1---
2title: Downloading courses from Linux Academy
3subtitle: youtube-dl is a phenomenal tool
4author: Amolith
5description: Using youtube-dl to pull Linux Academy courses for offline viewing
6date: 2019-10-19T01:35:00-0400
7draft: false
8cover: /assets/pngs/youtube-dl.png
9categories:
10 - Technology
11tags:
12 - youtube-dl
13 - Linux Academy
14 - Training
15toc: true
16---
17
18## Forward
19Every month, Linux Academy releases courses for free. I'm a very busy
20college student and don't have time to whirl through everything I want
21to before it goes behind their paywall again so I figured out how to
22download a course or two every month using
23[`youtube-dl`.](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/)
24
25## Setup
26* Install
27 [`youtube-dl`](https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html)
28* Make sure you have a browser handy
29* Create a community account on [Linux
30 Academy](https://linuxacademy.com/join/community)
31* Get some food
32* Maybe a drink
33* Sit back down in your chair
34* Spin around a bit
35* Read on
36
37## Downloading
38* Log into your account
39* Pick the course you want
40* Open the developer console and go to `Network` (Ctrl+Shift+E in
41 Firefox)
42* You'll want to select `Media` as shown in the screenshot below
43
44*In moving my posts around, this screenshot has disappeared* :shrug:
45
46* Click the video you want to start with
47* Watch the network logs
48* You'll see an entry that starts with `playlist` (screenshot below)
49
50*In moving my posts around, this screenshot has disappeared* :shrug:
51
52* Right click it
53* Copy the URL
54* Paste it after `youtube-dl` in a terminal:
55
56``` bash
57amolith@poseidon:~ $ youtube-dl https://video-cdn.linuxacademy.com/vods3/_definst_/smil:box/cdnstore/modules/lots-of-stuff-in-here
58```
59
60* Press enter
61* Watch the magic unfold
62
63At a high level, `youtube-dl` is acting like your browser and following
64the `m3u` playlist to download chunks of the file. After it fetches them
65all, it runs them through `ffmpeg` to stitch them together into a single
66video!
67
68I found it useful to open a text editor and script downloading a whole
69course at a time. All you have to do is type `youtube-dl -o` and
70copy/paste it however many times there are videos. Then, copy and paste
71the video title in quotes after `-o` and add `.mp4` to the end (command
72example below). After that, paste the URL. Do that with every video in
73the series, save the script, run `chmod +x <script>`, then `./<script>`
74and (after a bit) you'll have an entire course you can watch at your
75leasure!
76
77``` bash
78amolith@poseidon:~ $ youtube-dl -o "04 - Conclusion and Next Steps.mp4" https://video-cdn.linuxacademy.com/vods3/_definst_/smil:box/cdnstore/modules/lots-of-stuff-here
79```
80
81**NOTE:** You may want to set up your directory structure beforehand so
82it's easier to script the process. Here's an example of one of mine:
83
84``` bash
85amolith@poseidon:~/Videos/Courses/Ansible - Playbooks Deep Dive $ tree
86.
87+-- 01 - Course Overview
88| +-- 01 - About the Course.mp4
89| +-- 02 - About the Training Architect.mp4
90| +-- 03 - Course Features and Tools.mp4
91| +-- 04 - About Ansible Playbooks.mp4
92| \-- 05 - Advanced Inventory Configuration.mp4
93+-- 02 - Playbook Basics
94| +-- 01 - Using YAML for Ansible Playbooks.mp4
95| +-- 02 - Creating an Ansible Play.mp4
96| +-- 03 - The ansible-playbook Command.mp4
97| \-- 04 - Understanding Playbook Tasks.mp4
98+-- 03 - Essential Playbook Syntax
99| +-- 01 - Using Variables in Playbooks.mp4
100| +-- 02 - Working with Templates.mp4
101| +-- 03 - Using Ansible Facts.mp4
102| +-- 04 - Conditional Execution in Playbooks.mp4
103| +-- 05 - Using Loops in Ansible.mp4
104| \-- 06 - Working with Handlers in Ansible.mp4
105+-- 04 - Advanced Playbook Syntax
106| +-- 01 - Executing Selective Parts of a Playbook.mp4
107| +-- 02 - Working with Sensitive Data Using Ansible Vault.mp4
108| +-- 03 - Error Handling in a Playbook: limit, ignore_errors, changed_when, and failed_when.mp4
109| +-- 04 - Error Handling in a Playbook: Block Groups and The Debug Module.mp4
110| +-- 05 - Asynchronous Tasks within a Playbook.mp4
111| +-- 06 - Delegating Playbook Execution with delegate_to and local_action.mp4
112| +-- 07 - Parallelism in Playbooks.mp4
113| +-- 08 - Using run_once.mp4
114| +-- 09 - Overview of Ansible Roles.mp4
115| \-- 10 - Ansible Role Demo.mp4
116\-- 05 - Conclusion and Next Steps.mp4
117
1184 directories, 26 files
119amolith@poseidon:~/Videos/Courses/Ansible - Playbooks Deep Dive $
120```