YouTube-to-M4A Downloader/Converter

Question

Background:

Every now and again I need to download my playlists from YouTube. The last time, I used DVDVideoSoft's YouTube-to-MP3 Converter, which did a reasonable job of converting hundreds of videos to M4A at different bitrates. Since then, it looks like the developers have really stripped back the program's capabilities, because I can no longer find a way to convert to an audio format other than MP3 or to a particular bitrate.

In my search for new software to get the job done, I came across youtube-dl, a command-line interface that gives me a lot more of the functionality that DVDVideoSoft's program did. Honestly, I've been fairly taken with how powerful youtube-dl is. Unfortunately, since adopting it, I've run into a few problems, problems that would take more than a few hours of my time to properly look into and solve - and I'm now starting to question whether my new-found affinity for youtube-dl is making me open myself up to unnecessary pain for the sake of it. Is there another program as powerful and/or easy as youtube-dl is to use?

Although my personal requirements differ somewhat from those I'm listing here, I'm purposely keeping a few requirements like price and platform broad to allow as many recommendations as possible for the sake of making this question a reference point for the current state of YouTube downloaders... because I'm generous like that.

The program:

• Can either be paid or free

• Can either work via the command-line or GUI

• Must run on Windows 7 64-bit

• Must allow you to extract the audio from select videos in a YouTube playlist, rather than either one video or the entire playlist

• Must be able to transcode the downloaded audio to .M4A (AAC) audio files at a specified bitrate (at least 192kbps)

• Must be able to control where the end files will be downloaded to

Optional, but preferred functionality:

• Default to or have an option for downloading the best quality available if no specific formats or bitrates are specified

Answer 1

You can use 4K video downloader to download video or audio from youtube video's.

Works in Windows 7 64-bit, GUI based, Free, Extract audio from entire playlist or selected videos. Extracts audio to the highest quality possible. Downloads audio in MP3, M4A, OGG formats.

You can control, to which folder downloaded files go into.

You can set preferences to download a particular quality always by default.

Download here : https://www.4kdownload.com/products/product-videodownloader

Answer 2

You can use this website: http://www.saveitoffline.com/

You can save youtube videos as

Video + Audio

720p - MP4

360p - WebM

360p - MP4

240p - FLV

180p - 3GP

144p - 3GP

Video Only

1080p - WebM

1080p - MP4

720p - WebM

720p - MP4

480p - WebM

480p - MP4

360p - WebM

360p - MP4

240p - WebM

240p - MP4

144p - WebM

144p - MP4

Audio Only

WebM (160 kbps)

M4A (128 kbps)

WebM (128 kbps)

WebM (70 kbps)

WebM (50 kbps)

Answer 3

jDownloader

Freeware, cross-platform, Mac/Win/nix, Java-based.
Basically, it can download anything you throw at it, file sharing sites big & small, Mega.nz, YouTube, Soundcloud & can enter credentials for paid services if you use them.

Can grab links straight from your copy buffer. Separates out each download type & file, & can download from YouTube, Soundcloud etc whether or not the file is set to be downloadable.
Can fetch many stream types [dependent on that is posted to the original track].

Examples - YouTube & Soundcloud, official release channels in each case.