Download Quality Youtube-dl

These commands will ensure you download the highest quality mp4 video and m4a audio from the video as a single file or will merge them back into a single mp4 (using ffmpeg in my case). If ffmpeg or avconv is not available, youtube-dl should fall back to the single file -f best option instead of the default.

notice that youtube-dl has labeled the last option 1280x720 as the 'best' quality and that's what it will download by default, but that the line starting with 137 is actually higher quality 1920x1080. Youtube has separated the video and audio streams for the lines labeled DASH so we also need to pick the highest quality audio which in this case is the line starting with 141. Then we run youtube-dl again this time specifying the audio and video:

Download File 🔥 https://bltlly.com/2y38Lc 🔥

and it will download the 1080p video and auto-merge it with the highest-quality audio. It should also auto-deleted the separate downloaded parts. This method is a little extra work, but will get you the best results.

This answer here, with the most votes, should be right to give you the best video quality available, but....it's not always. bestvideo+bestaudio seems to choose only the best video and best audio of the options that are video only and audio only, then it merges the two together. Note that this also appears to be identical to the default behavior of youtube-dl. However, on the video I was looking at, the best quality was a single, pre-merged file that was already in a format with combined video and audio. The bestvideo+bestaudio option did NOT choose this best quality 720p file because it was looking only for separate video and audio files. Details below.

Notice that row 22 says "(best)" to the far right of it. This is the only option which offers hd720 quality, which is the best quality I can get when watching this video in a web browser on YouTube. It is the clearest and has the best definition. When I use either of the commands recommended by the top answer:

I end up with a video that is both lower quality/lower resolution, and has a larger file size. I don't understand it exactly, but the -f best option is definitely the only one that truly gives me the best resolution.

Here's some screenshots from a tutorial video I was watching showing electronic circuit diagrams in the video. Notice how the latter one is much higher quality and more legible (click on each image and compare the tiny font in a zoomed-in view):

Some video sites, such as youtube, offer not only different resolutions of video to download, but have options in youtube-dl called formats to download video and audio separately. For the case of youtube, it will only offer the highest quality video and highest quality audio separately. Here's an example output of using -F flag to show all formats available:

So there's a lot of different formats, but some are labelled "audio only" or "video only". If I selected to download one of those formats by using the specified format code such as with -f 137, I would really get either an audio file or a video file with no audio, which is usually not what you want. If I had ffmpeg installed and specified both video and audio formats with -f 137+140, then youtube-dl would download video and audio and afterwards combine them together into one video file.

If you don't have ffmpeg installed, youtube-dl will by default select the highest quality format that has both audio and video. This maxes out at 720p (and is usually specified by format code 22 so you would download with -f 22). If you do have ffmpeg installed, youtube-dl will be able download the real best quality video (1080p or better if available) and best quality audio, and after downloading mux (combine) them together into one video file so this is what I recommend.

I am a disk saver, so I download videos of the format 1280 x 720,

because 4k videos takes more size of my hard disk.

So I add youtube-dl in ~/.bashrc file like given below

Typically youtube-dl aims to shoot for the highest quality possible. That's not always practical. Flip side I've seen was for minimum quality possible. That's not practical either. What would be a command to make youtube-dl find the highest quality format that is within a set limit?

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I went back to the site, because I wanted to see if I could get a better download. The video quality seems better on the web player, although I am not certain. I have been trying a few things like best, bestvideo, etc. But it doesn't seem to work properly anymore.

Looking at the download options with -F, it seems like it still downloads the best video (regardless of it being an mp4 or not, in my case a webm), and then converts it to mp4? As the file sizes match between the downloaded file and the best quality in -F.

By default youtube-dl tries to download the best available quality, i.e. if you want the best quality you don't need to pass any special options, youtube-dl will guess it for you by default.

I think I did not express myself clear. I meant did you try this command in a SSH terminal in OMV to ensure that the best quality video can be downloaded in OMV at all? If this is possible by CLI then it shouldnt be a big thing for ryecoaaron to modify the plugin - if he will find the time to do this of course

Maybe some kind of 4K support is necessary on the destination system, which the youtube-dl uses to determine which resolution is the "best quality". Why should it download a 4K-video if the system supports only full-HD? Just a thought.

Adding ffmpeg did allow me to download the 4k video of the video in the github issue when using no youtube-dl flags. But I couldn't get any --format option to download the 4k video. Even something simple like youtube-dl --format best would not work. I could add an option to not use any arguments but it is strange that "best" doesn't download the best even with ffmpeg.

ryecoaaron Thank you for maintaining the plugin!

Just an idea: Would it make sense to introduce some kind of "Extra Options" field to customize the way how the plugin downloads a file? There are so many command line switches available for youtube-dl, which you can never map all of them in the GUI.

The documentation states that using nothing should download the best quality possible, but I always get the default quality of 720p. This tends to be an issue when I am downloading playlists with multiple file qualities. So what gives? Is there some other code I should be using?

-f best is not the default. It advises youtube-dl to download the best single file format. For many supported sites, the best single format will be the best overall, but that does not apply to YouTube.

The main command I have been running lately is youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 & then the link to whichever track I just want the audio from. A few questions I just thought of though: 1.) The command you provided to me at the bottom- is this supposed to somehow automatically select the best quality before downloading? 2.) Also, if so, what would the command be if I wanted to do this AND just acquire the audio?

What I gave you is just an example and should not be used as template! Each video has different options available, this happens to be the latest L1T video. What you need to do is type man youtube-dl in a terminal and read the description of each flag.

Previously, I was using bestvideo+bestaudio/best, but I find the following variant works much better for reducing mkv, (apparently) eliminating webm, but yet still guaranteeing the highest quality video (don't use the --merge-output-format option when using this):

But what if you care more about getting a mp4 container than you do about the audio quality? By insisting on m4a audio first--but then relenting on just that part while issuing bestvideo again--(by using the the format selection above) you essentially express a flexible preference for mp4 over the other containers; you surely do want mp4 if possible, but not at the cost of reduced video quality.

If you've got xsel installed you just have to select the youtube url in the browser address bar before running downloadpl in a terminal.

(The "$@" is just so you can throw in any extra youtube-dl options - I seldom do though.)

Generally I prefer to leave it up to youtube-dl to choose the format with the best quality sound, even if it means unnecessary download bandwidth. People paying by the byte will have different priorities I guess.

I've looked in the manual and haven't found a reference to '140'. Are you saying that 'youtube-dl -F url' should be run first in order to know what's available? If so, I think for a generic quick command -x might be better: