Technology

How I Watch Youtube Videos without Having Internet at Home

People ask how I can watch Youtube videos at home while riding the exercise bike, without having the Internet at home. I use the youtube-dl python script which can download Youtube videos from the internet while at the library or another public wi-fi, along with some custom scripts I built and posted below.

Then I browse the Youtube pages of the channels I follow and other suggested videos. From there, I right click on the video, and put the link to the video into the clipboard. From there, I click on an icon in my toolbar that executes a script that “saves” the video URL. Here is the script:

#!/bin/sh

xclip -o >> ~/vd1.txt
VIDEO1="$(xclip -o)"
echo "\n" >> ~/vd1.txt

TITLE=$(youtube-dl -e ${VIDEO1})
notify-send -i "/usr/share/icons/gnome/32x32/mimetypes/video-x-generic.png" 'Youtube Added ...' "${TITLE}"

xclip -i /dev/null

Once I’ve made my list up to download the youtube-videos, and are ready to consume oodles of bandwidth on the free public wifi at the library or other locations, I run my script that downloads the videos.

#!/bin/bash

mkdir -p /home/andy/Videos/Home.Watching/
mkdir -p /home/andy/Videos/Home.Listening/

FILE=/home/andy/vd${1}.txt

if [ -f $FILE ]; then		
	for WORD in `cat $FILE`; do
		if [ ${#WORD} -gt 5 ]; then 
		   TITLE=$(youtube-dl -e ${WORD}) 
		   notify-send -i "/usr/share/icons/gnome/32x32/mimetypes/video-x-generic.png" -t 25000 -u normal  'Started Download' "${TITLE}"
		   cd /home/andy/Videos/Home.Watching/
		   youtube-dl --mark-watched $WORD
		   convert-home-watching-to-listening & # script shown below
		   notify-send -i "/usr/share/icons/gnome/32x32/mimetypes/video-x-generic.png" -t 10000 -u normal  'Downloaded' "${TITLE}"
		fi
	done
	
	NEWFILE=$(basename $FILE).done.txt
	mv $FILE /home/andy/$NEWFILE
        
done

ls -t /home/andy/Videos/Home.Watching/*/*|xargs -d '\n' vlc &

Nice, but there is one more part. I like to be able to listen to videos on my phone while at camp, hiking, or walking, so I also have a script to convert them over to MP3 format using ffmpeg. I also automatically delete any MP3 files that don’t match videos on my system, as I figure if I deleted the videos, I probably don’t need them.

#!/bin/bash

MOVIES=/home/andy/Videos/Home.Watching
LISTEN=/home/andy/Videos/Home.Listening

# first delete any MP3s
# that don't have a matching
# movie file
for f in $LISTEN/*
do
	FILE=${f##*/}
	BASE=${FILE%%.*}
	
	if ! ls $MOVIES/"$BASE"* 1> /dev/null 2>&1 
	then
		rm "$f"
	fi
done

touch $LISTEN/.nomedia # so these files don't appear with my music files

# then do the conversion of 
# the Movies to MP3s
for f in $MOVIES/*
do
	FILE=${f##*/}
	BASE=${FILE%%.*}
	#echo $BASE
	
	if [[ ! -f $LISTEN/"$BASE".mp3 ]]
	then
		ffmpeg -i "$f" $LISTEN/"$BASE".mp3
	fi
done

Lastly, I use jmtpfs and rsync to sync the files over to my phone. The ten second delay, if the folder is not mounted, is so I see that things weren’t mounted, because the phone is unplugged.

#!/bin/bash

jmtpfs -l
mkdir -p ~/phone/
jmtpfs ~/phone/
if [ -d "/home/andy/phone/SD card/Home.Listening" ]
then
	rsync -v --progress /home/andy/Videos/Home.Listening/* "/home/andy/phone/SD card/Home.Listening"
	cd
	fusermount -u ~/phone/
else 
	sleep 10
fi