CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonwindowsffmpegffprobeyoutube-dl
FlyingNimbus
FlyingNimbus

Reputation: 445

How to extract audio with youtube-dl on Windows

I want to extract audio from a video downloaded with youtube-dl on Windows. I got youtube-dl working, but am unable to extract the audio. This problem is caused due to not having the correct audio codes installed.

When I try to extract audio it tells me the following:

WARNING: unable to obtain file audio codes with ffprobe

The youtube-dl manual says:

-x -extract-audio    convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe)

How do I install ffprobe or ffmpeg? Do I install this on Windows, or do I install this as a Python extension?

My OS is Windows 7.

Upvotes: 8

Views: 31844

Answers (5)

SamC
SamC

Reputation: 96

I use packages available on conda-forge to accomplish this on Windows. The yt-dlp script should be in your %PATH% after installation in a conda environment. Note: I tested this with Git Bash, not Windows Terminal/Powershell

(yt-dlp) $ conda install ffmpeg yt-dlp
(yt-dlp) $ yt-dlp --version
(yt-dlp) $ ffmpeg --version
(yt-dlp) $ yt-dlp --extract-audio --audio-format wav https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc

You can also do this with Python code. Most of the Python code below was taken from yt-dlp documentation.

import yt_dlp


URLS = ['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc']


# https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#extract-audio
ydl_opts = {
    'format': 'm4a/bestaudio/best',
    # See help(yt_dlp.postprocessor) for a list of available
    # Postprocessors and their arguments
    'postprocessors': [{  # Extract audio using ffmpeg
        'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
        'preferredcodec': 'wav'
    }]
}
with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
    error_code = ydl.download(URLS)

Upvotes: 0

gary133
gary133

Reputation: 337

You can easily get win-ffmpeg using chocolatey

and if you still can’t get youtube-dl and ffmpeg to work together,

maybe you can do it in two steps:

  1. Get mp4 or avi : youtube-dl url

  2. Extract audio

    ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn -codec copy out.mp3

Upvotes: 0

th.sigit
th.sigit

Reputation: 121

EDIT

Future users may want to download the latest build from ffmpeg.org

My rep doesn't allow me to add a comment so I will put in here.

As per Sep 18, 2020 http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/ is closed, but still accessible via Web Archive. The complete downloads are still available from here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20200918193047/https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

I have made the following files/versions available for Windows users from my Google Drive but please don't take these as granted, and scan for malware or viruses as always:

ffmpeg-4.2.2-win32-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.2.2-win64-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.2.3-win32-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.2.3-win64-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.3-win32-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.3-win64-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.3.1-win32-static.zip
ffmpeg-4.3.1-win64-static.zip

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oj3VndOC-bGhfpNcHW3otIR--V2wxdG-?usp=sharing

Once downloaded, I extracted the latest build (4.3.1) on Windows 10 and copied all the .exe (ffmpeg, ffplay, ffprobe) to the same directory as youtube-dl, and then run:

youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...

Upvotes: 5

Sunil Kumar
Sunil Kumar

Reputation: 545

A quick fix for Windows users:

  1. Download the ffmpeg package from http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/, unzip it, copy ALL the contents of the Bin directory to the directory where youtube-dl.exe is located.

  2. Using DOS navigate to the directory where youtube-dl is located and run using the command:

    youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3

Upvotes: 7

Fredrick Brennan
Fredrick Brennan

Reputation: 7357

ffmpeg is not a Python module. Take a look at the code of youtube-dl in the FFmpegExtractAudioPP class.

It uses this call to figure out if the executable exists or not. It checks in your current path:

subprocess.Popen([exe, '-version'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()

You'll need to download the Windows builds of ffmpeg and put them in your current path, probably making sure that they do not have .exe at the end of their names.

Upvotes: 13

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