This program is a tool for downloading album-playlists from youtube as audio files, with album cover-artwork attached.
- Windows 64-bit OS.
ffmpeg.exe
album-dl requires ffmpeg to work, if you don't have ffmpeg installed, visit:
https://ffmpeg.org/download.html
This program bases on the following projects:
- yt-dlp, a fork of youtube-dl: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
- youtube-dl: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl
- ffmpeg: https://ffmpeg.org/about.html
Ctrl + S: Save settingsEsc: Exit the programTab: Focus next fieldShift + Tab: Focus previous field
Press Ctrl + S or go to "File/Save settings" to save:
- directores
- window position/size
- alert-on-done checkbox state
- audio bitrate
These settings are automatically loaded each time album-dl is opened.
Each directory can be either a full or a relative path.
A directory where the downloaded album-folder will be moved,
e.g.: C:/Albums/
If the directory does not exist, it will be created.
Working directory with the following files:
yt-dlp.execonfig.txtcookies.txt(optional)
By default, working directory is set to (relative path): workfolder/ and all necessary files are provided there.
A directory containing ffmpeg.exe.
album-dl requires ffmpeg to work, if you don't have ffmpeg installed, visit:
https://ffmpeg.org/download.html
Used to name the album-folder as well as audio files.
Used in the album-folder name.
This playlist will be downloaded into .mp3's. If no artwork-playlist URL is provided, this one is used to download the album artwork as well.
Album artwork is downloaded from this playlist. If left empty, URL from "Playlist URL" is used.
During execution, album-dl's terminal prints out each executed command's output, as well as it's own info in that box.
Each execution's full output is stored in the log file, in album-dl.exe directory, although only untill the next execution overwrites it. Only the last execution's output is kept in log.
Albums Directory/
Artist - Album Name (Album Year)/
Track Number. Artist - Track Title.mp3
Track Number. Artist - Track Title.mp3
Track Number. Artist - Track Title.mp3
...
Track Number. Artist - Track Title.mp3
artwork.png
album-dl goes through following stages after the "Download" button is pressed:
- downloading best audio quality .mp4's
- downloading the album artwork
- getting the track titles
- converting .mp4 files into .mp3's
- removing the .mp4's
- renaming the .mp3's
- attaching artwork.png to .mp3's metadata
- creating destination album subfolder in the albums directory
- moving .mp3's into the destination folder
- moving .png into the destination folder
This program uses Windows commands to execute renaming and moving files as well as creating directories.
For extra-safety this program does not use the DEL command,
left-over files are instead put in the <working-directory>/Trash/ subfolder in the working directory
and you are free to delete contents of that subfolder manually.
However, there is no need to clear these files as album-dl
always overwrites left-over files with the same name, each time leftover files are moved there,
so as a result the amount of disk space taken by the <working-directory>/Trash/ subfolder does not stack,
instead it is around the amount of disk space taken by just the last run's left-over files.
In case of an age-restricted URL:
- get a youtube cookies dump into cookies.txt
- place cookies.txt in the working directory
- include the following line in config.txt: --cookies "cookies.txt"
The primary way of using youtube-dl/yt-dlp for downloading albums, in my case, used to be combining it with ffmpeg to get the songs from a playlist into .mp3's.
To simplify things a .bat script would be created to execute download, convert, MKDIR and MOVE commands.
Renaming files was initially done completely manually, although later a .bat script was also created for that purpose. However, that script still required filling track titles and artist/album data manually for folder/filenames.
Furthermore, album's cover artwork would be downloaded manually from the playlist's thumbnail into a .png file, then attached to .mp3's metadata using foobar2000 audio player.
Later on, during that process I would use a custom .js script to extract the thumbnail URL which was faster than extracting it manually from the HTML DOM.
To achieve further automation to facilitate expanding an offline music library at hand, album-dl has been created, which is the simplest form of that process known to me so far.
This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.
Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.
In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this software under copyright law.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
For more information, please refer to https://unlicense.org/