well. For example, if I start download a 10 minute video; and, start playing it back in SageTV after 30 seconds, it will continue playing it back until the very end. This isn't true doing the same thing with liveTV clips. Do you think youtube-dl changes the livetv file attribute to have a fake, unobtainable very long video clip lenth such as a 10 hour video? that way the play will try to play it all the way until the end no matter what.

Anyway.. thanks a million for helping us!

Originally Posted by Elgero

Item 1:

FLV videos can contain metadata at the beginning with information about the video file, like the duration, but this is not the case with live streams from YouTube. Your video player probably reads the timestamp of the last audio/video frame and gets the duration that way.

I'm not sure what the problem is, but I can change the file permissions in the code (it's set to write only now) and maybe that will solve the issue. VLC doesn't have any problems with playing the video while downloading it and keeps on playing, so you might want to try that.

The 2.00G that youtube-dl shows is simply the content-length header returned from the youtube server. When downloading a normal file it returns the size of the file in bytes. With a live stream it returns 2147483648 (2GB).

Item 2:

Yes.

Item 3:

Yes.

I'll do it tomorrow.

[Elgero]

Here's a new version.

https://rapidshare.com/files/18912184/YouTubeDL.zip

- Highest quality stream will be downloaded when format argument is omitted.
- Full url must be specified.
- Stream can be redirected to stdout and played with VLC.

I haven't done anything about the live stream getting stuck (yet). I have no idea what youtube-dl does and I'm not going to dig through the source code of youtube-dl or experiment for hours trying to find that out. If somebody can tell me how youtube-dl does it, then I might be able to fix it.

 -u <url>       YouTube url (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk).
 -l             Lists the available formats for this video.
 -f <number>    Video format to download (see -l).
                Highest quality available will be downloaded when omitted.
 -o <filepath>  FLV output path, if the filepath is - print stream to stdout.
                Video will be downloaded to the same folder as executable and
                YouTube page title will be used as filename when omitted.

Example #1 - List available formats:
  youtubedl -l -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk

Example #2 - Download to current folder with page title as file name:
  youtubedl -f 34 -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk

Example #3 - Dowload with path specified:
  youtubedl -f 34 -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk -o "C:\a.flv"

Example #4 - Print stream to stdout and play in VLC:
  youtubedl -f 34 -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk -o - | "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" -

[hasomaso]

Originally Posted by Elgero

Here's a new version.

https://rapidshare.com/files/18912184/YouTubeDL.zip

- Highest quality stream will be downloaded when format argument is omitted.
- Full url must be specified.
- Stream can be redirected to stdout and played with VLC.

I haven't done anything about the live stream getting stuck (yet). I have no idea what youtube-dl does and I'm not going to dig through the source code of youtube-dl or experiment for hours trying to find that out. If somebody can tell me how youtube-dl does it, then I might be able to fix it.

 -u <url>       YouTube url (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk).
 -l             Lists the available formats for this video.
 -f <number>    Video format to download (see -l).
                Highest quality available will be downloaded when omitted.
 -o <filepath>  FLV output path, if the filepath is - print stream to stdout.
                Video will be downloaded to the same folder as executable and
                YouTube page title will be used as filename when omitted.

Example #1 - List available formats:
  youtubedl -l -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk

Example #2 - Download to current folder with page title as file name:
  youtubedl -f 34 -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk

Example #3 - Dowload with path specified:
  youtubedl -f 34 -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk -o "C:\a.flv"

Example #4 - Print stream to stdout and play in VLC:
  youtubedl -f 34 -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk -o - | "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" -

woww thanks

[MKANET]

Thank you!!!

Elgero, it works perfectly! After further testing, it look like the "stuck video" issue isn't limited to your utility. I was wrong, it happens to youtube-dl as well; including raw youtube download using wget.

The problem I have with my player looks like it presumes the media file doesnt grow; and, only reads the file length when it first starts playback. If the player looks at the file size; then I doubt there's anything that can be done.

Having said that, great job! Your utility is actually more functional than the original youtube-dl utility! You may see lots of people wanting to use this.

Originally Posted by Elgero

Here's a new version.

https://rapidshare.com/files/18912184/YouTubeDL.zip

- Highest quality stream will be downloaded when format argument is omitted.
- Full url must be specified.
- Stream can be redirected to stdout and played with VLC.

I haven't done anything about the live stream getting stuck (yet). I have no idea what youtube-dl does and I'm not going to dig through the source code of youtube-dl or experiment for hours trying to find that out. If somebody can tell me how youtube-dl does it, then I might be able to fix it.

 -u <url>       YouTube url (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk).
 -l             Lists the available formats for this video.
 -f <number>    Video format to download (see -l).
                Highest quality available will be downloaded when omitted.
 -o <filepath>  FLV output path, if the filepath is - print stream to stdout.
                Video will be downloaded to the same folder as executable and
                YouTube page title will be used as filename when omitted.

Example #1 - List available formats:
  youtubedl -l -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk

Example #2 - Download to current folder with page title as file name:
  youtubedl -f 34 -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk

Example #3 - Dowload with path specified:
  youtubedl -f 34 -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk -o "C:\a.flv"

Example #4 - Print stream to stdout and play in VLC:
  youtubedl -f 34 -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk -o - | "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" -

[MKANET]

Elgero, I hope you dont mind. I shared your tool with youtube-dl users who need better handling of live TV video downloads.

BTW: I'm not sure if this is fixable or not. But, on some live TV videos, there is no format detected. The same thing happens with youtube-dl.exe

C:>youtubedl.exe -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJHdBB3YX9k
Specified format not found.

C:>youtubedl.exe -l -u http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJHdBB3YX9k
Available formats for this stream:

[Elgero]

Yes, that's fine.

I don't think it's easy to fix. Not all live streams are from YouTube. Some live streams are from other websites, but embedded on the YouTube website. The white house streams are from live.whitehouse.gov (Akamai) and as far as I know they provide rtmp streams.

[hasomaso]

hello Elgero,

thank you for the great youtube-dl tool, works perfect mate

can you please expand the tool and a few streaming sites integrate?

the sites are free...


for example this sites

1. http://xhamster.com/

2. http://www.thenewporn.com

3. http://www.tnaflix.com/

4. http://www.youporn.com/





thx Bro.
hasomaso

[Elgero]

Sorry, that's not going to happen. I spent several hours making this tool and it has only been downloaded 11 times in almost 3 weeks, so there isn't much interest in this tool. If I add those websites, then I'm basically just doing it for you and I'm not going to do that.

There are already a lot of tools out there that can download from all these websites.

[hasomaso]

Originally Posted by Elgero

Sorry, that's not going to happen. I spent several hours making this tool and it has only been downloaded 11 times in almost 3 weeks, so there isn't much interest in this tool. If I add those websites, then I'm basically just doing it for you and I'm not going to do that.

There are already a lot of tools out there that can download from all these websites.

hello Elgero,

i can understand you well, but you can force anyone
of course there are many download tools on the internet, but youtube-dl has certain something.

I would be happy, if you are integrating the pages in your great tool

my email you can find under my profile



thx
hasomaso

[Elgero]

Like I said, I won't do it. It's a 'YouTube' downloader that was designed for downloading from YouTube only. Adding other websites to the tool requires me to rewrite most of the tool and already nobody is interested. And if one of these websites changes something, then I am forced to update it. I'm really not interested in writing or updating a tool just for a handful of people, while I'm not using it myself.

Maybe you can contact the author of youtube-dl (another console youtube downloader), to add support for those websites. He already added xvideos.com, so he might add other websites as well.