Download YouTube Videos : The Linux Way !

</p>
There are some sites like [KeepVid.com](http://keepvid.com) which
allow users to input a YouTube link and they would give you the
download link. So get the download link from this site and download
the <span style="font-weight:bold;">flv</span> file.

<p>
</span>

1. Firefox Plugin

   There is a firefox extensionwhich allows you to download YouTube videos as you watch them. I haven’t tried this.

2. Command Line Tools

   This is the safest and best way (for CLI junkies :-D). Download the script YouTube-dl (thanks to Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez for this nice script). Just put that script in your ~/bin or /usr/bin directories or somewhere in the application path.

   To download the flv video do this :

   youtube-dl

   e.g : youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

</p>
-   Get <span style="font-weight:bold;">ffmpeg</span> for your
    system. SuSE users can get it
    [here](http://packman.links2linux.de/package/ffmpeg).
-   Convert the <span style="font-weight:bold;">flv</span> video to
    <span style="font-weight:bold;">avi</span> (or any other format)
    using ffmpeg :
    </p>
    <p>
    `ffmpeg -i my_flash_video.flv the_avi_file.avi`
-   Now drag and drop the avi file into your favorite video player n
    watch the video :-)

</p>
<p>

Note : I found

the downloader in youtube-dl quite slow. So I tweaked it a bit(I don’t

know python :-D) to use an external downloader

(axel rocks!). Open the

file youtube-dl in your favorite editor and change the following lines

282 # Abort here if in simulate mode

283 if cmdl_opts.simulate:

284     sys.exit()

282 # Abort here if in simulate mode

283 if cmdlopts.simulate:

284     condprint(video_data.geturl())

285     sys.exit()

That will make the script output the downloadable video link to the

standard output (when run in simulate mode). Now write the shell script

#!/bin/bash

if [ \$# -ne 2 ]

then

echo “Usage : \$0 \ \extension>”

echo “e.g : \$0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA stevejobs”

else

outputfile=”.avi”

todnload=youtube-dl -s $1 | tail -n 1 -

echo “Got the file..”\$todnload

axel -n 100 \$todnload -o \$2”.flv” # wget -c \$todnload -O \$2”.flv” .if you don’t use axel

echo “Download Completed…”

ffmpeg -i \$2”.flv” \$2\$outputfile  # get the avi file

fi

utube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA steve_jobs

Just drag the *.avi to kaffeine and enjoy the speech by Steve Jobs !