How to Get the Original File Name, Title, File Size, Video Format (mp4 or mov) and Length for Videos using Youtube Data API?

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When we upload the videos to Youtube, we might want to use the Youtube API to get the meta data for the videos. For example: Original File Name, File Size, Video Format (mp4 or mov), and Video Length.

Video File Size via Youtube Data API

The YouTube Data API provides a lot of metadata about YouTube videos, such as the title, description, uploader, and so on. However, it does not provide direct information about the file size of a YouTube video. This is because YouTube videos are not static files that are simply downloaded when you watch them; rather, they are streamed to your device in chunks, and the size can vary depending on the quality setting you choose (240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, etc.).

The YouTube Data API does not provide the file size of a video, because YouTube videos are not static files – they are streamed to your device in chunks and can be viewed in different quality levels, each with a different file size.

However, you can estimate the size of a YouTube video using third-party tools or libraries like pytube. This involves downloading the video, which may be against YouTube’s terms of service, so use this approach with caution and only for videos that you have the right to download.

To get the file size or any other technical details of the video file itself, you would have to download the video file. There are third-party libraries like pytube or youtube-dl which can be used to download YouTube videos, and you can then inspect the downloaded file’s size using standard Python functions. Note that downloading YouTube videos may violate YouTube’s terms of service, so you should only do this with videos that you have permission to download.

Here is an example of how to use pytube to download a YouTube video and check its file size:

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from pytube import YouTube
import os
 
video = YouTube('https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID')  # Replace with your video's URL.
 
# Select the highest resolution stream of the video.
stream = video.streams.get_highest_resolution()
 
# Download the video.
stream.download(filename='my_video')
 
# Get the size of the downloaded file.
size = os.path.getsize('my_video.mp4')
 
print('File size: ', size, 'bytes')

from pytube import YouTube
import os

video = YouTube('https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID')  # Replace with your video's URL.

# Select the highest resolution stream of the video.
stream = video.streams.get_highest_resolution()

# Download the video.
stream.download(filename='my_video')

# Get the size of the downloaded file.
size = os.path.getsize('my_video.mp4')

print('File size: ', size, 'bytes')

This script downloads the highest resolution version of the video and then uses the os.path.getsize function to get the size of the downloaded file in bytes.

Please replace ‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID’ with the actual URL of the YouTube video you’re interested in.

Note: You need to install the pytube library using pip if you haven’t already (pip install pytube).

Video Title via Youtube Data API

You can get the video’s title and other metadata using the YouTube Data API, though. Here is a basic example of how to do this (you may need to install the pip package google-api-client):

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from googleapiclient.discovery import build
 
# You must have a Google Developer account and a project with the YouTube Data API v3 enabled to get this key.
api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'
 
youtube = build('youtube', 'v3', developerKey=api_key)
 
request = youtube.videos().list(
    part='snippet',
    id='VIDEO_ID'  # Replace with your video's ID.
)
response = request.execute()
 
for item in response['items']:
    print('Title: ', item['snippet']['title'])

from googleapiclient.discovery import build

# You must have a Google Developer account and a project with the YouTube Data API v3 enabled to get this key.
api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

youtube = build('youtube', 'v3', developerKey=api_key)

request = youtube.videos().list(
    part='snippet',
    id='VIDEO_ID'  # Replace with your video's ID.
)
response = request.execute()

for item in response['items']:
    print('Title: ', item['snippet']['title'])

This script will print the title of the YouTube video with the given ID.

Original File Name via Youtube Data API

The original filename of the video as it was uploaded to YouTube is not exposed via the YouTube Data API. This is likely for privacy and security reasons. When a video is uploaded, it’s processed and re-encoded by YouTube, and the original file is not accessible to viewers.

However, you can retrieve the title of the video, which is often similar to the filename (assuming the uploader didn’t change it during upload). The code I provided in the previous response will allow you to retrieve the video title using the YouTube Data API.

If you have access to the account that uploaded the video, you might be able to find the original filename in the video’s upload history, but this isn’t guaranteed and it’s not accessible programmatically through the YouTube Data API.

If you need to keep track of original filenames for videos you upload to YouTube, I’d recommend storing them separately in your own database or system.

Video Length via Youtube Data API

To get the length of a YouTube video, you can use the contentDetails part in your API request. The duration is returned in an ISO 8601 format which you can parse to get the actual duration in a more useful format.

Here’s an example:

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from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from isodate import parse_duration  # You may need to install this module.
 
# You must have a Google Developer account and a project with the YouTube Data API v3 enabled to get this key.
api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'
 
youtube = build('youtube', 'v3', developerKey=api_key)
 
request = youtube.videos().list(
    part='contentDetails',
    id='VIDEO_ID'  # Replace with your video's ID.
)
response = request.execute()
 
for item in response['items']:
    duration = parse_duration(item['contentDetails']['duration'])
    print('Duration: ', duration)

from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from isodate import parse_duration  # You may need to install this module.

# You must have a Google Developer account and a project with the YouTube Data API v3 enabled to get this key.
api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'

youtube = build('youtube', 'v3', developerKey=api_key)

request = youtube.videos().list(
    part='contentDetails',
    id='VIDEO_ID'  # Replace with your video's ID.
)
response = request.execute()

for item in response['items']:
    duration = parse_duration(item['contentDetails']['duration'])
    print('Duration: ', duration)

This will print out the duration of the video in a datetime.timedelta format. Note that this uses the isodate library to parse the ISO 8601 duration format that YouTube uses. You may need to install this library using pip if you haven’t already (pip install isodate).

Remember to replace ‘YOUR_API_KEY’ with your actual API key and ‘VIDEO_ID’ with the ID of the YouTube video you’re interested in.

Video Format via Youtube Data API

YouTube videos are typically streamed in MP4 format, but the original file format that was uploaded (like MOV, AVI, WMV, etc.) is not made available through the YouTube Data API or any other public-facing YouTube interfaces. Once a video is uploaded to YouTube, it is transcoded into multiple formats for streaming at various qualities, and the original file is not directly accessible.

If you download a YouTube video using a tool like youtube-dl or pytube, the downloaded file will typically be in MP4 format, because that’s the format that YouTube uses for streaming. Here’s an example of how you can use pytube to download a video and print its file format:

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from pytube import YouTube
import os
 
# The URL of the YouTube video.
video_url = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID'  # Replace with your video's URL.
 
youtube = YouTube(video_url)
 
# Get the highest quality stream.
stream = youtube.streams.get_highest_resolution()
 
# Get the file extension of the stream.
file_extension = stream.mime_type.split('/')[-1]  # The MIME type is in the format 'type/subtype'.
 
print('File extension: ', file_extension)

from pytube import YouTube
import os

# The URL of the YouTube video.
video_url = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID'  # Replace with your video's URL.

youtube = YouTube(video_url)

# Get the highest quality stream.
stream = youtube.streams.get_highest_resolution()

# Get the file extension of the stream.
file_extension = stream.mime_type.split('/')[-1]  # The MIME type is in the format 'type/subtype'.

print('File extension: ', file_extension)

This code will print out the file extension of the highest quality stream of the video (typically ‘mp4’).

Please replace ‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID’ with the actual URL of the YouTube video you’re interested in.

Note: You need to install the pytube library using pip if you haven’t already (pip install pytube).

–EOF (The Ultimate Computing & Technology Blog) —