Easiest way to download YouTube videos and convert them to any format including .mp3 in 2022

Methods of downloading YouTube videos have changed over the years. Here are two of my preferred methods for doing so in 2022.

tl;dr: easy:

Use a Youtube-Mp3 converter site, if you know how to Google then you’ve probably found one of these already.

tl;dr: is asked to fix printers:

Get the latest ‘youtube-dl’ fork like yt-dlp. Use ffmpeg to convert.


Easy

Yeah there’s really nothing else you need here

The Other Method

  1. Get yt-dlp. Put it in a folder somewhere in C:\ like ‘youtubedownload’. Rename the .exe file to yt.exe.
  2. Get ffmpeg. Put it in the same folder. You could rename this .exe file if you want as well, the names will be the commands used in the future.
  3. Press the WINDOWS key, and type ‘path’.
    (INCOMING WALL OF PICTURES)
  4. Choose ‘Enviroment Variables’
    enviroment variables pointer
  5. Then,
    edit path detailed pointer
  6. You can then add a new entry for the ‘path’ environment variable. The system uses this to allow the executing directory to be in any directory listed in the path. Meaning, when you run a command in CMD, the system will always check any directories in the ‘path’.
    add new path entry
  7. Click OK on all open windows after adding the directory the exes are in to the ‘path’.

Example Usage

We will be using this song from YouTube: Moving Romance – Yoann Garel. It’s also available on Soundcloud here.

Right click on your Desktop > ‘Open Command Window Here’. If you don’t have this option in the context menu, you can download these registry edits to add it.

Next type the name of the yt-dlp .exe followed by a space and the url. So if you renamed it ‘yt’ like stated previously, it would look like so:
yt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIMdcJWOEFM
Hitting enter will start downloading that video to the desktop directory you just launched the CMD window in. (Hint! If you want to use a Soundcloud URL like we have below, that will work too! Isn’t technology great?)
yt-dl download example

If you want to convert the resulting video to a proper audio file like .mp3, you have two options. You can use the quick solution right from yt-dl:

yt -x --audio-format mp3 [video_url]

Or to download a playlist:

youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s"

You can ignore missing (“unavailable in your country”, or removed) videos with an -i flag. If your playlist isn’t working and the URL contains v=<ID>, remove it so just the ?list= item is in the query string.


Or, since ffmpeg is useful for other tasks (and you should have it anyway), you can use it directly. A simple syntax of an ffmpeg command that would convert to an mp3 would look like ffmpeg -i [input file name] [output file name].[output file extension]. But wait, we don’t want to type that long, ugly file name in that yt-dlp just spit out onto our desktop… luckily we have a trick for that.

Run ‘dir /x‘ in the open CMD window.dir /x example yt
This is an extremely helpful windows command that will show ‘short’ filenames for files, making working with longer file names a breeze. Windows is telling us in the screenshot above that we can refer to the video we just downloaded as ‘moving~3.web’. Now assuming no renaming of the ffmpeg .exe took place in the setup step, our command simply becomes:

ffmpeg -i moving~3.web output.mp3
ffmpeg -i output.mp3 example

And you’re done! You now have ‘output.mp3’ on your desktop saved as the song we were just playing on YouTube. I’ve combined this process with scripted metadata adding/titling for an offline library. And, with the right yt-dlp commands it can even become an efficient way to export entire playlists of music.


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Published 2022-03-06 02:23:43

The Stack Overflow Macro Keypad is Cute

Stack Overflow decided to release their April Fools joke as a real product on Drop, as a Macro Keypad. I thought it looked cool and might be a good place to display a few artisans or something. They allow to reconfigure the keys using something akin to QMK’s software, and there is some custom work going into bringing the full QMK configurator to the device, but for now you can do simple remappings.

Unfortunately it’s not Bluetooth enabled but at least it comes with a USB C connector. Even still, it’s a bit much to hook up an entirely separate 3 key setup all the time as a joke. It works better on a machine that won’t be moving frequently such as a video editing workstation or desktop setup.

