Media Downloader

A Flask web application for downloading video and audio from online platforms supported by yt-dlp. Paste a URL, fetch the list of available formats, pick one, and the server downloads the selected format into a local downloads/ folder.

Features

• Fetch metadata and the list of available formats for a media URL
• Choose a specific format (resolution, codec, audio-only, and so on) from a dropdown
• In-page preview for URLs that expose a direct MP4 stream
• Server-side download using the selected format, saved as <title>.<ext>
• Works with any site yt-dlp supports (YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, and many others)

Tech stack

Component	Version
Python	3
Flask	2.2.2
yt-dlp	2024.8.3
jQuery	3.6.0 (CDN)
Font Awesome	6.0.0-beta3 (CDN)

Getting started

Prerequisites

• Python 3
• FFmpeg on your PATH (yt-dlp needs it to merge separate audio and video streams and for some conversions)

Install

cd pytube
python -m venv venv
# Windows
venv\Scripts\activate
# macOS / Linux
source venv/bin/activate

pip install -r requirements.txt

Run

python app.py

Open http://127.0.0.1:5000. Downloaded files are written to pytube/downloads/, which is created on startup.

To list the sites yt-dlp can handle:

yt-dlp --list-extractors

API

Method	Path	Description
GET	/	Web interface
GET	/api/video_info?url=<url>	Returns the available formats for the URL as JSON
POST	/download	Form fields url, format_id; downloads the format and returns the saved file_path

Project structure

pytube/
├── app.py               # Flask app and yt-dlp integration
├── requirements.txt
├── templates/
│   └── index.html       # UI and client-side logic (jQuery)
└── static/
    ├── css/styles.css
    └── js/scripts.js    # Currently empty

Notes and limitations

• Files are saved on the machine running the server. After a download, the page redirects to /downloads/<file>, but the app does not define a route that serves that folder, so retrieve the file from pytube/downloads/ directly.
• The Video/Audio selector is sent to the server but not used; the format chosen in the format list determines what is downloaded.
• Some platforms require authentication for certain content, and site changes can break extraction. Keep yt-dlp up to date (pip install -U yt-dlp).
• Use this tool only for content you have the right to download, and respect each platform's terms of service and applicable copyright law.

License

No license has been specified for this project.