* Added options: --video-multistreams, --no-video-multistreams, --audio-multistreams, --no-audio-multistreams
* New format selectors: best*, worst*, bestvideo*, bestaudio*, worstvideo*, worstaudio*
* Added b,w,v,a as alias for best, worst, video and audio respectively in format selection
* Changed video format sorting to show video only files and video+audio files together.
@ -711,12 +715,23 @@ You can also use a file extension (currently `3gp`, `aac`, `flv`, `m4a`, `mp3`,
You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats:
- `best`: Select the best quality format represented by a single file with video and audio.
- `worst`: Select the worst quality format represented by a single file with video and audio.
- `bestvideo`: Select the best quality video-only format (e.g. DASH video). May not be available.
- `worstvideo`: Select the worst quality video-only format. May not be available.
- `bestaudio`: Select the best quality audio only-format. May not be available.
- `worstaudio`: Select the worst quality audio only-format. May not be available.
- `b*`, `best*`: Select the best quality format irrespective of whether it contains video or audio.
- `w*`, `worst*`: Select the worst quality format irrespective of whether it contains video or audio.
- `b`, `best`: Select the best quality format that contains both video and audio. Equivalent to `best*[vcodec!=none][acodec!=none]`
- `w`, `worst`: Select the worst quality format that contains both video and audio. Equivalent to `worst*[vcodec!=none][acodec!=none]`
- `bv`, `bestvideo`: Select the best quality video-only format. Equivalent to `best*[acodec=none]`
- `wv`, `worstvideo`: Select the worst quality video-only format. Equivalent to `worst*[acodec=none]`
- `bv*`, `bestvideo*`: Select the best quality format that contains video. It may also contain audio. Equivalent to `best*[vcodec!=none]`
- `wv*`, `worstvideo*`: Select the worst quality format that contains video. It may also contain audio. Equivalent to `worst*[vcodec!=none]`
- `ba`, `bestaudio`: Select the best quality audio-only format. Equivalent to `best*[vcodec=none]`
- `wa`, `worstaudio`: Select the worst quality audio-only format. Equivalent to `worst*[vcodec=none]`
- `ba*`, `bestaudio*`: Select the best quality format that contains audio. It may also contain video. Equivalent to `best*[acodec!=none]`
- `wa*`, `worstaudio*`: Select the worst quality format that contains audio. It may also contain video. Equivalent to `worst*[acodec!=none]`
For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use `-f worstvideo`. It is however recomended to never actually use `worst` and related options. See [sorting formats](#sorting-formats) for more details.
@ -724,8 +739,7 @@ If you want to download multiple videos and they don't have the same formats ava
If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as a separator, e.g. `-f 22,17,18` will download all these three formats, of course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined with the precedence feature: `-f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio`.
You can merge the video and audio of multiple formats into a single file using `-f <format-1>+<format-2>` (requires ffmpeg or avconv installed), for example `-f bestvideo+bestaudio` will download the best video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with ffmpeg/avconv.
You can merge the video and audio of multiple formats into a single file using `-f <format1>+<format2>+...` (requires ffmpeg or avconv installed), for example `-f bestvideo+bestaudio` will download the best video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with ffmpeg/avconv. If `--no-video-multistreams` is used, all formats with a video stream except the first one are ignored. Similarly, if `--no-audio-multistreams` is used, all formats with an audio stream except the first one are ignored. For example, `-f bestvideo+best+bestaudio` will download and merge all 3 given formats. The resulting file will have 2 video streams and 2 audio streams. But `-f bestvideo+best+bestaudio --no-video-multistreams` will download and merge only `bestvideo` and `bestaudio`. `best` is ignored since another format containing a video stream (`bestvideo`) has already been selected. The order of the formats is therefore important. `-f best+bestaudio --no-audio-multistreams` will download and merge both formats while `-f bestaudio+best --no-audio-multistreams` will ignore `best` and download only `bestaudio`.
## Filtering Formats
@ -791,7 +805,7 @@ You can change the criteria for being considered the `best` by using `-S` (`--fo
All fields, unless specified otherwise, are sorted in decending order. To reverse this, prefix the field with a `+`. Eg: `+res` prefers the smallest resolution format. Additionally, you can suffix a prefered value for the fields, seperated by a `:`. Eg: `res:720` prefers larger videos, but no larger than 720p and the smallest video if there are no videos less than 720p. For `codec` and `ext`, you can provide two prefered values, the first for video and the second for audio. Eg: `+codec:avc:m4a` (equivalent to `+vcodec:avc,+acodec:m4a`) sets the video codec preference to `h264` > `h265` > `vp9` > `av01` > `vp8` > `h263` > `theora` and audio codec preference to `mp4a` > `aac` > `vorbis` > `opus` > `mp3` > `ac3` > `dts`. You can also make the sorting prefer the nearest values to the provided by using `~` as the delimiter. Eg: `filesize~1G` prefers the format with filesize closest to 1 GiB.
The fields `has_video`, `has_audio`, `extractor_preference`, `language_preference`, `quality` are always given highest priority in sorting, irrespective of the user-defined order. This behaviour can be changed by using `--force-format-sort`. Apart from these, the default order used by youtube-dlc is: `tbr,filesize,vbr,height,width,protocol,vext,abr,aext,fps,filesize_approx,source_preference,format_id`. Note that the extractors may override this default order (currently no extractor does this), but not the user-provided order.
The fields `has_video`, `extractor_preference`, `language_preference`, `quality` are always given highest priority in sorting, irrespective of the user-defined order. This behaviour can be changed by using `--force-format-sort`. Apart from these, the default order used by youtube-dlc is: `tbr,filesize,vbr,height,width,protocol,vext,abr,aext,fps,filesize_approx,source_preference,format_id`. Note that the extractors may override this default order (currently no extractor does this), but not the user-provided order.
If your format selector is `worst`, the last item is selected after sorting. This means it will select the format that is worst in all repects. Most of the time, what you actually want is the video with the smallest filesize instead. So it is generally better to use `-f best -S +size,+br,+res,+fps`.
@ -808,6 +822,19 @@ If you want to preserve the old format selection behavior (prior to youtube-dlc
Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of single.
```bash
# Download and merge the best best video-only format and the best audio-only format,
# or download the best combined format if video-only format is not available
$ youtube-dlc
# Same as above
$ youtube-dlc -f 'bestvideo+bestaudio/best'
# Download best format that contains video,
# and if it doesn't already have an audio stream, merge it with best audio-only format
pukkandan
4 years ago