crunchy2mkv

Download .flv videos from Crunchyroll (and maybe other sites) and convert them to .mkv.

Introduction

This program downloads videos from various video sites like Crunchyroll, Dailymotion, NicoNico, YouTube, and many more, converting them to .mkv format afterwards (without reencoding the video). It uses the youtube-dl and mkvmerge (from mkvtoolnix) for this purpose.

To run this program, you just need to call it like this:

$ crunchy2mkv http://www.crunchyroll.com/fatekaleid-liner-prisma-illya/episode-1-illya-grow-up-657285

This will download this video in the highest quality that is possible in the current folder (you can change this passing the -r /path/to/folder option). You can download multiple files calling the program with multiple URLs. If the service limits videos only for premium users you can pass your login information like this:

$ crunchy2mkv -u username -p password http://www.crunchyroll.com/fatekaleid-liner-prisma-illya/episode-1-illya-grow-up-657285

Run like this:

$ crunchy2mkv -h

To get a list of all available options.

There is no configuration file! You can change some defaults by changing the following environment variables:

• C2M_RESULT_PATH: set the desired output path (example: /home/m45t3r/Videos or C:\Videos);
• C2M_VERBOSE: use True for verbose output, use False to only print user friendly messages (default);
• C2M_USERNAME and C2M_PASSWORD: set your username and password;
• C2M_QUALITY: set the desired default quality (some valid options: worst, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, best)
• C2M_SUBS: set desired subtitle langauge (valid examples: all, en, en,pt, "")

How to install

You need to have both youtube-dl and mkvmerge (part of mkvtoolnix) installed and added somewhere on your PATH. Probably the best way is to use your distribution packages to install this program. Some distribution commands to install both:

$ sudo pacman -S youtube-dl mkvtoolnix-cli # Arch Linux

After that just run crunchy2mkv using the full path, or added it somewhere in your path.

$ /random/path/crunchy2mkv -v # or PATH=/random/path:${PATH} crunchy2mkv -v

Difference between crunchy2mkv and livedumper

The main difference between both is that crunchy2mkv uses youtube-dl, while livedumper uses livestreamer. This makes the behavior between the two slightly different.

For example, in Crunchyroll livestreamer emulates the PS3 API, that brings high quality videos using the HLS protocol. Using this protocol makes Crunchyroll send hardcoded subtitles (i.e. encoded with the video). For instance, youtube-dl hacks the available Flash Video player to get the audio/video/subtitles. The Crunchyroll's Flash Video player are actually special since they support a encrypt version of Advance Substation Alpha subtitles, so the result are softsub videos that can even include subtitles from different languages.

crunchy2mkv is very simple: it's basically a script that wrappers both youtube-dl and mkvmerge. It's not as powerfull as livedumper was, but this made the code much simpler and smaller.

About Python versions

This program should be compatible both with Python 2.7.x and Python 3.2+, but is only tested in Python 3.4.x. Should something not work, if it's in Python 2.7.x I may drop support depending if it's too hard to fix (but please report, I will at least take a look on the issue). If it's Python 3.2+ I will treat it as a bug so you can report and I will try to fix it.

Credits

This project is based on youtube-dl and mkvtoolnix projects. Thanks!