Synchronizes a YouTube music playlist with iTunes. Once synchronized with iTunes they become available on your iPhone and other Apple devices.

This is useful if you have a YouTube playlist full of music or music videos and want to be able to play them anywhere.

NOTE: This project is no longer being maintained. It is recommended that playlists be downloaded manually with youtube-dl. Then syncing with iTunes is sufficiently easy to do by hand.

• Mac OS X 10.7+ (Lion)
  • 10.6 (Snow Leopard) probably works too, but I have not tested this.
• iTunes 10+
  • Probably any iTunes version works, but this is the one I have tested.
• Python 2.6
  • This is included with the above Mac OS X version.

And additionally:

• youtube_dl installed in your PYTHONPATH.
  • You will need to download a source package from the youtube-dl Github page. The binary version on the main youtube-dl website is not sufficient
  • The 2012.11.29 version is recommend, since it has been tested.
• ffmpeg and ffprobe commands installed in your system PATH
  • You will probably need to compile ffmpeg to get ffprobe, since it is typically not included in binary distributions of ffmpeg.

./sync_youtube_to_itunes.py <YouTube-Playlist-URL> <Directory-Path> <iTunes-Playlist-Name>

For example:

./sync_youtube_to_itunes.py http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5F93ED354981399F /Users/davidf/Music/YT-Music YT-Music

Or, if you would like to perform the synchronization in two steps for some reason:

./sync_youtube_to_filesystem.py <YouTube-Playlist-URL> <Directory-Path>

./sync_filesystem_to_itunes.py <Directory-Path> <iTunes-Playlist-Name>

• Handles [Video Deleted] items in YouTube playlists
• Unicode support (for playlist item titles and similar)

Here's how the script works:

• YouTube playlists are downloaded to the local filesystem using the excellent youtube_dl library. An invisible .ordering file tracks the original order of downloaded items.
  • The youtube-dl library is maintained independently by the community and is regularly updated when YouTube changes their unofficial APIs.
• Downloaded videos are converted to the MP4 (AAC) format that iTunes expects using ffmpeg.
• iTunes playlists are manipulated using the actual iTunes application via Apple Events sent by the osascript tool (available only on Mac OS X).
  • This is much safer than the alternative approach of editing the existing the iTunes Library XML file directly.

Some improvements I would like to make:

• Better error handling.
  • Complain if ffmpeg & ffprobe are not installed.
  • Compiain if the specified filesystem directory does not exist.
• Simplify installation by providing a binary distribution.
  • It is cumbersome to require users to install youtube_dl, ffmpeg, and ffprobe manually.
• Improve marketing by creating a custom website (likely via GitHub Pages).
• ☆ Sync the YouTube thumbnail to iTunes as album art.
• Support syncing full videos from YouTube playlists to iTunes (in addition to the audio track).
  • For videos unavailable in an iTunes-friendly format (i.e. MP4/M4V), ffmpeg or HandBrakeCLI could be used to transcode videos.
• ☆ Download video metadata (ex: title, description, etc) for archival purposes.
• ☆ If a video becomes [Video Deleted] on YouTube, preserve the downloaded version of the video (if available).
• Improved support for Python 2.6.
  • Fix deprecation warning related to BaseException.message.

Starred items (☆) are my personal most-wanted improvements.

This software is freeware. For details, see the LICENSE file.