HOWTO: Download YouTube Stereo MP3s

[andrew.46]

Hi SuperMike,

Well, a problem might be the different syntax found with all the different versions of ffmpeg found with Ubuntu. The file I have on my Desktop from youtube is the following:

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'Rammstein_Mutter.mp4':
  Duration: 00:03:45.90, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 338 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(und): Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16
    Stream #0.1(und): Video: h264, yuv420p, 352x264, 24.99 tb(r)

And conversion of audio only with the svn ffmpeg, decreasing the bitrate a little is as follows:

andrew@skamandros:~/Desktop$ ffmpeg -i Rammstein_Mutter.mp4 \
-acodec libmp3lame -ab 192k Rammstein_Mutter.mp3
FFmpeg version SVN-r16683, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
  configuration: --disable-debug --enable-shared --disable-static 
--enable-postproc --enable-avfilter --enable-pthreads --enable-libtheora 
--enable-libvorbis --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libmp3lame 
--enable-libxvid --enable-libx264 --enable-libschroedinger 
--enable-libfaac --enable-libamr-wb --enable-libamr-nb 
--enable-libspeex --enable-libgsm --enable-nonfree --enable-gpl
  libavutil     49.14. 0 / 49.14. 0
  libavcodec    52.11. 0 / 52.11. 0
  libavformat   52.24. 1 / 52.24. 1
  libavdevice   52. 1. 0 / 52. 1. 0
  libavfilter    0. 2. 0 /  0. 2. 0
  libswscale     0. 6. 1 /  0. 6. 1
  libpostproc   51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
  built on Jan 19 2009 12:03:54, gcc: 4.3.2
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'Rammstein_Mutter.mp4':
  Duration: 00:03:45.90, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 338 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(und): Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16
    Stream #0.1(und): Video: h264, yuv420p, 352x264, 24.99 tb(r)
Output #0, mp3, to 'Rammstein_Mutter.mp3':
    Stream #0.0(und): Audio: libmp3lame, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 192 kb/s

and this produces a stereo 192 kbs mp3. I am not sure how the stock Ubuntu ffmpeg handles aac audio though. But the sound and picture quality of the unaltered, downloaded mp4 file is pretty impressive anyway do you think?

Andrew

[Sharepointengine]

Hi,

Smash this is unbelievable!!!!
Extremely excellent effort.
This is acutely awfully chill…..

[SuperMike]

Well, a problem might be the different syntax found with all the different versions of ffmpeg found with Ubuntu. The file I have on my Desktop from youtube is the following

Andrew.46: Looks like YT screwed with us again. I can no longer convert the /tmp/Flash* (renamed song.flv) to song.mp3 by either:

# ffmpeg -i song.flv -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192K song.mp3

nor

# ffmpeg -i song.flv song.mp3

EDIT: On the conversion, I keep getting:

[flv @ 0xb7ef8110]Unsupported video codec (7)

[andrew.46]

Hi,

Hmmmm.... I am not sure about that. I tested the following:

$ youtube-dl 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwL0G9wK8j4'

Sorry about the boring clip . It converted successfully with ffmpeg as follows, I am not sure about the value of increasing the frequency or adding the stereo setting:

ffmpeg -i EwL0G9wK8j4.flv -acodec libmp3lame -ar 44100 -ac 2 -ab 112k test.mp3

But it certainly produced the required stereo mp3 soundtrack. I should stress that I am not any form of expert with ffmpeg though, just a casual user. For real expertise there is:

HOWTO: Compile the latest ffmpeg and x264 from source
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=786095

Andrew

[Ender27182818]

Thanks for the work on this.

I run Intrepid Ibex, and I was having trouble with ecasound outputting the mp3 file directly. Seems there's a disconnect between ecasound and lame. Intrepid uses a newer version of lame and and older version of ecasound which doesn't properly understand lame's newer message output.

Anyways, I changed the script a bit so that ecasound does it's mono-to-stereo thing and produces a wav file, then lame directly encodes the mp3 from the .wav. This is definitely sub-optimal, but it IS an effective workaround for Intrepid.

Of course, original credit goes to SuperMike and others in this forum that have posted information. I just connected the final link for me, and believe in giving back.

My version also keeps most of the files around. /tmp/{filename}.flv is kept, and {filename} (mono).mp3 and {filename} (sim-stereo).mp3 are both produced. The only file I delete is the *.wav file. I do this because I've found on certain videos, I prefer the sound of the mono file.

#!/bin/bash
#
# Bash script to convert YouTube Video to Simulated Stereo MP3
#
# Public Domain
# Contributors: Supermike, Crouse, Kai Vehmanen, Chriss.Hi, John-Michael Mulesa, Eli Ribble
#
mkdir -p ~/mp3;cd ~/mp3
read -p "YouTube URL: " ur
read -p "Filename: " nv
echo;echo;
youtube-dl "${ur}" -o "/tmp/${nv}.flv"
ffmpeg -i "/tmp/${nv}.flv" -f mp3 -vn -acodec copy "${nv}.mp3"
ecasound -i "${nv}.mp3" -etf:8 -o "${nv}.wav"
lame "${nv}.wav" "${nv} (sim-stereo).mp3"
mv "${nv}.mp3" "${nv} (mono).mp3"
# Comment out the next line to save the .wav file
rm -f "${nv}.wav"
# Comment out the next line to save the (mono) file
#rm -f "${nv} (mono).mp3"
# Comment out the next line to save the .flv file
#rm -f "/tmp/${nv}.flv"
echo;echo;
echo "File ${nv}.mp3 has been created"

-Eli Ribble

[SuperMike]

Ender27182818: Don't forget, you can also add "&fmt=18" on the end of SOME (keyword, SOME) YouTube videos and get better sound quality, if not stereo, and thus ecasound might not be necessary. However, I've noted that some videos already come in stereo, and some videos do not benefit with fmt=18 at all -- it all depends and you must test with your ears before running youtube-dl script.