Looking To Download YT Videos & Tracks From Soundcloud- What's The Best Method(s)?

Operating Systems & Open Source
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Well, ever since I made my last post on here about wanting to do my own mix/compilation for Youtube, I have made some progress on the list itself even though I’m not done yet. So far, my strategy has been listening to certain soundtracks, adding to/modifying the tracklist that I’ll be using & then adding tracks/audio files to a folder on my desktop that I will use for the project itself. Unfortunately, I appear to have hit a snag.

So 1 of the audio files I downloaded directly off of Youtube has an extra piece after the end of the song that I was hoping to edit out. I fired up DaVinci Resolve --(Which happens to be my choice for a video editor.)-- & attempted to import the file so I could edit it. But after I selected the file & hit OK for it to import, it just wouldn’t do ANYTHING! I tried experimenting on my own & found out that it would successfully import other MP3 files, but not the 1 that I was hoping to edit myself. Which got me to thinking that maybe the extension I was using might not be all that great. (TBH, I don’t remember what it’s called.)

“But what is your goal this time?” you might be asking; “What do you hope to accomplish?” Simple: I would like your feedback/advice/tips/suggestions/recommendations on how I can download YT videos & audio files from Soundcloud so that when I go to import them in DaVinci Resolve I won’t have any issues like what I eluded to earlier. I have already checked out some websites out there that can download/convert certain file types to what you want. (Say MP4 to MP3, for example.) The only problem I have with the vast majority of these sites is that a lot of them DON’T have options for bitrate which kind of matters to me for this project!

Now I know I have 3 options: I can download the audio files I want using a browser extension, using a 3rd-party software, or via a site/service that can download/convert them for me. But I’m honestly not sure which would be my best option & what specifically to use. :thinking:

I do have some requirements for what I’m looking for: just something that works without any hassle, has great audio quality, & I’d prefer that whatever I use has the option for me to set the bitrate to what I want. Also, I have checked with the content creators both on Youtube & Soundcloud & I do have everyone’s permission to use their content as long as I credit them which I will in the video’s description once I get to that.

With that being said, I look forward to hearing your feedback. If any of you happen to need more details or have any questions for me, do let me know & I’ll be sure to fill you in! Thanks in advance to anyone who can help! :slight_smile:

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youtube-dl is the de facto standard for grabbing YT videos and soundcloud.

You’ll have to get used to it’s command line interface because all the GUI based projects basically died.

All the other software claiming to do it are freemium versions of youtube-dl… except youtube-dl is already free and open source…

http://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html

use the EXE file in a command prompt to get it to do what you want it to do (Windows)

Or on Linux, it’s as simple as pip3 install youtube-dl

3 Likes
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Well, I’ll have to admit I’m pretty sure I haven’t heard of youtube-dl up until this point. I assume this tool has bitrate options as I said that’s an important feature I’m after? BTW, I checked out the link you provided, but how exactly would I install it on Windows? :thinking:

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Depends how you define “bitrate options”. But you can pass the -F argument to list all available formats and qualities. Then use -f <number> to download the numbered format you want.

Windows exe is right at the top…

Alternatively it’s also on chocolatey:

https://community.chocolatey.org/packages/youtube-dl

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So essentially, it is just an application, right? (Not sure if it’s custom though given I’ve never used it before…)

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I mean… everything is an application sooo yes? Not sure what you mean with Custom. Obviously it’s not included in Windows…

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Well, by “custom” I simply meant it was like built from scratch or something. So how would I go about using this tool for what I’m wanting to do? This is definitely something I haven’t tried before.

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They have a very extensive guide on their GitHub page:

Download the exe, open a command line (or power shell), navigate to whereever you put the exe and then go ham with it.

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Oddly enough, I didn’t see any options for a ReadMe when I looked at the link provided to me earlier. So far, I have downloaded the .exe file, but I didn’t happen to catch where exactly on my pc it was being downloaded to.

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I don’t think it’s anywhere on the download page, who knows why.

