Record streaming youtube video on a Windows 10 PC?

May 3, 2017 10:30 AM

A relative of mine is graduating from Penn State in a couple days and the ceremony will be livestreamed via Youtube. What is the current best way for me to capture the video using a Windows 10 PC? There are a lot of old answers here and on Google but I know Youtube can make updates that break those methods so looking for whatever works now.
posted by mattholomew to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

youtube-dl is designed to do exactly this. It's a script you run from a terminal that has lots of nifty options but, given sane defaults, just grabs the best video source available from a youtube (or a bunch of other providers) link.

It's updated regularly and is reliable.

It does require a python interpreter and the ability to run it from a terminal.
posted by mce at 10:59 AM on May 3, 2017 [4 favorites]

I would also suspect that Penn State might make the video available on line afterwards. You could look and see if they did so in previous years. This might be a backup plan to capturing it yourself.
posted by procrastination at 12:10 PM on May 3, 2017 [2 favorites]

Came in to say youtube-dl, but mce beat me to it. It's by far the best.
posted by gregr at 12:42 PM on May 3, 2017

If it's live streaming on YT I would bet the archived video will also be on YouTube.
posted by COD at 12:50 PM on May 3, 2017

If it's streamed on YouTube, the video will archive and you can just download it by googling "youtube download" and entering the URL. But if you think it won't be archived, you can use screen capture software. Many years ago, I used Camtasia Studio. I'm sure there's something more popular and better these days.
posted by AppleTurnover at 9:53 PM on May 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

I used to work on commencement at another Big 10 university. Contact the commencement office; in addition to streaming and archived online video, they will almost certainly have DVDs available. Think of the many, many grandparents who can't figure out the Googles! We took them into consideration a LOT.
posted by St. Hubbins at 10:22 AM on May 4, 2017 [2 favorites]