ytdlpwav1

A program to download YouTube videos in AV1 and Opus, with MKV as a container.

Description

ytdlpwav1 is a program to download videos from a YouTube playlist, and outputting the final video result as an AV1-encoded video with Opus for the audio. The program enforces this rule, even if that means re-encoding. Note that this re-encoding behaviour almost guarantees a worse quality than the downloaded video itself. Considering that, this program is not meant to do any kind of serious digital archives. Please keep this in mind when using the program!

This program relies on FFmpeg, FFprobe and yt-dlp being installed and added to PATH.

Requirements

• FFmpeg and FFprobe
• yt-dlp (The latest version is heavily recommended, as an out-of-date version can cause issues regarding downloads, either to fetch video information, or downloading the actual video)

Getting Started Guide

Note

Do not use shorthands for the cookie_path argument, such as ~ for your current home folder. Always use absolute paths!

Note

And also make sure to have an up-to-date YouTube cookie file! If not, then you might experience unexpected download failures, or sub-optimal video quality.

Downloading YouTube videos from a YouTube Playlist

• To download a collection of videos from a YouTube playlist, you must first fetch a list of videos from a playlist. To do that, first run the executable with arguments as such : ytdlpwav1 fetch --cookie_file "YOUR_COOKIE_FILE_PATH" --playlist_id "YOUR_YOUTUBE_PLAYLIST_ID". This command will generate a file called ytdlpwav1_video_data.json that contains YouTube video IDs from the chosen playlist.
• After that, to download the videos themselves, run the executable with the following arguments : ytdlpwav1 download --cookie_file "YOUR_COOKIE_FILE_PATH" --output_dir "YOUR_OUTPUT_DIR"

Downloading a single YouTube video

• To download just a single YouTube, run the executable with this : ytdlpwav1 download_single --cookie_file "YOUR_COOKIE_FILE_PATH" --output_dir "YOUR_OUTPUT_DIR" --id "YOUR_YOUTUBE_VIDEO_ID"

Configuration

• If you are having trouble with the program falsely identifying that you do not have either FFmpeg, FFprobe, or yt-dlp, pass in --no_program_check, like so : ytdlpwav1 fetch --cookie_file "YOUR_COOKIE_FILE_PATH" --playlist_id "YOUR_YOUTUBE_PLAYLIST_ID --no_program_check, or ytdlpwav1 download_single --cookie_file "YOUR_COOKIE_FILE_PATH" --output_dir "YOUR_OUTPUT_DIR" --id "YOUR_YOUTUBE_VIDEO_ID" --no_program_check for downloading multiple videos
• If the program is not working, use --debug to tell the program to output a verbose log file, which can be used to diagnose failures
• If you don't want to supply a cookie file, just omit the --cookie_file argument
• If you want to also download YouTube's automatic captions, supply the --download_auto_subs flag for the download sub-commands (download, and download_single)
• If you want to set the preferred width and height for the downloaded video(s), use --preferred_width and --preferred_height.

Warning

Downloading videos with YouTube's automatic captions may cause you to be throttled by YouTube, by yt-dlp erroring out, complaining about a Too Many Requests error (HTTP 429). If this happens, do not use the --download_auto_subs option