Saturday, January 7, 2017

YTDL_Batch - A batch youtube downloader program

YTDL_Batch is a modest Windows front-end written in AutoIt for an awesome CLI program called youtube-dl. Although youtube-dl, in and by itself, does a great job of batch downloading online videos (check out the overwhelming list of supported sites), I feel, however, the need to write a simple front-end to be able to use youtube-dl easily.

The real chore is gathering the URLs or links of the videos you want to download. I wrote "ClipLog.exe" specifically for this task. It monitors the clipboard, copies and appends all URLs/links to a text file (ClipLog.txt). You will be amazed by how many links of interesting video thumbnails you could acquire in an hour. All you have to do is copy and copy without ever pasting which literally cuts the work in half.

Now that "ClipLog.txt" is full of video URLs, you then proceed by dropping this file onto the file "YTDL_Batch_[DropClipLogHere].exe". A batch file and a corresponding log will be generated and you're done! I really like the workflow that I defined, and I think that you will like it too.

Features:
1. Removes duplicate URLs.
2. Youtube-dl supports downloading whole playlists.
3. YTDL_Batch can resume an interrupted batch file and youtube-dl can resume an interrupted download.
4. YTDL_Batch displays the current download on the title (e.g. 35/284) and logs the time it started and ended.
5. Each generated batchfile downloads to its own corresponding sub-folder.


Download YTDL_Batch HERE.

youtube-dl's supported sites

P.S. Expect AutoIt's UPX false positive on your AV.