up vote 151 down vote favorite
78

I have installed youtube-dl in my 14.04.

I can download video by following command,

$ youtube-dl [youtube-link]

But I want to know how to select available pixel quality of youtube video(i.e 1080p, 720p, 480p, etc).

In software description they said it's possible(shown in image below), but how to do..

ss

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The description above is obsolete. From the man page: "youtube-dl now defaults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases." – Jos Jun 21 '14 at 10:08
1  
Note that YouTube has employed some sort of protection that prevents downloading tools from downloading (or even seeing) the 1080p version, but you can still download all other resolutions up to and including 720p. – thomasrutter Oct 1 '14 at 3:19
up vote 219 down vote accepted

To download a video, you type the URL after the command like so:

youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9pzm5b6FFY"

To select the video quality, first use the -F option to list the available formats, here’s an example,

youtube-dl -F "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9pzm5b6FFY"

Here’s the output:

[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] P9pzm5b6FFY: Downloading webpage
[youtube] P9pzm5b6FFY: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] P9pzm5b6FFY: Extracting video information
[info] Available formats for P9pzm5b6FFY:
format code extension resolution  note 
140         m4a       audio only  DASH audio , audio@128k (worst)
160         mp4       144p        DASH video , video only
133         mp4       240p        DASH video , video only
134         mp4       360p        DASH video , video only
135         mp4       480p        DASH video , video only
136         mp4       720p        DASH video , video only
17          3gp       176x144     
36          3gp       320x240     
5           flv       400x240     
43          webm      640x360     
18          mp4       640x360     
22          mp4       1280x720    (best)

The best quality is 22 so use -f 22 instead of -F to download the MP4 video with 1280x720 resolution like this:

youtube-dl -f 22 "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9pzm5b6FFY"

Or optionally use the following flags to automatically download the best audio and video tracks available:

youtube-dl -f bestvideo+bestaudio "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9pzm5b6FFY"

If you encounter an error during the muxing process, instead try the following: 

youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/bestvideo+bestaudio' --merge-output-format mp4 "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9pzm5b6FFY"

That command will ensure you download the highest quality mp4 video and m4a audio from the video and merge them back into a single mp4 (using ffmpeg in my case).

Source: http://www.webupd8.org/2014/02/video-downloader-youtube-dl-gets.html

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3  
Make sure that you do not choose DASH. That will be unplayable! – prakharsingh95 Sep 13 '14 at 4:21
    
@prakharsingh95 the DASH audio only can be converted to standard wave or mp3 format using gnac or similar software. – mchid Sep 17 '14 at 12:09
    
I meant DASH Video. I tried to download 4K, but that's all in DASH format (DASH allows youtube to preserve bandwidth). It's radically different it will mostly be unplayable. – prakharsingh95 Sep 24 '14 at 19:41
    
@prakharsingh95 Yeah if anything you might be able to view the mp4 using VLC as VLC allows you to sync the video with a separate file for audio. I haven't tried it though. Have you tried converting the mp4 file from the DASH download to avi format? I think they are similar. – mchid Sep 25 '14 at 5:05
1  
Yes. Dash is of course playable, but you need to mux the streams with something like avconv. Too slow for 4K. – prakharsingh95 Sep 29 '14 at 8:39
up vote 65 down vote

You can download 1080p using youtube-dl, but you need to do a little extra work. Usually it will only download 720p as its max even if you can see 1080p on youtube.com.

Run with -F to see available formats:

youtube-dl -F https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=-pxRXP3w-sQ

171         webm      audio only  DASH audio  115k , audio@128k (44100Hz), 2.59MiB (worst)
140         m4a       audio only  DASH audio  129k , audio@128k (44100Hz), 3.02MiB
141         m4a       audio only  DASH audio  255k , audio@256k (44100Hz), 5.99MiB
160         mp4       256x144     DASH video  111k , 12fps, video only, 2.56MiB
247         webm      1280x720    DASH video 1807k , 1fps, video only, 23.48MiB
136         mp4       1280x720    DASH video 2236k , 24fps, video only, 27.73MiB
248         webm      1920x1080   DASH video 3993k , 1fps, video only, 42.04MiB
137         mp4       1920x1080   DASH video 4141k , 24fps, video only, 60.28MiB
43          webm      640x360
18          mp4       640x360
22          mp4       1280x720    (best)

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:

youtube-dl -f 137+141 https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=-pxRXP3w-sQ

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.

