youtube-dl is awesome. I built a bash script around this use case, with some additional bits just for file management. I run "yety https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thnXzUFJnfQ" and poof, the mp3 is dropboxed and available on all my devices.
There you have all stream files in a nice json format, which means opus and m4a for audio files.
I have a python project which is very quick to gather metadata, because I wanted to have a responsive YouTube app without using the browser. Had no time for it recently, though.
or you could just generate direct link (@) in the browser and download m4a without any external programs.
@ "Download YouTube Videos as MP4" did that, but author removed that script from the internet (got google nastygram maybe?). Iv got a copy at https://github.com/raszpl/smplayer4YT
In their previous tutorial [1] their encoding settings show that they're targeting roughly 128 kb/s VBR, which is what YouTube AACs typically are, so that doesn't explain it. AAC (and Opus for that matter, which YouTube also often has) are superior formats, and lossy encoding should only happen once if possible- so this honestly makes me cringe a bit. In this case the (probably already lossy) source audio is lossily converted by YouTube and then again by ffmpeg/LAME with rather low bitrates at each step. A lot of quality is lost along the way.
Support for Opus is unfortunately still somewhat sparse, but AAC support is essentially universal on modern devicese. So I can't think of any reason to favor this approach over:
youtube-dl -f bestaudio[ext=m4a] "$URL"
Even YouTube's 128 kb/s copies won't satisfy audiophiles.
I can definitely understand you cringing about the re-encoding, but I just wanted to point out that the reason that we took this approach was simply to give a semi-plausible real-world example of how tools like aws-serverless-express [1] and Exodus [2] can be used to build useful APIs with AWS Lambda [3] and AWS Gateway [4]. These articles are primarily meant to be educational tutorials that people can use as a reference when writing and deploying their own APIs. The whole "converting to MP3" thing is just an easily understandable premise which lays out a clear goal for the tutorials to build upon.
https://podsync.net/ + Pocket Cast = <3 - doesn't work always unfortunately.
For audio only I use https://huffduffer.com/ (well it's just adding single youtube videos to a customized podcast feed)
I'm pretty sure there are a few ways to do this: try inspecting the html of the page, you can find an xml url there. There used to be an 'export to rss' option buried somewhere in the sidebar, don't remember if that still works. On mobile so can't verify.
In regards to algorithmic hooks (nice shorthand, I'm borrowing that), there are various extensions available on the major browsers which block comments, the sidebar, videos loading in the player at the end of the video, etc.
I am finally quite happy with my defence kit, I should write about it somewhere. /r/nosurf has plenty of tips anyway.
4C. You agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Service itself, the Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.
The less specific, the more wiggle room for lawyers. You know perfectly well that they don't offer download buttons. I'm actually surprised that ytdl still works, so I guess it's not a serious problem actually and no need to obscure further than they already do. I as an amateur could not figure out how to get the files of yt or soundcloud. Reading scdl.py it looked simple enough but I'd need to register a developer api key. For ytdl I guess the source has become bloated and obscure by now so i wouldn't even try. Having a bunch of dependencies already seemed too cluttered.
Maybe technically against the terms, but frankly, I think pretty much no-one will find it immoral if it's for your own use only and you're not distributing. Probably even explicitly legal in many jurisdictions that allow personal copies.
I haven't had nearly that much trouble with more recent videos, which seem to have excellent sound reproduction. It very much depends on the original upload quality though. Some older videos (anything stuck on 240p or lower) are from a time before HD uploads were a thing, and surely used more aggressive compression.
Some uploaders are also simply unskilled; I'm mostly after video game soundtracks to listen to in my car, and especially for newer soundtracks you have to watch out for the uploaders trying to be "first" to gain the popularity, while sometimes using poor settings or a bad rip. There's nothing youtube can do to improve bad source audio.
they seem to use Opus with 160 kbit bitrate now, you can view the formats with youtube-dl -F. Bandcamp disallows using compressed source audio, i wish youtube would too.
