Download youtube videos with html5 player

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nic007
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Download youtube videos with html5 player

#1 Post by nic007 »

Youtube is phasing out the use of flashplayer and almost all videos can now be watched with their embedded html5 player if your browser is new enough. Downloading a video is very simple. As soon as the video loads, you can just double right-click in the video window and select "save video as" from the popup menu. Rename the file to name.mp4

NB: If you have flashplayer installed and enabled in your browser settings, flashplayer will be your default player for youtube. In order to use the embedded html5 player, you will have to disable flashplayer in your browser settings first.
Last edited by nic007 on Sun 17 Jul 2016, 02:12, edited 2 times in total.

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Pete
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#2 Post by Pete »

On which browser?
That option does not exist in Firefox, at least not in the latest version.

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nic007
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#3 Post by nic007 »

I'm using Palemoon with Tahr. What do you get when you right-click or double-click when using Firefox?

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nic007
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#4 Post by nic007 »

Checked with the Seamonkey browser in Precise. Works the same. Don't use Firefox so can't check that one.

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drunkjedi
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#5 Post by drunkjedi »

I use a helper plugin extension from http://en.savefrom.net/user.php on Google chrome.
It's also available for Firefox and other browser.
It gives nice options of quality and shows size too for selection.

But there are many other options too.

I didn't try double click yet. But that option won't be available in chrome I think.

p310don
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#6 Post by p310don »

Nice find.

Doesn't work in chromium, and I assume wouldn't work in chrome.

Sailor Enceladus
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Re: Download youtube videos with html5 player

#7 Post by Sailor Enceladus »

nic007 wrote:Youtube is phasing out the use of flashplayer and almost all videos can now be watched with their embedded html5 player if your browser is new enough. Downloading a video is very simple. As soon as the video loads, you can just double right-click in the video window and select "save video as" from the popup menu.
Ah, "double right-click". I was just doing regular right-click on the video, and didn't see it on the menu, then I tried double-clicking on the video, which made it full screen. Double right-click worked, and showed a completely different set of options, in Firefox 28. The file was just called "videoplayback", so I renamed it to videoplayback.mp4 and it opened in GNOME MPlayer.

Playing Youtube videos in GNOME MPlayer is so much smoother than in the browser! :) Any my 100% CPU goes down to 30%

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drunkjedi
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#8 Post by drunkjedi »

p310don wrote:Nice find.

Doesn't work in chromium, and I assume wouldn't work in chrome.
Well google don't want you to download "their" videos and use it for your "personal gains."
lol.

Anyway try the helper extension from savefrom.net I linked.
I have been using it for a long time.
works really well.
and on other sites too.

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nic007
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Re: Download youtube videos with html5 player

#9 Post by nic007 »

Sailor Enceladus wrote:
nic007 wrote:Youtube is phasing out the use of flashplayer and almost all videos can now be watched with their embedded html5 player if your browser is new enough. Downloading a video is very simple. As soon as the video loads, you can just double right-click in the video window and select "save video as" from the popup menu.
Ah, "double right-click". I was just doing regular right-click on the video, and didn't see it on the menu, then I tried double-clicking on the video, which made it full screen. Double right-click worked, and showed a completely different set of options, in Firefox 28. The file was just called "videoplayback", so I renamed it to videoplayback.mp4 and it opened in GNOME MPlayer.

Playing Youtube videos in GNOME MPlayer is so much smoother than in the browser! :) Any my 100% CPU goes down to 30%
Thanks for pointing out that the file should be renamed. I forgot to point that out in the opening post for completeness sake..did so now.

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rcrsn51
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#10 Post by rcrsn51 »

Cool. I got this to work with Firefox after adding the .mp4 extension to the download.

Here's the next question. If you extract the audio from the MP4 using ffmpeg, how good is the quality?

I'm too lazy right now to track down the procedure. :wink:

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nic007
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#11 Post by nic007 »

rcrsn51 wrote:Cool. I got this to work with Firefox after adding the .mp4 extension to the download.

Here's the next question. If you extract the audio from the MP4 using ffmpeg, how good is the quality?

I'm too lazy right now to track down the procedure. :wink:
It depends on the original quality of the sound in the video. Apparently high quality youtube videos have a sound quality of 192kb/s (encoded to mp4a/aac), the others seem to be 128kb/s (mostly) so re-encoding not recommended. I have had the audio part of high quality videos re-encoded to 192kb/s (mp3) at times and that sounds okay. I'm really only interested in those videos which are generally audio only with perhaps a picture or two. In the latter case it's better just to play the downloaded file without re-encoding it again.
Last edited by nic007 on Sun 17 Jul 2016, 07:25, edited 1 time in total.

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Pete
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#12 Post by Pete »

Right, got it sorted in Firefox too.
On my system, if I have the flash lib, then the flash pop up options seem to take over the good stuff like being able to download videos.
Once I nuked flash, problem solved.
Thanks very much for the great tip nic007.

p310don
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#13 Post by p310don »

Here's the next question. If you extract the audio from the MP4 using ffmpeg, how good is the quality?
I have done this

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -i xxxx.mp4 xxxx.mp3
For older music videos I have had pretty poor results, but for newer stuff it works very well. Of course, your mp3 is only going to be as good as the original file.

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nic007
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#14 Post by nic007 »

p310don wrote:
Here's the next question. If you extract the audio from the MP4 using ffmpeg, how good is the quality?
I have done this

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -i xxxx.mp4 xxxx.mp3
For older music videos I have had pretty poor results, but for newer stuff it works very well. Of course, your mp3 is only going to be as good as the original file.
No, your resulting mp3 will always be poorer in quality than the original because the audio is being encoded again. Let's look at the audio part - an uploader will normally upload a sound file which is already compressed (let's say an mp3 file at 256kb/s). Now youtube encodes this file again to mp4a at either 192kb/s or 128kb/s (depending if it's part of HD video or not). So once published by youtube the audio part has in all prabability already been encoded twice (you will be lucky if the uploader actually uploaded the sound in wave format or at a high compressed bitrate). So, if you are going to convert to mp3 again, you are encoding once more which is not recommended for a file which is already encoded to either 192kb/s or 128kb/s. You are right that the very old youtube videos have an even lower audio quality.

Pelo

'Audacious' (or other) as defaut audio player

#15 Post by Pelo »

Being translated for our french users.
Until now, with Palemoon, i have been deleting flash plugin, and set 'Audacious' (or other) as defaut audio player in Palemon preferences.
You Tube not tried, only Musicbazaar. It does not works with Deezer.
But i get nice Mp3 files doing that, including art covers.

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