On 2023-06-19, Chris Schram <
chri...@me.com> wrote:
>> What's hilarious is what it says about the iPad on that web site.
>
> Yes, there will probably never be a version of ClipGrab for iPad.
Your suggestion to use ClipGrab turned out to be a great idea for PCs.
https://clipgrab.org/ suggestion seems to be a nice app as it says it
downloads via a GUI the videos for YouTube and FaceBook and says it
converts to all the industry standard formats MPEG4, MP3, WMV, OGG, FLV or
WebM (noticeably absent is the insane M4V that iPhones tend to use).
https://download.clipgrab.org/clipgrab-3.9.7-portable.exe
Name: clipgrab-3.9.7-portable.exe
Size: 73728520 bytes (70 MiB)
SHA256: 0AE8656F4C65673D75544CFF54721CBFC586EDD6E8B4B2A2070930684920411E
It puts 198.2 MB into C:\Program Files (x86)\ClipGrab
The only license it asks you to agree with are
ClipGrab licenses
QT licenses
GNU licenses (for ClipGrab, Qt and ffmpeg)
Notably absent are Google, Apple or Microsoft licenses to be agreed to.
I was surprised to see the venerable ffmpeg in that distribution since for
decades it seems I had to always add ffmpeg over lame due to legal
restrictions on distribution (did those USA/EU patents finally expire?)
I was surprised also when ClipGrab, upon first use, asks to install the
"youtube-dlp" (which I thought had been deprecated in favor of "yt-dlp".
It says "ClipGrab uses youtube-dlp in order to download videos from the
Internet. youtube-dlp is developed by an independent team of Open Source
developers and released into the public domain. Learn more on
github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp. Click on Continue to download youtube-dlp.
The relevant unpacked executables seem to be
Name: clipgrab.exe
Size: 1119744 bytes (1093 KiB)
SHA256: 10770DA581CC85D55A286D42A0428ACCAFE6C7910BC640CC4264DA7FB26DAFA4
Name: ffmpeg.exe
Size: 52176384 bytes (49 MiB)
SHA256: E79D9B4BD7B0420B974EB58EB15D6F072EE939F98ACC93314A4CC750C6B7099D
Name: python.exe
Size: 97808 bytes (95 KiB)
SHA256: CA9F2A394EA9A7E0EE58CC39C7F2DCEB4D539223DFBADA1124A215921B0D767D
I looked all over for a physical youtube-dl.exe but I couldn't find it.
I guess I should have run a before-and-after scan, but I didn't.
Perhaps it incorporated the youtube-dl into the executable?
(Again, I should have run a before and after hash, but I didn't).
> The original poster did not seem to need that.
The original poster wasn't clear since the op didn't ask but the ng list
included the iphone users (who have caused all the unnecessary ruckus).
Their chosen platform is nirvana for them but it doesn't work for them so
what they do is make excuses saying they never need to do anything on it.
Since ClipGrab uses a youtube downloader and since it also uses ffmpeg,
what I think it adds to the mix above what we already have is the GUI.
That's probably what the Python was for. The GUI does a search, for
example, based on keywords you can enter. So I entered the keywords
"Russian troops enter Ukraine Army trenches" which gave me a nice display
of 16 videos with a large thumbnail for each, along with the description.
It was very easy to use & see (which is a wonderful feature of the GUI).
I had to go back to the OP to find what the original age-restricted URL was
as none of the thumbnails were blurred out as they would have likely been.
The original URL is crazy long for some reason unknown to me though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SSrXOkCRd8&pp=ygUWdWtyYWluZSB0cmVuY2ggd2FyZmFyZQ%3D%3D
And it didn't like that in the keyword field as it brought me to a
different tab called the downloads tab which then said "Please wait while
ClipGrab is loading information about this video" and then it found it in a
few seconds (maybe ten seconds).
There were format pulldowns for "Original, mpeg4, wmv (Windows), ogg
theora, mp3 (audio only), ogg Vorbis (audio only), original (audio only)".
I guess that means it can rip audio but not save to the insane Apple M4A
format so I pity the Apple user who may need yet another conversion try.
The quality pulldown had 1080p (HD), 720p (HD), 480p, 360p, 240p, 144p.
I left everything at the default (Original format & 1080p quality).
It saved "Russian troops enter Ukraine Army trenches; Face-to-face fight
caught on camera Watch" so fast that I was left wondering what happened.
Name: Russian troops enter Ukraine Army trenches; Face-to-face fight caught on camera Watch.mp4
Size: 48846859 bytes (46 MiB)
SHA256: 03872036E01D2283E7B6A6237E3521553EFFCFC6EEB9A0A0049A42F876783A03
Maybe I missed it as my speakers were off at the time but I didn't hear
anything or see anything happen but when I looked in the download folder
a few seconds after hitting the button to get it, it was there.
Afterward I noticed a pulldown that you can place on the file name asking
"Open downloaded file, Open target folder, Copy video link, Open video link
in browser" (which was when I realized my speakers were turned off!).
The video itself is uninteresting but what's important is that there was no
request for me to prove my age, nor any attempt to make me log in to yt.
All in all, what I think ClipGrab adds to the toolbox is a very nice
graphical interface to run the youtube downloader, with search & rip.
You don't have to remember all the different command line options for that.
> And yes, sometimes an App Store rule make us Apple fans scratch our heads.
One has to wonder why Apple lets the same useful apps that people put on
Windows, Linux and Android onto the Mac but never onto the iOS devices.
> I must add, ClipGrab's instructions for transferring videos are years
> out-of-date. One no longer needs to invoke iTunes, which essentially no
> longer exists. There are simpler, faster ways now.
What's the opposite of telling iTunes to rest in peace? Burn in Hell? :->
Likewise that insane M4V format Apple users may need can burn in Hell.
"M4V essentially stores videos that have been downloaded from the Apple
iTunes store. While this file format has some similarities to MP4, it is
subject to Apple's FairPlay DRM copyright protection-users can't play M4V
files that are copy-protected without authorization. You'll need an account
with iTunes."
https://www.videostudiopro.com/en/pages/m4v-file/
Overall, this ClipGrab package wraps a rather nice GUI around the youtube
downloader and the ffmpeg converter, and as that, it's a nice tool indeed!
Thank you for finding something that most of us never knew about before
since this topic was covered many times but ClipGrab wasn't part of it.