How to pass hard-coded youtube-dl code & tkinter variable to command line

Question

I am attempting to paste the youtube video URL into the tkinter GUI text box, and have the 'Browse' button initiate a subprocess call that takes a hard-coded youtube-dl code, and adds the text box URL. I can't seem to pass the hard-coded Youtube-dl code, and variable to command line.

Googled multiple things to find answers but can't seem to find any...

from tkinter import *
import tkinter as tk
from tkinter import ttk
import os
import subprocess


root = Tk()
root.geometry("900x800")    
Title = root.title( "JJ's Youtube Downloader")
PathTextBox = Text(root,height =  2)
PathTextBox.grid(row = 4,column = 1,columnspan = 2)
path = PathTextBox.get('1.0',END)
def download():
    import subprocess
    subprocess.call(["youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 ", path])


BrowseButton = Button(root,text="Browse ",command = download)
BrowseButton.grid(row = 2,column = 2)

root.configure(background='ivory2')
HeadLabel1 = Label(root,text="Image ")
HeadLabel1.grid(row = 1,column = 1,sticky=(E))
HeadLabel2 = Label(root,text="Reader ")
HeadLabel2.grid(row = 1,column = 2,sticky=(W))
InputLabel = Label(root,text = "INPUT IMAGE")
InputLabel.grid(row = 2, column = 1)


PathLabel = Label(root,text = "Path:")
PathLabel.grid(row = 3,column = 1,sticky=(W))



DataLabel = Label(root,text = "DATA IN IMAGE:")
DataLabel.grid(row = 6,column = 1,sticky=(W+E+N+S))
ResultTextBox = Text(root,height = 30,padx = 1, pady = 1)
ResultTextBox.grid(row = 7,column = 1,columnspan = 4,padx=3, 
pady=3,sticky=W+E+N+S)

root.mainloop()

ERROR CODE I'M RECEIVING Exception in Tkinter callback Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Users\hutch\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\tkinter__init__.py", line 1705, in call return self.func(*args) File "C:\Users\hutch\Downloads\Desktop\PythonPrograms\YoutubeDownloader.py", line 17, in download subprocess.call(["youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 ", path]) File "C:\Users\hutch\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\subprocess.py", line 323, in call with Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs) as p: File "C:\Users\hutch\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\subprocess.py", line 775, in init restore_signals, start_new_session) File "C:\Users\hutch\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\subprocess.py", line 1178, in _execute_child startupinfo) FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

Try subprocess.call(["youtube-dl", "-x", "--audio-format", "mp3", path]). Or, as youtube-dl is a python program, you can just import it. — Novel

Hoppeduppeanut Hoppeduppeanut · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-05T23:19:15

Instead of needing to call youtube-dl as a subprocess, you can import youtube-dl itself direct from PyPI and use it like you would any other Python library.

You can add it to your Python environment by running pip install youtube_dl in your terminal/command prompt, and then call YoutubeDL.download() from within your script. To use the command-line arguments you've included in your subprocess string, you can try the following (This example is slightly modified from the documentation, it will download the audio track from your video, then convert to MP3, doing pretty much the same thing as defining -x in your command line arguments)

import youtube_dl

ydl_opts = {
    'format': 'bestaudio/best',
    'postprocessors': [{
        'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
        'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
        'preferredquality': '192',
    }]
}
with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
    ydl.download([path])

How to pass hard-coded youtube-dl code & tkinter variable to command line

1 Answers