😊


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Published 2022-01-04 21:45:00

Blog Style Refresh

Wow, it’s been a long time since I began this blog. Four years and counting, to be precise, and lots of stuff has happened since that point. I realized I hadn’t touched the blog css or general theme since inception, so I decided to spruce it up a little bit. The style refresh was much needed and I think it looks pretty good!

It’s cool to look over the archives and see what I’ve written since that point.

That’s all this blog is for, after all. 😄 Writing practice, and fun. Hopefully whomever visits gets a small amount of enjoyment from it as well.

Here’s the first post that was ever made on the blog:
https://gmr.dev/blog/2017/02/17/moved-to-wordpress/


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Published 2021-06-18 00:52:11

Is the U.S. already in a recession?

The longest economic expansion the U.S. has ever seen may finally be over, thanks to the Coronavirus (COVID-19).

Even with U.S. hiring surging with a 273,000 gain right ahead of the virus, and the unemployment rate residing at 3.5%, the markets have seen steep declines these past weeks.

And, the data that was just released is based on job data from the 12th of February, before the virus started having a major impact on world events.

New research from M.I.T. suggests that the U.S. was vulnerable to a recession even before having the virus. In January, the chance of a recession in the next few months was about 70%.

If stocks give up all their gains that they’ve been enjoying for the past 12 months, the chance of a recession will grow to 80%, says Will Kinlaw, head of a research unit State Street Corp.

And, there were a few other signs a recession was close before the virus even hit. Industrial production was down 0.8% from last year, and the treasury yield curve was close to inversion in January. Inversion of the yield curve, where long-term interest rates are lower than short term ones, is a massive indicator of a recession.

Whether the recent pain in the markets is because of the virus, or the sign of something much bigger to come remains to be seen, but it’s likely the economic impact of COVID-19 will be felt for months to come.


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Published 2020-03-06 15:36:06

Welcome to the Age of Quantum Computers

From Bloomberg:

A team of scientists at Google’s research lab announced last week in the journal Nature that they had built a quantum computer that could perform calculations in about 200 seconds that would take a classical supercomputer some 10,000 years to do.

An age ofQuantum supremacywas duly declared.

Google’s claim to have achieved quantum supremacy that is, to have accomplished a task that traditional computers can’t was premature.

Although the specific problem that Google’s computer solved won’t have much practical significance, simply getting the technology to work was a triumph; comparisons to the Wright brothersearly flights aren’t far off the mark.

Congress should fund basic research at labs and universities, ensure the U.S. welcomes immigrants with relevant skills, invest in cutting-edge infrastructure, and use the government’s vast leverage as a consumer to support promising quantum technologies.

A more distant worry is that advanced quantum computers could one day threaten the public-key cryptography that protects information across the digital world.

This is big for a number of reasons but do not get too excited/scared yet! Quantum computing is still a number of years away. IBM was also quick to point out that Google’s estimate for how long “Summit” (the fastest computer in the world currently Google estimated against), was incorrect. According to papers published after Google’s report, “IBM’s engineers reckon, [adjustments would] allow Summit to breeze through the job in a mere 2½ days. Therefore, according to IBM, Google had not shown quantum supremacy after all.”

Well, that was quick.

What does that mean for their supposed success? Well, it’s still impressive. Google demonstrated a monstrous leap in technological prowess and got one step closer to proving a plethora of theories that many computer scientists are still eagerly waiting to take a crack at. P = NP anyone?

But wait, not so fast. Technically yeah, Google was wrong, but you still have to compare and contrast the differing performance results. Two and a half days is, after all, still about 1,200 times longer than 3 minutes.

Second, each extra qubit doubles the memory required by a classical machine put up against it. Adding just three qubits to Google’s challenger machine would have exhausted Summit’s hard disks. Quantum computers do not face such explosively growing demands. Google’s machine may not quite have crossed the finishing line. But it has got pretty close to doing so.