Check your Downloads in Chrome or Firefox or whatever you’re using, it’ll tell you where it saved it.

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I managed to find it by checking my recent downloads since I was Brave at the time. I’m not really sure if the tool itself was downloaded to my pc or if it’s piece of software you use for downloading the tracks/audio you want via CMD/Powershell. That’s something I’ll just have to find out on my own as I experiment with the tool itself. Is it easy to use for beginners since I don’t know a lot of CMD/Powershell commands?

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Basics:

-F (case sensitive) lists the available qualities

--merge-output-format mp4 -f bestvideo[ext=mp4]+140 downloads a MP4 in the best possible quality.

--restrict-filenames makes sure the filename is safe for other programs

-o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" names your file in a sane way

You will need a static build of FFmpeg in the same folder. https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/ffmpeg-release-github

Use the essentials zip version. Take the binaries out of /bin and copy to whereever you extracted your youtube-dl folder as it’s essential for it to work.

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Welp, it’s definitely command-line based. Wouldn’t I just be able to keep the commands simple? Like if I wanted the files I’m after to be downloaded right to my desktop instead of a specific folder? Or say if I wanted to download a particular file (or set of files) & I wanted the bitrate to be say 320kbps? If I can’t take a few shortcuts on this I understand. Just wanting to keep it simple though.

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What? I’m not really sure what you’re getting at here…

youtube-dl is the tool you use to download the audio you want, using CMD or PowerShell.

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The most basic of basic usage of it is just doing youtube-dl.exe <yourlinkhere>, that will pick the “best” quality for audio and video by default and put it in the same directory where the exe is located.
You can use youtube-dl.exe -F <yourlinkhere> to list all available formats (that are numbered), e.g.:

[tarulia@localhost]~% youtube-dl -F "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lxxjz6-lmM"
[youtube] 4lxxjz6-lmM: Downloading webpage
[info] Available formats for 4lxxjz6-lmM:
format code  extension  resolution note
249          webm       audio only tiny   50k , webm_dash container, opus @ 50k (48000Hz), 1.91MiB
250          webm       audio only tiny   61k , webm_dash container, opus @ 61k (48000Hz), 2.31MiB
251          webm       audio only tiny  115k , webm_dash container, opus @115k (48000Hz), 4.36MiB
140          m4a        audio only tiny  129k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.2@129k (44100Hz), 4.88MiB
160          mp4        256x144    144p   69k , mp4_dash container, avc1.4d400c@  69k, 30fps, video only, 2.62MiB
278          webm       256x144    144p   71k , webm_dash container, vp9@  71k, 30fps, video only, 2.69MiB
242          webm       426x240    240p  110k , webm_dash container, vp9@ 110k, 30fps, video only, 4.18MiB
133          mp4        426x240    240p  155k , mp4_dash container, avc1.4d4015@ 155k, 30fps, video only, 5.85MiB
243          webm       640x360    360p  192k , webm_dash container, vp9@ 192k, 30fps, video only, 7.25MiB
134          mp4        640x360    360p  290k , mp4_dash container, avc1.4d401e@ 290k, 30fps, video only, 10.92MiB
244          webm       854x480    480p  308k , webm_dash container, vp9@ 308k, 30fps, video only, 11.61MiB
135          mp4        854x480    480p  513k , mp4_dash container, avc1.4d401f@ 513k, 30fps, video only, 19.34MiB
247          webm       1280x720   720p  590k , webm_dash container, vp9@ 590k, 30fps, video only, 22.24MiB
302          webm       1280x720   720p60  846k , webm_dash container, vp9@ 846k, 60fps, video only, 31.86MiB
136          mp4        1280x720   720p  994k , mp4_dash container, avc1.64001f@ 994k, 30fps, video only, 37.44MiB
298          mp4        1280x720   720p60 1381k , mp4_dash container, avc1.640020@1381k, 60fps, video only, 52.01MiB
303          webm       1920x1080  1080p60 1306k , webm_dash container, vp9@1306k, 60fps, video only, 49.19MiB
299          mp4        1920x1080  1080p60 2653k , mp4_dash container, avc1.64002a@2653k, 60fps, video only, 99.91MiB
308          webm       2560x1440  1440p60 4855k , webm_dash container, vp9@4855k, 60fps, video only, 182.84MiB
315          webm       3840x2160  2160p60 10896k , webm_dash container, vp9@10896k, 60fps, video only, 410.31MiB
18           mp4        640x360    360p  374k , avc1.42001E, 30fps, mp4a.40.2 (44100Hz), 14.11MiB
22           mp4        1280x720   720p 1122k , avc1.64001F, 30fps, mp4a.40.2 (44100Hz) (best)

