Re: [gentoo-user] youtube-dl and the conf file.

[Michael <confabulate@kintzios.com>]

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On Tuesday, 27 October 2020 21:14:37 GMT Arve Barsnes wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2020 at 21:58, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm using the normal youtube-dl <link to video> command.  No options or
> > anything.  This is what I have in the conf file.
> > 
> > 
> > --format
> > bestvideo[ext=webm][width<=?1280]+bestaudio/bestvideo[ext=mp4][width<=?128
> > 0]+bestaudio/best
> > 
> > --merge-output-format mp4
> > 
> > 
> > Those options worked for a long time so I guess something changed with
> > youtube-dl.  I don't get why it says the options are a URL either.  When
> > I google, I can't find where anyone is getting this error or using
> > different options either, at least not to accomplish the same goal. I
> 
> I took a quick look at the commit history, and it seems the
> documentation for the format options haven't changed in at least a
> year, so it's hard to say if it is actually youtube-dl being the
> culprit here.
> 
> Might be a quoting problem. Have you changed or updated anything
> regarding your terminal emulator lately?
> 
> Maybe run your command with the verbose flag (-v) and see if it tells
> you the full command it is trying to run. Notice in the docs the whole
> format string is quoted with single quotes.
> 
> Regards,
> Arve

Occasionally the youtube-dl on the tree is not totally up-to-date with the 
latest and greatest in git.  You can wait for a day or two and see if it gets 
updated in portage testing branch, or download it from git and run it from 
within a directory.

Theoretically, your config can run into trouble if the container format you 
have set to merge video and audio into, will not work with the video/audio 
extractors available on the stream.

You have specified:  "--merge-output-format mp4"

If the available codex for video or audio is not suitable for the mp4 
container, you are going to get an error.  For example, if a stream only has 
bestvideo in a VP9 codec at width 1280, and/or best audio in opus codec, this 
will barf if you try to merge it into a mp4 container without transcoding the 
video and/or audio streams using codecs compatible with mp4, instead of 
merging (copying) them into webm (mkv) as they come.

Hence it throws a wobbly back at you and asks you to run a search in case 
there is some URL with video/audio streams in codecs which will satisfy your 
mp4 container format requirement.

I don't think the single/double quote is an issue for Linux.  In MSWindows you 
ought to use double quotes.

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