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| -rw-r--r-- | doc/todo/switch_from_quvi_to_youtube-dl.mdwn | 41 |
1 files changed, 41 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/todo/switch_from_quvi_to_youtube-dl.mdwn b/doc/todo/switch_from_quvi_to_youtube-dl.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 000000000..31c1a73f0 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/todo/switch_from_quvi_to_youtube-dl.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +quvi does not seem maintained (last upstream release in 2013) +and it supports many fewer videos than youtube-dl does. + +The difficulty with using youtube-dl is it, by design, does not +provide a way to probe if it supports an url, other than running it +and seeing if it finds a video at the url. This would make `git annex +addurl` significantly slower if it ran youtube-dl to probe every url. + +It is possible to use youtube-dl to download arbitrary non-video files; +it stores the file to disk just as wget or curl. But, that's well outside +its intended use case, and so it does not feel like a good idea to make +git-annex depend on using youtube-dl to download generic urls. +(Also, youtube-dl has bugs with downloading non-video +urls, see for example http://bugs.debian.org/874321) + +So, switching to youtube-dl would probably need a new switch, like `git +annex addurl --rip` that enables using it. + +Currently `git annex importfeed` automatically tests for video urls with +quvi; it would also need to support `--rip`. + +Both of those changes would need changes to user's workflows and cron jobs. +git-annex could keep supporting quvi for some time, and warn when it uses +quvi, to help with the transition. + +Another gotcha is playlists. youtube-dl downloads playlists automatically. +But, git-annex needs to record an url that downloads a single file so that +`git annex get` works right. So, playlists will need to be disabled when +git-annex runs youtube-dl. But, `--no-playlist` does not always disable +playlists. Best option seems to be `--playlist-items 0` which works for +non-playlists, and downloads only 1 item from playlists (hopefully a fairly +stable item, but who knows..). + +Another gotcha is that youtube-dl's -o option does not fully determine the +filename it downloads to. Sometims it will tack on an additional extension +(seen with youtube videos where it added a ".mkv"). +And --get-filename does not report the actual filename when that happens. +Only way I can find to avoid this wart is output to stdout with "-o -", +but that would prevent resuming. Seems it would have to be run in a temp +dir and the file moved out to the git-annex location when done, which would +prevent stuff that operates on incomplete downloads from working. |