[nogabebop23]

First sentence:

>> 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.

[pengaru]

> 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.

[dredmorbius]

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.

The Swiss Army knife metaphor is quite apt.

[nullc]

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.

[Polylactic_acid]

I use it on my government funded news stations video player because it requires turning on DRM.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

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.

[hiisukun]

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.

[ripdog]

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.

[IggleSniggle]

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.