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Author Topic: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions  (Read 4385 times)

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Steve C.

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MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« on: October 06, 2012, 08:20:15 PM »

Am I the only person getting a lot of restriction on what used to be an easy conversion of youtube to MP3 conversions?

I do like the youtube TOTM, nice to watch the fingering (plus, I don't know why this is so, but Clive appears to getting younger and happier), but

The soundcloud files, when they are offered, provide much nicer sounding, easier to access files for saving the tunes and playing them back in a loop for learning.
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Lester

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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2012, 08:37:22 PM »

Seems Google, owners of YouTube, has had pressure brought by various recording companies and RIAA to block the on-line audio strippers.

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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #2 on: October 06, 2012, 08:42:09 PM »

Am I the only person getting a lot of restriction on what used to be an easy conversion of youtube to MP3 conversions?

I do like the youtube TOTM, nice to watch the fingering (plus, I don't know why this is so, but Clive appears to getting younger and happier), but

The soundcloud files, when they are offered, provide much nicer sounding, easier to access files for saving the tunes and playing them back in a loop for learning.

Dorian Gray?!?
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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #3 on: October 06, 2012, 08:51:23 PM »

Bit more time consuming but you can use Audacity. You may need to follow the following instructions if you use Win 7.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_recording_computer_playback_on_windows.html

Clive Williams

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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #4 on: October 07, 2012, 12:40:12 AM »

but Clive appears to getting younger

I wish! :-)

If there's a video I want to keep, I simply use firefox with a suitable youtube download plugin (currently using Youtube Downloader 3.6) to download the video, but there are others. I don't normally want to convert them to mp3, but there are all manner of online and offline converters that will do that job for you quickly - I use Applian, but there are free alternatives. Beware of DVDVideoSoft's offerings however; they come with an ad toolbar which is quite... insistent.

I think the trick to getting decent sound quality on youtube videos is to upload them at *at least* 480p resolution; the sound quality drops noticeably when you go down to the next lowest level 360p.

Cheers,

Clive

Andrew Shead

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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #5 on: October 07, 2012, 04:02:12 AM »

I use the DownloadHelper 4.9.10 plug-in for Firefox to download YouTube videos, but I haven't used it lately though it has worked well in the past.

If you just need the audio then there are applications that will intercept and record the audio stream before it reaches the computer speakers. I use outRec on my Linux machine, which records to either mp3 or ogg format files that are then editable using Audacity.
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Thrupenny Bit

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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #6 on: October 07, 2012, 10:06:36 AM »

Another Firefox user here.
I always worry about the plethora of Youtube downloaders available on youtube and was worried about what exactly was being downloaded, so followed forum advice and went to Firefox.
I tend to convert to 'ipod compatible' and pop it onto there to enable me to view a video.
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Andrew Wigglesworth

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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #7 on: October 07, 2012, 02:37:38 PM »

I know a few people here use GNU/Linux, so they may find some of this useful.

This is what I use, though I'm certain that there are other ways of doing all this as there always are on GNU/Linux.

These are some command line programmes ... no, not scary but simple. The first two are in the Debian repos, so they will be on Debian derivatives too (you know who you are) and many other distros. They are "cclive" and "youtube-dl".

You go to the directory that you wish to download into, put the programme name followed by the URL of the web page you wish to download the video from, and there you go.

If you put in the programme name followed by --help then you will get a list of options for all sorts of things to do with video quality, file names, bandwidth throttling etc etc. With youtube-dl there are some options for automatically extracting audio files using ffmpeg (or probably avconv in newer versions, not that you'd notice as an end user).

There is also a programme called "clive", though this is no longer actively developed and the developers recommend "cclive".

These are very easy to install, just like any programme from a repository, and easy to use. Below is something slightly more complicated (not much in reality) to install but just as easy to use.

Since youtube occasionally change their setup then cclive and youtube-dl sometimes have a few issues until new versions of them and the libraries they use get into the repos. For this reason I also have a copy of the development version of "get_flash_videos". That is, not the version in the Debian repository.

I use git (a distributed version control system) to get the latest version. There's a page on the "get_flash_videos" website detailing ways in which to get the latest code ( https://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/wiki/Installation ), but this is what I do/did.

First you need to install git. It's already on my systems since I use it every day, but it is not a standard install. On Debian and Debian derived distros.

# aptitude install git

This will have to be done as root of course, or if your setup uses sudo,

# sudo aptitude install git

Then create a directory somewhere for the programme to live in and in that directory run:

# git clone https://github.com/monsieurvideo/get-flash-videos.git

That will download everything that you need. It includes a compiled (ie. ready to run) "get_flash_videos" file.

To upate it all, go back into the directory you used "git clone" in and run:

# git pull

This will pull new files onto your computer.

You can run "get_flash_videos" from its own directory if you wish, but it is more convenient to have the programme on the GNU BASH path so that you can run it anywhere by just using its name.

In the file ".bash_profile" (note the preceding dot) in your home directory add a line along these lines:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/your_username/path/to/file/directory

on my box it is as follows:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/ecadre/myfiles/scripts

I keep all sorts of scripts that I have written in that directory, including a sym-link to "get_flash_videos". In your case you will probably just want to point directly at the directory containing the "get_flash_videos" file.

When you've added the line to your bash profile it will append your addition to the machine's path (where it looks to find executable files) every time you log in. You probably don't want to log out and back in again right now, so you can reload BASH's settings:

# source ~/.bash

OK, now you can use "get_flash_videos" in much the same way as cclive and youtube-dl, follow it with "--help" to get info on some extra settings you can use.


