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

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

Michael wrote:
> 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.


I first noticed this when using a site other than youtube.  For a long
while, I thought it was because of me using other sites.  Today, real
early this morning, I wanted a video off youtube and noticed it still
gave the error.  That made me start to wonder.  Odd thing is, it seems
to pick the best video but the ones I was downloading were already low
definition anyway.  I may find a 4K video and see what it does.  If it
grabs the 4K version, it's ignoring the option in the conf file.  If it
grabs the 720P version, well, it is making use of some of the option
even if it is not happy with the rest of the line. 

I get the same error even when I comment out that merge format line.  I
was hoping but I added that line a while back but so far, it ignores it
or they are not available as you point out. 

If youtube-dl stops working because it can't be maintained, I'm going to
be sad.  I don't use it a lot but it is a nifty tool.  I really like the
resume feature.  It seems other tools stop at 90 something percent and
they require me to start over.  Youtube-dl just picks up where it left
off when you try again.  Saves a lot of time and bandwidth for me and
the site I'm getting a video from. 

Dale

:-)  :-)