Ok so I found this answer to someones question about how to download youtube videos via youtube-dl. It had all of the information that I needed, except how to open the video.
Here is what I have so far:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install youtube-dl
youtube-dl youtube-video-link
It downloads ok, I just don't know how to open it. Again, thanks for your help.
You can specify the directory where the video will be saved using the -o option.
Example:
youtube-dl -o "/home/<User>/Downloads/%(title)s" {URL}
The syntax to open any file in its default application is:
xdg-open $file
If you are using VLC player, you can use so:
cd /path/videos
vlc "Videoname.avi"
If VLC Player is not installed, you can install it so:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc
Ok I found the answer. As Lucio stated, you double click on the file, I just didn't know where to find it to do this, and it is in the home folder.
Perhaps the best way to set the location of all of your downloaded files is to set this from within youtube-dl's configuration file which can be located as $HOME/.config/youtube-dl.conf. Syntax is:
--output "~/media/%(title)s.%(ext)s"
and of course change the path to suit your needs (and the extension template details if you wish). Otherwise youtube-dl will simply download the requested file in the working directory. This will only work with relatively recent versions of youtube-dl so it would be best to update your copy before trying this with the following command:
sudo youtube-dl --update
Now you will be able to easily find your downloaded files and play them back with VLC, SMPlayer or whatever your favoured media playback application is :)
youtube-dl URL, whereURLis the URL of the video. – Nattgew May 04 '14 at 23:39