Downloading Social Media Videos

Sometimes, a case has me scouring social media in hopes of uncovering information that will bolster my reconstruction. Most commonly, I’m searching for photographs showing the pre-impact condition of a motorcycle. Common bonus info includes riding history, choice of protective gear, common routes/rides, bike maintenance, training, etc.

So how do you pull videos from such sites? I was recently introduced to yt-dlp, a powerful tool for archiving and preserving online video in the best quality available from the platform. It pulls the stream served up by the platform, not a screen-recording or re-encoded version. It’ll also get you a JSON file detailing available metadata.

It’s a command-based program that stemmed from youtube-dl, one of the most popular projects in GitHub history. However, it was knocked offline by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2020. GitHub reinstated the project, created a developer defense fund, and it’s since been forked. Today’s version is maintained by a core group of developers with hundreds of contributors who create site-specific extractors. It works on 1,000+ sites including: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, etc.

yt-dlp is the force behind many of the programs you may have used, including ClipGrab, Parabolic, Stacher, etc. However, yt-dlp is easy to use, robust, and frequently updated.

Here are the five commands that'll do almost all the work. Just open the Command Prompt and let it rip (after ensuring you’re within the confines of the law). Note, close and reopen the Command Prompt after step 1.

1. Install: winget install yt-dlp.yt-dlp

2. Download: yt-dlp “URL”

3. Download to specific folder: yt-dlp -P “%USERPROFILE%\Downloads” “URL”

4. Save metadata as JSON: yt-dlp –write-info-json “URL”

5. Update program: yt-dlp -U

If you need a place to view the JSON data, this html file should do the trick. Click on carets to expand the data trees. Lots there. Below is a file with sample commands.

​yt-dlp Sample Commands.pdf​

For an equivalent tool for archiving images, check out gallery-dl.

Thanks for reading, keep exploring!

Lou Peck

P.S. When you nail your testimony.