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how to select next best quality if specified quality is not available yt-dlp

cd flag

i am trying to download a video using yt-dlp and i already specified the quality i want. What i want to know is if it is possible to make yt-dlp proceed to download next best quality if specified quality is not avaliable.

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cn flag

No. yt-dlp will try to download the highest quality media it can find that is not separate video and audio streams.

Specifically YouTube separates audio and video for everything better than 720p so that means yt-dlp will not download higher than 720p from youtube. Other locations might not do this or do it for all files.

You can download either best video if it is a video file (that may contain audio), best audio if it is an audio file (that may contain a video), or best video/audio it is has both but this refers to one download.

See the options here.

  • b*, best*: Select the best quality format that contains either a video or an audio or both (ie; vcodec!=none or acodec!=none)
  • b, best: Select the best quality format that contains both video and audio. Equivalent to best*[vcodec!=none][acodec!=none]
  • bv, bestvideo: Select the best quality video-only format. Equivalent to best*[acodec=none]
  • bv*, bestvideo*: Select the best quality format that contains video. It may also contain audio. Equivalent to best*[vcodec!=none]
  • ba, bestaudio: Select the best quality audio-only format. Equivalent to best*[vcodec=none]
Subomi avatar
cd flag
So this means that `yt-dlp` by default downloads 720p if it available and quality is not specificied.
cn flag
no, if a file you download has 1080p as -one file- it will download that. YT tends to have 1 audio and 1 video file though for higher than 720p :)
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