VidKeeper

A simple command-line tool for downloading videos and audio from various online platforms using yt-dlp.

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v14 or higher)
• npm (Node Package Manager)
• yt-dlp (required for general video downloading)
• FFmpeg (required for high-quality YouTube downloads)

Installing yt-dlp

macOS

brew install yt-dlp

Linux

sudo curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -o /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp

Windows

winget install yt-dlp

Installing FFmpeg

macOS

brew install ffmpeg

Linux

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

Windows

winget install ffmpeg

Installation

1. Clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/isoaxe/vidkeeper.git
cd vidkeeper

2. Install dependencies:

npm install

Usage

1. Start the application:

npm start

2. When prompted, enter the URL of the video you want to download.

3. Choose whether to download video (v) or audio only (a).

4. The content will be downloaded to your Downloads folder in a vidkeeper subdirectory.

Features

• Downloads videos in the best available quality
• Supports audio-only downloads in M4A format
• Automatically saves to your Downloads folder
• Simple command-line interface
• Supports multiple video platforms (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
• Optimized for QuickTime compatibility
• Automatic cleanup of temporary files

Troubleshooting

If downloads fail or you see warnings like "nsig extraction failed", "Some formats may be missing", or references to SABR/SSAP experiments, update yt-dlp and FFmpeg and try again. YouTube regularly changes their player, and yt-dlp ships frequent fixes.

• macOS (Homebrew):

  brew update
  brew upgrade yt-dlp ffmpeg

• Linux:

  • yt-dlp (pip):

    python3 -m pip install -U yt-dlp

  • FFmpeg (Debian/Ubuntu):

    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

• Windows:

  winget upgrade yt-dlp ffmpeg

License

ISC