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Is there a decent youtube downloader?

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Curt:
http://www.youtubedownloadersite.com/ -Renegade (January 06, 2013, 09:00 AM)
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Isn't that what was tried and had its inadequacies pointed out in the OP, (YTD/FYTD)? -4wd (January 06, 2013, 09:28 AM)
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-apparently not:

1) I'm very grateful for all these suggestions all unknown hitherto to me, -helmut85 (January 06, 2013, 12:05 PM)
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But hey, unknown abbreviations and lack of links can do that.

Renegade:
Hey, here's a wicked cool project that if it doesn't do exactly what's needed, it could:

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/21053/MyDownloader-A-Multi-thread-C-Segmented-Download-M

Now, it's a Code Project project, and so it's really meant for programmers, but still, it does Youtube, and since it's open source (CPOL licensed) it can be changed and added to.

I use some of the functionality quite a bit, so I might just well check it out. -- Haven't tried it yet, but from my experience with the Code Project, stuff there is usually pretty darn good.

helmut85:
Remember Laura Nyro.

Renegade:
Phew! That was a long and pretty comprehensive write up!  Good on ya there~! :Thmbsup: :D

And even for Renegade's beloved "YouTube Downloader and Converter", you'll need to write a many-mouseclicks (!) macro in order to put the download on a single key, i.e. these developers are unable even to implement some little keyboard shortcuts, which would be a strict minimum for 30-bucks-a-year sw imo. Sorry, I always get harsh in the end for being overwhelmed by dissatisfaction, but I simply don't understand this blatant, ubiquitous lack of understanding of users' even most basic needs, all sorts of free and paid sw combined, with rare exceptions.
-helmut85 (January 07, 2013, 07:35 AM)
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I'm not tied to any specific piece of software, except through experience, and I've just never had many real problems with YTD there.

Now, to be fair to the authors of this kind of software, they have a tough job. I'd like to outline just a bit of what they face...

The generic term for this kind of software is a "scraper". All scraper software suffers from the problem of web sites updating their code and then the scraper breaking. This requires vigilance and work to keep things smooth. i.e. The software *WILL* break. That's a given. (I've written this kind of software before many, many times.)

So, you're stuck with having to get users to update the software. This is a real pain for the users, but believe me... it's a MUCH greater pain for the developer/author. I'll skip the nastiness there - but you can probably imagine the horrible nastiness associated with updating - I've been called names and accused of malicious intent simply for talking about having an automatic updating mechanism that lets users choose if they want to update... There is simply NO pleasing some people.

For YTD, I've simply kept it up to date. I had one short period where they couldn't update it quickly enough, but I've got the current version, and it's working fine for what I need - e.g. downloading videos and playlists and converting, etc. This will happen with all scraper software.

For global shortcut keys, that's an entirely different can of worms. Suffice it to say that you need to be judicious with them, and that browser integration isn't all that simple when you do client software (tonnes of issues there - I'll skip them here).

But I'm not sure I read which you'd decided upon. Please to post your final decision as I'd like to try that out. It seems like you've more than done your homework, so I'd like to take advantage of your experience there from the purely user-perspective. :D

Again, thanks for posting all that info there!  :Thmbsup:

4wd:
I think you missed my point about Bulk Youtube Video Downloader, (BYTubeD), addon and DownThemAll!, (DTA).

You use BYTubeD to manage the batch download, (collect URLs, select quality, read from list, etc), and it uses DTA to do the actual download, skipping already existing files.

You don't use DTA for management of the URLs at all and you can choose the target folder - it defaults to whatever is set in Firefox under Options->General.

BTW, if you lost  "1 giga" of drive space after installing Firefox and a couple of addons, you've seriously got something wrong with your installation.  Mine's under 50MB in total including quite a few addons.

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