youtube-dl seting resolution.

[OldNick]

I have just tried youtube-dl. Being an oldster who spent many a happy (?) hour doing batch files to control command files, I had little trouble and had it working in a short time. That is not all because of me. The programme very sensibly offers lots of scary options...but allows a very simple option to just down load stuff. So, geeky, but with a nice starter kit

BUT...there are command line entries that refer to the target's width and height:
width (numeric): Width of the video
height (numeric): Height of the video

Are these parameters able to dictate,or at least request, the actual download res

(So if a YT video allows 240, 480,760, they will go to the closest (higher) resolution, etc, if you ask for 360...which would come out at 480)

Help appreciated.

Nick

[sneaker]

The documentation describes the format selection by resolution.

E.g:

youtube-dl -f "bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]" URL

to download the highest resolution video that is not higher than 480 pixels height.

[OldNick]

OK. Thanks. Excellent! There are so many command lines that I got lost......bored....sorry So BestVideo.

As I say I spent years playing in command line stuff and actually wrote several for other forums. But I am out of practice.

Part of me says "Stay" and the other part says "Run away"....old fart...been here since DOS (5 IIRC ?....back in the days where you loaded up with floppy "disks".) and Compuserve............now am just a user.

[hydra3333]

ha ha, paper tape and punch cards vintage oldster here, still doing DOS bits here and there too (it still "just works", doesn't it !)

now am just a user

me too.
fiddle with cross-compilation of ffmpeg occasionally, but effectively now "just a user"

[OldNick]

We're both in Oz!

I was not back as far as the punch card/tape era: I had a mate whose older brother was a total geek and was doing punch cards at Uni. HAH! He worked on borrowed time on the computer, which probably had 0.1% power of my desktop! He also built his own Astro telescope.....grinding his own lenses. Bit of a genius. Amazingly gentle guy.... we all held in a bit of awe.

I was a softer target, with biology etc. But later on, yeah I programmed under the DOS...and yeah DOS could be a pain, but does work.

I am into photography and on one forum I was actually writing DOS .bat files ( to circumvent Windows) to help members to post the best quality shots they could, within the constraints of the forum. Platform dependent, but not Win X dependent....quite

To me, programming under DOS was more table than under Win X, but limited AFA the interface is concerned. I had to chuck Win programming because as a lone operator I could keep up with everyone's desire to keep up with the latest version. I am sure if I wrote in C, even then I would have to deal with +, ++, +++ etc not being back-compatible.

I nostalgically drivel.

[abolibibelot]

Interesting notes about a not-so-distant past which most "users" nowadays haven't known (myself included – well, I've used computers with DOS commands and floppy disks, but was around 10 at the time so it mostly came down to "install this" and "run that") and therefore feel like it all came down from the sky, knowing close to nothing about the under-the-hood intricacies involved in today's fancy "applications"...

BUT...there are command line entries that refer to the target's width and height:
width (numeric): Width of the video
height (numeric): Height of the video
Are these parameters able to dictate,or at least request, the actual download res
(So if a YT video allows 240, 480,760, they will go to the closest (higher) resolution, etc, if you ask for 360...which would come out at 480)
Help appreciated.

The -F switch (upper case F) is meant to display a list of all available formats, be they video-only, audio-only, or video + audio.

youtube-dl -F [link]

Then with a second command you can select one of the available streams (if it's already a video + audio stream) or two (one video stream + one compatible audio stream) for the actual download, with the -f switch (lower case f, which stands for "format"). Usually on YouTube the 720p version (if present) is readily available in AVC video + AAC audio in MP4 container with the code "-f 22" (there is also a video only 720p stream with code "136", it's supposed to be identical but sometimes it's not). For 480p you always have to combine the video-only 480p stream with the AAC audio with the code "-f 135+140". For 1080p it's "-f 137+140". The 360p format is available in video + audio with "-f 18". If you select an audio stream other than AAC (140) it will not be compatible with the default MP4 container, in which case I suppose that youtube-dl will automatically use the MKV or WEBM container instead. Sometimes the actual resolution is different from what's listed. For instance, with this link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1NTmnG0hmA, the video downloaded with "-f 135+140" (normally 480p) has a resolution of 320x178 only.
I usually add a custom naming pattern so that downloaded files are easier to sort later on, using the "-o" switch ("output") and some of the available parameters :

youtube-dl -f 135+140 [link] -o "H:\YouTube - %(title)s [%(id)s 480p].mp4"

(For instance with the URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzNhaLUT520, this will create a file in the H:\ root directory named "YouTube - Antoine Dodson ‘Hide Yo Kids, Hide Yo Wife’ Interview (Original) [EzNhaLUT520 480p].mp4".)
I never rely on the "best" options as their outcome is quite unpredictable (sometimes it does not select the actual best format, for instance it chooses 720p when 1080p or higher is available, or it selects WEBM formats instead of AVC / AAC / MP4 which I prefer for the sake of consistency).

[aazerty]

Hi ,

Sometimes , infos given by : youtube-dl -F [link]
are wrong !!!

Do a try with : youtube-dl -j [link] > infos.txt
and dig inside the file for finding the good link for streaming .
( lot of job !!! )

Cheers .

[OldNick]

Sorry for no follow-up. When I downloaded youtube-dl, it was to actually grab (Australia's) ABC's iView episodes for offline viewing. It worked, so I started to ask questions to fine-tuning.

It doesn't work any more. ABC seems to frequently do "stuff" to stop anyone downloading. I don't get it. ABC has no ads. I can't see what it costs to have me able to watch offline.

Nick

[LZAA]

Url?

[hydra3333]

if you get it working, pls post how

[OldNick]

Url?

No...it was derwayne


https://iview.abc.net.au/show/total-control

This is what you get when you ask to share the programme total control and "copy url" (the above url is the copy/paste of the result): that was the recommended way to actually download iView episodes. It worked maybe a week ago or so. now the message is "unsupported format" or similar.

Nick

[OldNick]

if you get it working, pls post how

Don't look to me ! I am asking not telling. Maybe someone here can sort this. But I reckon that whatever works will be thwarted fast.

Nick

[LZAA]

TubeDigger.

[lomero]

i can't play... with chrome click on play button and all appears black... and stop....??? how to play?? VPN?