>> Web multimedia-content Swiss army knife youtube-dl
Come on, you've already shown your bias and I need to be on guard from that point on. I love youtube-dl and built an app that used it heavily for exactly what it says in the name: downloading media from YouTube. To pretend that's not it's primary and major purpose is incredibly disingenuous.
> To pretend that's not it's primary and major purpose is incredibly disingenuous.
I'm fairly confident some people use youtube-dl more on pornhub URLs than youtube URLs, what you say speaks more to youtube-dl's origins than its current state.
My principle use of youtube-dl is through other tools for multimedia playback, most typically mpv, mps-youtube, and other command-line media playback --- video rarely interests me, and the ability to throw randfom URLs at mpv and have it find and play the appropriate media files (sometimes YouTube, Twitter URLs w/media (https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/104565986372976258), often podcasts, other video hosting sites, Soundcloud, etc.), is quite the win.
In mpsyt I can curate search and lists for playback (painful or impossible with the Youtube Web client), mpv can take files with lists of URLs to play. Both use youtube-dl for media access
Very often audio-only for headless/background playback.
Also for offline playback when not on WiFi or hardline LAN link.
There's also considerable processing and metadata tools available, including grabbing transcripts from YouTube videos.
Youtube-dl downloads a lot more than from youtube.
I use it a more often on vimeo content embedded in webpages which usually won't play in my browser (presumably due to some privacy settings) than I use it on youtube.
It's primary and major purpose is to download videos from video platforms. One of the biggest advantages of youtube-dl is how universally it works: If a page hosts video, is even slightly common/known, and isn't primarily a warez site (youtube-dl specifically refuses to build support for those!), youtube-dl most likely supports it.
Not having to find a clean and working version of "<somesite> downloader" and install/learn it, and instead being able to rely on one piece of software is incredibly valuable.
One of the most recent things I downloaded is a Reddit video. Reddit makes the link annoying to find, but youtube-dl handles it.
I use it to watch twitch on devices that can't use the browser, and to watch videos from free TV services here in Australia in the same way, such as iview.
I do rarely use it for youtube, but given it supports so many websites, I think 'swiss army knife' is a pretty fair description.
Just because that's all you use it for doesn't mean that's all others use it for. I've seen the yt-dl issue tracker, it's swamped in non-youtube support requests.
I used it when I was a teacher to markup my students‘ videos when they submitted them to YouTube or Vimeo.
Part of the assignments were to produce content for a publicly viewable medium, and it was the easiest way to to get a certain consistency between submissions when I wanted my students to be focused on content, not files.
I also needed to have my own copy so that I had a provable record of the students work even if they decided to later take their assignments down.
>> Web multimedia-content Swiss army knife youtube-dl
Come on, you've already shown your bias and I need to be on guard from that point on. I love youtube-dl and built an app that used it heavily for exactly what it says in the name: downloading media from YouTube. To pretend that's not it's primary and major purpose is incredibly disingenuous.