(note I’m on Linux, so no .exe there)

To pick a format from that list you need to use the number in the first column. To get an MP4 audio you would use:

[tarulia@localhost]~% youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lxxjz6-lmM" -f 140
[youtube] 4lxxjz6-lmM: Downloading webpage
[download] Destination: L1 Giveaway! TerraMaster TD2 - Thunderbolt w_RAID-4lxxjz6-lmM.m4a
[download] 100% of 4.88MiB in 00:00
[ffmpeg] Correcting container in "L1 Giveaway! TerraMaster TD2 - Thunderbolt w_RAID-4lxxjz6-lmM.m4a"

Obviously there is a lot more you can use for more flexibility, but that is the basic usage.

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I did notice that the Youtube Video Downloader file itself is still in my downloads folder. Although I’m not entirely sure where it got installed to on my pc. I feel like I’m really getting into the weeds here as I’m not really the best when it comes to command-line types of commands & tasks. A lot of the commands you have used as examples here- I assume the vast majority of them are for Windows except Linux where noted?

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Well it doesn’t install itself, and in this case it doesn’t need installation at all.
As long as you have the right MSVC++ version (listed on the download page), you just use it as is.
General hint: “installing” software in Windows is for the most part bullshit and 99% of software doesn’t need an “installation” procedure. All it does it unpack files. In this case the files are already unpacked.

It’s a good place to start. The command line is incredibly powerful when used correctly.

The commands are the same for both, the only difference is the .exe ending, because that’s what the file is called (Linux executables don’t have “file extensions” for the most part, but that’s beside the point).

Also one more thing I overlooked earlier:

You can’t specify the bitrate directly. You get a list of available formats that youtube (or soundcloud) provides, and that’s it.
You can technically transcode to a higher bitrate but there is literally nothing to be gained from this. With the lower bitrate a lot of the acoustic information is already gone, and it won’t be magically brought back with a higher bitrate. In fact it can make the quality worse, even on higher bitrates. So just leave the files as they are.

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OK. But I thought it was a common fact that a higher bitrate means the audio is just “higher-quality”. Isn’t that true? If I’m wrong somehow, then feel free to correct me.

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No that is true (well, generally speaking, there’s a couple caveats), but what I mean is this:

When you look at the list, the highest bitrate that YouTube provides is format 140 with 129kbit:

140          m4a        audio only tiny  129k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.2@129k (44100Hz), 4.88MiB
^                                         ^                                    ^

The way audio encoding works is by deleting information that the ear either cannot hear at all (i.e. certain frequencies), or that is “imperceptable” to most human ears. If you now take this file and re-encode it in a higher bitrate, it won’t restore that deleted information.

Hypothetically speaking:
IF Youtube provided a lossless audio format (e.g. WAV or FLAC or ALAC), you could then transcode this to any bitrate you like, and the higher the bitrate you choose, the higher quality of an encode you will get.
BUT Youtube does not provide any lossless formats (and most youtubers don’t even upload lossless in the first place because they know this), so there is no point in re-encoding anything.

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So you’re saying trying to download an audio piece or track at anything higher than 129kbps from Youtube would be pointless hence I should just leave it as is. But about Soundcloud though? :thinking: From what I understand, going with a higher bitrate can be beneficial but only in certain use cases/scenarios.