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3  
thank you very much, didn't know about 137+141 – whitesiroi May 5 '15 at 14:48
    
Your example and others present easy choices for the audio - that is, for high quality, choose the one with highest bitrate value. I recently however found myself faced with a choice between DASH audio , opus @160k or DASH audio 126k , audio@128k (44100Hz), 1.79MiB or DASH audio 127k , m4a_dash container, aac @128k (44100Hz), 1.94MiB. I had to choose but am uncertain about quality, or perhaps compatibility. – user643722 Jun 10 '15 at 12:13
    
The best thing about youtube-dl is that it is multi-platform. This solution doesn't just work on Linux, but also on Mac and Windows. Thank you! – Antony Jun 2 '16 at 23:19
up vote 12 down vote

To select specific resolutions, you can specify the size and audio quality so they get selected automatically - so for 480p:

-f 'bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]'

with bestvideo[height<=720]+bestaudio/best[height<=720] for 720p etc. This can added to config file at ~/.config/youtube-dl/config (or even /etc/youtube-dl.conf) so you don't get oversized downloads:

mkdir ~/.config/youtube-dl
echo "-f 'bestvideo[height<=720]+bestaudio/best[height<=720]'" >> ~/.config/youtube-dl/config

You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable the configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.

Please note that fairly often it will have to download a separate video and audio steam and merge them.

For more examples see youtube-dl's doucmentation.

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1  
I had an issue where different segments of the same video had different format codes for the same resolution (e.g. hls-1476 for video 1 of 2 and hls-1665 for video 2 of 2 where both were 540p) so I couldn't just use "-f hls-1476" or "-f hls-1665" or I'd get "ERROR: requested format not available" Your command examples helped me retrieve what I wanted. – ssnobody Jan 22 '17 at 21:37
    
+1 for ~/.config/youtube-dl/config – Marinos An May 22 '17 at 18:15
up vote 2 down vote

A bash wrapper script that prompts for the format, which includes all available renditions, including audio-only, video-only.

Accepts both absolute youtube URLs and video IDs.

#!/ usr/bin/env bash
# Download youtube video with desired quality

# Accept both full URLs and video id's such as AQcQgfvfF1M

# match by regex, starts with http:// or https://
if [[ "$1" =~ ^https?:\/\/.* ]]; then
    url=$*
else
    url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$*"
fi

echo "Fetching available formats for $url..."
youtube-dl -F "$url"
read -p "Please enter the desired quality code: " FORMAT

echo "Streaming with quality $FORMAT..."
mpv --cache=1024 $(youtube-dl -f $FORMAT -g "$url")

Sample output:

    yt.sh https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dax_tnZRExc
    [youtube] Dax_tnZRExc: Downloading webpage
    [youtube] Dax_tnZRExc: Downloading video info webpage
    [youtube] Dax_tnZRExc: Extracting video information
    [youtube] Dax_tnZRExc: Downloading MPD manifest
    [info] Available formats for Dax_tnZRExc:
    format code  extension  resolution note
    139          m4a        audio only DASH audio   49k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.5@ 48k (22050Hz), 308.75KiB
    249          webm       audio only DASH audio   50k , opus @ 50k, 271.91KiB
    250          webm       audio only DASH audio   70k , opus @ 70k, 366.63KiB
    171          webm       audio only DASH audio  118k , vorbis@128k, 652.50KiB
    140          m4a        audio only DASH audio  127k , m4a_dash container, mp4a.40.2@128k (44100Hz), 820.00KiB
    251          webm       audio only DASH audio  130k , opus @160k, 705.84KiB
    160          mp4        256x144    DASH video  109k , avc1.4d400c, 13fps, video only, 703.64KiB
    278          webm       256x144    144p  111k , webm container, vp9, 25fps, video only, 439.72KiB
    242          webm       426x240    240p  243k , vp9, 25fps, video only, 623.95KiB
    133          mp4        426x240    DASH video  252k , avc1.4d4015, 25fps, video only, 1.54MiB
    134          mp4        640x360    DASH video  388k , avc1.4d401e, 25fps, video only, 1.24MiB
    243          webm       640x360    360p  458k , vp9, 25fps, video only, 1.19MiB
    135          mp4        854x480    DASH video  761k , avc1.4d401e, 25fps, video only, 2.40MiB
    244          webm       854x480    480p  893k , vp9, 25fps, video only, 2.00MiB
    136          mp4        1280x720   DASH video 1382k , avc1.4d401f, 25fps, video only, 4.56MiB
    247          webm       1280x720   720p 1754k , vp9, 25fps, video only, 3.94MiB
    137          mp4        1920x1080  DASH video 2350k , avc1.640028, 25fps, video only, 8.48MiB
    248          webm       1920x1080  1080p 2792k , vp9, 25fps, video only, 8.09MiB
    17           3gp        176x144    small , mp4v.20.3, mp4a.40.2@ 24k
    36           3gp        320x180    small , mp4v.20.3, mp4a.40.2
    43           webm       640x360    medium , vp8.0, vorbis@128k
    18           mp4        640x360    medium , avc1.42001E, mp4a.40.2@ 96k
    22           mp4        1280x720   hd720 , avc1.64001F, mp4a.40.2@192k (best)
    Please enter the desired format #

If you want to download the video as opposed to stream it, just remove the mpv --cache=1024 part and the dollar sign with brackets.

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up vote -3 down vote

By default, youtube-dl will pick the best quality.

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1  
Yes, as per the readme You also have option(s) to select intended format, see here: github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/… – AjayKumarBasuthkar Jan 26 '16 at 17:18

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