NEXT: Using GNASH.

GNASH (a free software replacement for Adobe Flash) will play videos on Youtube (and many other places) in a web browser. You'll find it on all the big distros at the very least.

In GNASH you can set its preferences to save media it plays to a directory on your box. Whilst GNASH is playing a video, right-click on the video and you will get a GNASH menu pop-up, on the media tab tick "save dynamically loaded media to disk" and choose a directory to save it all in.

LASTLY(ish).

If you like programmes that do it all for you, then have a look at Miro. It's in the Debian repos (and lots of other distros) and although I've only ever looked at it briefly, I'm assured that its "great", "really kool" and all that kind of thing. It downloads, plays, converts, hooks up to media devices, plays "channels" from all over the web etc. Oh, and its all free software of course :-)

http://www.getmiro.com

The (ish).

Oh, converting stuff to different formats and audio files. There are a plethora of ways to do it, but you could do worse than trying out VLC (it's availible for Windows and Mac as well). It's a great video player that plays just about anything you can throw at it, it will also convert to masses of formats and leave the video out if you wish just to have an audio file.


Glossary:

repo = repository. Where a GNU/Linux distribution (eg. Debian) keeps all of the files (packages) needed to install thousands of different programmes and libraries. Your computer connects to it over a network (usually the internet) and a packaging manager programme manages what is installed and what you wish to install/uninstall. It also gives security updates and bug fixes for all the programmes in the repository.

BASH = "Bourne again shell", it's essentially the programme that interprets and implements what you type into the command line. There are other shells, but BASH is pretty much default on most GNU/Linux systems.

distro = distribution = For example Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu (OK, I've finally mentioned it), Trisquel (a 100% free software derivative of Ubuntu). It's a combination of programmes, settings etc that together run a complete GNU operating system.

Not really "glossary", but, the "#" above simply indicates the command line, don't type in the #.

Any questions?  :-)


Edited: corrected typos
« Last Edit: October 07, 2012, 03:12:33 PM by Andrew Wigglesworth »
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Andrew Shead

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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #8 on: October 07, 2012, 02:54:21 PM »

I know a few people here use GNU/Linux, so they may find some of this useful.

Thanks for that. I should take a look a Miro. With GNU/Linux there are always multiple ways of reaching one's objective and I find that when something doesn't work I don't become apoplectic as I once did with Microsoft, having wasted money on their software. Unfortunately for the average computer user, GNU/Linux can be challenging though Canonical has done wonders for usability with it's Ubuntu distribution.
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Steve C.

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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #9 on: October 07, 2012, 03:21:27 PM »

Thanks for the many ideas.  Will start with the easiest ones.  I do have Audacity so may try that also.  Still want to shout out for the soundcloud folks, those are ready to go, as is.  Regards,  S.
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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #10 on: October 07, 2012, 04:11:51 PM »

I know a few people here use GNU/Linux, so they may find some of this useful.

Indeed. It was a useful list of things to try.
On the the few occasions I've wanted to download a video I've used one of the browser plugins to do that. I wonder, though, if either those plugins or cclive and youtube-dl will work if YouTube has worked to disable the downloading of videos - though of course they can't make it completely impossible or you wouldn't be able to view it at all.

I've recently discovered the joys of ffmpeg. It looks scary with so many options, but most of the time the default action does the right thing and it works out what sort of file you want from the extension you put on the filename.

I think the trick to getting decent sound quality on youtube videos is to upload them at *at least* 480p resolution; the sound quality drops noticeably when you go down to the next lowest level 360p.
That's interesting. I used to have bad YouTube audio until I started using 720p on the basis of advice somewhere else on the web, and that (amongst many other suggestions that didn't help) was the only thing that made a clear improvement. I don't remember whether the bad ones were 480p or 360p...
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Ray

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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #11 on: October 07, 2012, 05:35:08 PM »

I think the trick to getting decent sound quality on youtube videos is to upload them at *at least* 480p resolution; the sound quality drops noticeably when you go down to the next lowest level 360p.
That's interesting. I used to have bad YouTube audio until I started using 720p on the basis of advice somewhere else on the web, and that (amongst many other suggestions that didn't help) was the only thing that made a clear improvement. I don't remember whether the bad ones were 480p or 360p...

As far as I can tell, sound quality reaches it's best at 480p, after that you're just increasing video quality
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Andrew Wigglesworth

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Re: MP3 converters/You tube restrictions
« Reply #12 on: October 08, 2012, 01:17:05 AM »

I know a few people here use GNU/Linux, so they may find some of this useful.

Indeed. It was a useful list of things to try.
On the the few occasions I've wanted to download a video I've used one of the browser plugins to do that. I wonder, though, if either those plugins or cclive and youtube-dl will work if YouTube has worked to disable the downloading of videos - though of course they can't make it completely impossible or you wouldn't be able to view it at all.

I've recently discovered the joys of ffmpeg. It looks scary with so many options, but most of the time the default action does the right thing and it works out what sort of file you want from the extension you put on the filename.


I'm glad it was of some use ;-)

On the question of downloading the Youtube videos ... well the answer is in the question. Essentially they can't really stop it.

I actually wrote one of the first Youtube download scripts for GNU/Linux (it was a convoluted BASH script of all things). It came about from a chance comment about the possibility of doing such a thing and I had a go at it. After a very short time I succeeded. I didn't continue with my script as much more flexible things came along soon afterwards.
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