Downloading YouTube Videos and Extracting Audio on Ubuntu
Have you ever had a YouTube video that you just wanted to have on your PC in-case you were not online to watch it or you wanted the audio extracted from one of those videos to listen to on your PC or iPod? With Firefox addons that is a reality. I had a friend who had found a very, very old German song and found it on YouTube put to a slideshow and was asked how to download the video and extract the audio. This can be done in two steps very easy.
First download the Firefox addon called Fast Video Download. It is available here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3590. Install the addon and restart Firefox. Once restarted you will see a little icon in the top right portion of the toolbar or the bottom right corner.
Next make sure you have the correct programs for the audio extraction. This is primarily done with ffmpeg and a few supporting actors.
$ sudo apt-get install ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-ugly-multiverse
mpg123 mpg123-alsa
At the command line type
$ ffmpeg -i input.flv -acodec copy output.mp3
And in seconds you have music to listen to!!!
If you want more information on the use of ffmpeg go to http://www.ffmpeg.org.
