How To Download YouTube Videos As MP4 Files. Franck’s Rant On The Today’s GOTD - YouTube MP3 Downloader

GiveawayOfTheDay.com Series (15)

So a little drop by, regarding today’s GOTD.
It’s been a long time since I promissed myself I would pin such crapware being “given away” at GOTD.

Obviously, these are software any sensible person would ever buy. One must be a total ignorant to pay only one dollar for such things, and even for free, I’d be sorry some 4freers could rely on such crap.

To make myself clear: I didn’t download today’s GOTD, and I won’t be.
According to the description, you can use this to grab a video on youtube and convert it into mp3 (I guess the point is to get a song from its video clip).
In a nutshell, to use this software :
- you go to youtube.com
- it grabs the video
- it converts it to mp3

Each time a multimedia (video and/or audio) is converted, the is quality loss.
As the file you grabbed from youtube is not necessarily top notch quality, you should really want to avoid additional quality loss.
So, converting should be last resort…

Basically, a video is a combination of two streams :
- a succession of images, displaying at a given framerate
- an audio stream

When you see the images and ear the audio at the same time, that means that the streams have been multiplexed in a video file.

A wiser strategy to get audio should be to demultiplex the video file.

So? What should we do?
As the today’s gotd claims to be youtube exclusive, here is a method that works with youtube.

1/ Grab the video.
No need to install anything. No need to dive into your browser cache. You’re just a click away from a neat little mp4 file.
Visit this page, and add the “Get YouTube Video” bookmarklet to your browser favorites.
Then when you’re watching a video at youtube and want to download it, just select that favorite. You should at least one download link : download standard MP4, and, if available, download HD (it’s also an mp4 file)

2/ Extract the audio
You’ll need a demultiplexer.
There are many that are free, providing both command line and GUIs.
For instance, MP4Muxer , which is fully portable.
You also have the well know Yamb which is a GUI for mp4box

In any case, you’ll just get the audio part of the video, without conversion (and therefore without any quality loss).
If audio was mp3 in the video, you’ll get a mp3 file ; as for mp4 files from youtube, you’ll get aac files.

Let’s grab yamb and install it.
I’ll assume installation path is : c:\program files\yamb

We could use the GUI of course, but I see some interest in speaking about mp4box command line capabilities.

Imagine you downloaded your youtube mp4 and stored it in c:\download as myYouTubeVideo.mp4...
In command line you’ll type "c:\program files\yamb\mp4box.exe" -raw 1 "c:\download\myYouTubeVideo.mp4"
And you’ll then find an aac file in your c:\download folder

Basically the syntax is as follows :
mp4box.exe -raw StreamId video_file
The fact is you should provide the correct streamId corresponding to the audio. Each time I tested a youtube video, it appears the audio was in stream #1

Note that for avi files, mp4 is smarter.
You can use mp4box.exe -aviraw audio avi_video_file without knowing the audio streamId.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work with mp4 files.

So why is command-line interesting in our case ?
I propose you that we tweak our windows so a right-click on an mp4 file will allow us to automatically extract audio. We could set the trick with nirsoft FileTypeMan but I did it for you.
Open notepad, paste exactly what follows. (I assume mp4box is in the yamb folder)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\QuickTime.mp4\shell\Extract audio]
@=”Extract audio”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\QuickTime.mp4\shell\Extract audio\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Yamb\\MP4Box.exe\” -raw 1 \”%1\”"

Now save as something.reg and double-click it. Say yes. Delete the reg file.
Now you should see a new context menu option on mp4 files. If you click on extract audio, you should see an audio file in the same folder as the video.

Oh oh wait… we do not need anymore the mp4 video file. Why bothering deleting it by hand?

Open notepad. Copy and paste as follows (I assume mp4box is in yamb folder) ):

@echo off
"C:\Program Files\Yamb\MP4Box.exe" -raw 1 %1
del %1
exit

Save as extractAUdioFromMp4.bat (or whatever you like) and store it in c:\program files (or wherever you like).

Now open notepad again and paste what follows (adapt names and locations if required)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\QuickTime.mp4\shell\Extract audio and delete]
@=”Extract audio and delete”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\QuickTime.mp4\shell\Extract audio and delete\command]
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\extractAUdioFromMp4.bat\” \”%1\”"

Save as something.reg, double-click, blabla… delete the reg file.
You should now see an extract audio and delete menu entry…

In a nutshell all you have to do to what the today’s gotd is doing without paying a penny, without installing crap on your computer, is very simple, and you’ll even get a little better quality audio file.

- get the bookmarklet
- install yamb (or use mp4muxer but you’ll have to adapt your command line on  your own)
if you want to just extract audio:
- open once the notepad and copy paste the first reg file I showed you
if you want to extract audio and delete useless video file:
- open twice the notepad and copy paste the bat file and the reg file… (don’t forget to save the bat file in program files)

Programs like today’s gotd are real shame !
Enjoy everybody !

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