Additionally, Bloomberg has an excellent point when it says the U.S. should invest in this technology, if they aren’t already. They likely are behind the scenes, as a foreign entity such as China being the first to own a Quantum Computer is very scary. As Bloomberg pointed out, Quantum Computers make breaking passwords look like a walk in the park. Our current method of storing passwords would be under direct attack from Quantum Computing, and it’s one of the reasons the research is so dangerous.

Let me end your day off with this badass robot (fair warning, some of the video is fake) that some very talented individuals are developing.


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Published 2019-11-01 11:35:18

The Death of Flash… and the End of an Era.

Every millennial or Gen Z remembers playing Flash games in class on a school computer, or playing Super Smash Flash on your home computer. Those were magical, simpler times. But all of that is coming to an end, very soon. Flash is dead.

But that’s okay. Newer technologies are almost where they need to be to be a full-fledged Flash replacement. WebGL, WebAssembly, and HTML5 canvases have shown great promise and can fill Flash’s absence. There is one question though, what happens to all the existing flash content on the web?

Good question. And there’s no good answer… right now. Some are attempting to immortalize it as best they can, as is the case with Flashpoint, which is focused on saving flash games and making sure you can play them in the future when flash dies. It seems to be a worthy project and I encourage you to support them as best you can.

So, why is Flash being killed? Numerous reasons, chief among them being that Flash player is proprietary and Adobe controls it. Another is that Flash is a gaping security hole.

In terms of websites still using Flash… those websites will simply cease to function in 2020. For most browsers, including Edge and IE: “Users will no longer have any ability to enable or run Flash,” said John Hazen, a program manager on the Edge team. Google has a similar timeline, and by the end of 2020, you will not be able to run Flash on any major browser.

My thoughts on the matter are pretty neutral. I was a flash developer myself, and so it does make me slightly nostalgic and sad to think that all of that is going away. On the other hand though, technology is always evolving, and being a software engineer unfortunately means going with the flow sometimes. I look forward to seeing what advancements WebGL brings.

Again, if you’re feeling nostalgic about all those Flash games you used to play, I recommend checking out one of the numerous services wanting to immortalize them, like Flashpoint mentioned above. Go check out their Discord server and say hello!

Concussion, my last flash game I made, is luckily available online still. 😉


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Published 2018-10-06 14:51:46

Be careful with app signing keys

Recently, I received an email from Google Play services. “Your app has been removed from the Google Play Store for a policy violation”, or something like that. How odd, I thought. I don’t remember doing anything against their terms of service. The email revealed that I didn’t have a valid privacy policy inside the app or on the store listing.

Oh. Right. The whole GDPR thing. It was time to write some privacy policies. After doing so, I began the process of digging up old files to old apps to make the necessary changes to the code. After about 2 hours of reinstalling Android Studio (my hard drive was wiped as some readers may remember), I began the process of exporting the app from Unity to an .APK.

Eventually, I was able to upload the finished .APK to Google’s servers. However, the Play Console threw an error at me; “The signatures do not match”. Wait, what? It’d been too long since I’d actually done this process. I googled the error to remind myself and broke out into a cold sweat.

Apparently, you generate a .keystore file upon first creating an Android app to sign the application with. It prevents people from uploading versions that aren’t originally from you, in the event that a developer’s account got hacked or something. There was no way to recover said .keystore file if you didn’t have it anymore, meaning there was no way to update my app. Ever. A full, in-depth system scan revealed no .keystore files. Luckily, with the two brain cells that were still functioning, I managed to remember that the other day I had deleted the app-which-I-was-updating’s Android version off my hard drive, because there was no real difference between the iOS and Android version, and I thought it was redundant. Perhaps it was in there?

I checked my Recycle Bin and breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t emptied it. It was still there. Opening the folder, the first thing I saw was a “user.keystore” file at the very bottom of the file list. A quick test confirmed that was the one. Phew.

Apparently those things are important. Don’t lose ’em, kids.


HEY, LISTEN! It’d be really cool if you checked out the app here on the play store, since it just got updated. 😉


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Published 2018-09-19 15:02:16