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Simple Video/Subtitle Downloader

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This script provides a simple graphical interface for the yt-dlp command. No installation is required. Just open the software, paste the video link, and click "Start Download" or press Enter to download the video.

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Screenshot of the main interface (V2.0.0 version)

System Requirements

System Requirements	Description
Operating System	Windows 7 and above
Other Software	ffmpeg (important, must be installed)

ffmpeg installation and configuration of environment variables

1. Download ffmpeg from the ffmpeg official website.
2. Open "Edit System Environment Variables" settings.
3. Find the variable named "Path" in the system variables and click "Edit".
4. Add the installation directory path of ffmpeg (e.g. "C:\path\to\ffmpeg").
5. Confirm the changes and close the window. Restart your computer or open a new command prompt to enable the environment variable.

Basic Features

• Video download: You can specify videos (up to YouTube 8K) and audio of any quality. It supports downloading playlists and thumbnails.
• Support for most video websites: It supports Bilibili, YouTube, Youku, TikTok and almost all video websites. See Supported Websites for details.
• Support for keyword search: Enter a search keyword in the video link to download the most matching video from YouTube.
• Subtitle download: You can download subtitle files (if any) in the specified language and format. Check "Translate Subtitles" to translate them into the desired language.

Tutorial

Download the software, no installation is required. After opening, paste the video link and click "Start Download" or press Enter to download the video.

FAQ

• Import cookies: For some videos that require login or membership to watch, you may need to check "Import Cookies" to download (Version 1.1.2 and above).
• Download short videos: Since the video quality is the maximum height of the video, when downloading TikTok, YouTube Shorts or other short videos, the video quality should be selected to be greater than 1920.
• Default current folder: The download folder is optional. The default is to download to the videos folder under the current software directory.
• Download danmaku: To download danmaku files from Bilibili and other danmaku websites, check "Download all subtitles" (danmaku download option added in V2.1.0)
• Subtitle translation and automatic subtitle generation:
  • Except for YouTube, not all websites support subtitle translation;
  • Before V2.1.0: To download automatically generated subtitles, the video must first have automatic subtitles. Then check "Translate" and change any line on the right to LANG_CODE-orig (LANG_CODE is the language code). Change another line to blank. For example, change en to en-orig (English automatic subtitles)
  • V2.1.0 and above: To download automatically generated subtitles, select "auto" for "Language". To translate automatically generated subtitles, check "Translate into" and select the language you want to translate into.

Self-compiled exe file

python module installation

Please make sure the following python modules are installed on your computer: yt-dlp, ttkthemes, pyyaml. Execute the following command to install:

pip install yt-dlp ttkthemes pyyaml

In the project directory, execute the following command to run:

python .\yt-dlp-simple-gui.py

Uncompressed packaging

In the project directory, execute the following command to package the result into a single executable file yt-dlp-simple-gui.exe (including all dependencies):

pip install pyinstaller pyinstaller-versionfile
create-version-file metadata.yml --outfile versioninfo.txt
pyinstaller -F --onefile .\yt-dlp-simple-gui.py -i download_icon.ico --version-file=versioninfo.txt --paths C:\users\dell\appdata\local\programs\python\python310 \lib\site-packages\yt-dlp,websockets,pycryptodomex,brotli,certifi,mutagen,ttkthemes,pillow,pyyaml --clean

To improve the exe startup and loading speed, it can be packaged into a file directory:

create-version-file metadata.yml --outfile versioninfo.txt
pyinstaller -F --onedir .\yt-dlp-simple-gui.py -i download_icon.ico --version-file=versioninfo.txt --paths C:\users\dell\appdata\local\programs\python\python310 \lib\site-packages\yt-dlp,websockets,pycryptodomex,brotli,certifi,mutagen,ttkthemes,pillow,pyyaml --clean

At this point, all the results are packaged into a folder, which includes an executable file yt-dlp-simple-gui.exe and dependent files (default) required for execution of the executable file.

Use virtual environment and UPX compression package

Execute the following code:

pip install pipenv
pipenv install
pipenv shell

Wait until the virtual environment starts, and then execute the following code:

pip install yt-dlp pyinstaller ttkthemes pyyaml pyinstaller-versionfile
create-version-file metadata.yml --outfile versioninfo.txt

Choose one of the following two lines of code:

:: generate a single executable file exe
pyinstaller -F --onefile .\yt-dlp-simple-gui.py -i download_icon.ico --version-file=versioninfo.txt --clean
:: Generate file directory (can be packaged into zip)
pyinstaller -F --onedir .\yt-dlp-simple-gui.py -i download_icon.ico --version-file=versioninfo.txt --clean

Then copy UPX.exe to the same folder as pyinstaller.exe. Modify the .spec file generated by pyinstaller, change upx=False to upx=True, and then execute the following code:

:: (if already True, skip this line)
pyinstaller yt-dlp-simple-gui.spec

pipenv --rm
exit

qt version packaging

After Version 2.0.0, the Qt framework (PyQt5) is used to construct the software, and additional steps are required for compilation.

1. Clone the source code of yt-dlp locally: git clone https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp .git
2. Copy all the source code of the yt-dlp project to the qt-gui folder of this project
3. Execute the following command in the folder (if it is python3, execute the python3 command):

python -m pip install -U pyinstaller -r requirements.txt
pip install yt-dlp pyyaml pyqt5 pyinstaller pyinstaller-versionfile
create-version-file metadata.yml --outfile versioninfo.txt
:: generate a single executable file exe
pyinstaller --onefile yt-dlp-simple-gui-qt.py --add-data "constants.py;." --add-data "ui.py;." --add-data "download_icon.ico;." --add-data "yt-dlp-simple-gui.ui;." --add-data "about_ui.py;." --add-data "about.ui;." --add-data "translations/*.qm;translations" -i download_icon.ico --version-file=versioninfo.txt --clean
:: Generate file directory (can be packaged into zip)
pyinstaller --onedir yt-dlp-simple-gui-qt.py --add-data "constants.py;." --add-data "ui.py;." --add-data "download_icon.ico;." --add-data "yt-dlp-simple-gui.ui;." --add-data "about_ui.py;." --add-data "about.ui;." --add-data "translations/*.qm;translations" -i download_icon.ico --version-file=versioninfo.txt --clean

Console Window can be hided from adding parameter --noconsole after the command since V2.1.0.

Multilingual switching

There are .ts and .qm files under the translation folder, where .ts files are in xml format, and .qm is a binary file. Proceed as follows:

1. Modify the ui files such as yt-dlp-simple-gui.ui in the Qt Designer software, and then execute the following code in the current qt project directory (qt-gui):

pyuic5 yt-dlp-simple-gui.ui -o ui.py
::...(other ui files)

2. Compile the ts file, the code is as follows (the middle of the language code is an underscore _, not a horizontal bar -):

pylupdate5 yt-dlp-simple-gui-qt.py ui.py -ts translations/en.ts
pylupdate5 yt-dlp-simple-gui-qt.py ui.py -ts translations/zh_TW.ts
::...(other languages)

3. Open all ts files with Qt Linguist, add translations, and select "Generate All".
4. In the getFont() function of yt-dlp-simple-gui-qt.py, add the font of the corresponding language, and add the switch_language method of the corresponding language in the runAction function;
5. There are other places where language parameters need to be added: constant.py, some initialization places can be written according to the format of the language added before.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.