mdl is a tiny UNIX command line wrapper for yt-dlp) to download video/audio from popular sites.

Notes

• This tool does not add any functionality that does not exist in yt-dlp; it simply contains shortcuts for common download tasks with yt-dlp
• mdl will not overwrite existing files of the same name as the file in question
• This has only been tested on OS X Mountain Lion and macOS Sierra 10.12.6 and will not work on a non-Unix machine
• If you want more control than mdl offers, use yt-dlp directly

Dependencies

• yt-dlp
• Boost: The following files must exist after installation…
  • <header_include_directory>/boost/algorithm/string.hpp
    • eg, /usr/local/include/boost/algorithm/string.hpp
  • <header_include_directory>/boost/program_options.hpp
    • eg, /usr/local/include/boost/program_options.hpp
  • <library_directory>/libboost_program_options.a
    • eg, /usr/local/lib/libboost_program_options.a
• Xcode Command Line Tools
• GNU Make

Building mdl

• Run $ make (creates the mdl executable in the root of this project)
• Add the path to the mdl executable to your PATH environment variable or run mdl directly

Synopsis

mdl [options] <manifestFile>

Options

Option	Default	Description
-h,--help	N/A	Display help info
-t,--type	videoplaylist	Media type (audio
-F,--list-formats	N/A	List available download formats
-f,--format	mp3	Audio format (accepts formats specified by yt-dlp)
-i,--format-id	N/A	Download video whose format id matches specified regex (eg, "^480[pP]$")
-c,--closest-video-resolution	N/A	Download video with resolution closest to value specified (eg, 480)
-r,--rate	Unlimited	Download rate (eg, 420k, 4.2M, etc)
-q,--filter	best	Quality filter (eg, 22, 135, 136, best, worst, bestvideo, worstaudio, etc)
-s,--subtitles	Disabled	Include subtitles
-m,--manifest-file	manifest	Manifest file
-N,--dry-run	N/A	Show command line instead of downloading

Examples

Running mdl will, by default, look for a line-delimited text file in the current directory named manifest from which to download files. The files will be downloaded into the current directory

Contents of an example manifest file…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4GzetzGg4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3lAM_L3jR0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfOa1a8hYP8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YDmYMDEAPY

The following command line will download and extract the audio as mp3s (the default audio format) from the videos specified in a file named my_songs.txt...

$ mdl -t audio -m my_songs.txt

If the manifest file is the last argument, there is no need to specify -m or --manifest-file=<manifest_file>…

$ mdl -t audio my_songs.txt

Since mdl looks for a manifest file named manifest by default, the command line can be shortened to…

$ mdl -t audio

Changelog

• v0.3.0
  • Add "format id" option
  • Add argument names to options
  • Add "list formats" option
  • Add "closest video resolution" option
  • Add "dry-run" option
  • Update output template to make output file more unique to avoid file name clashes
  • Switch from "youtube-dl" to "yt-dlp"
  • Add empty database
  • Add "subtitle" option
  • Add "filter" option
• v0.2.0
  • Add -r, --rate command line option
• v0.1.0
  • lowercase mediaType variable instead of testing for variations in case (eg mediaType == "audioPlaylist" || mediaType == "audioplaylist")
    • convert common strings to const
• Initial build