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Seems to be a known problem, install and use yt-dlp

Code:
sudo -H pip3 install yt-dlp
yt-dlp --version

You don't have to use sudo to download, you can cd to any folder before yt-dlp, use best for the best resolution

Code:
yt-dlp 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilifg26TZrI' best

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/30102
 
Seems to be a known problem, install and use yt-dlp

Code:
sudo -H pip3 install yt-dlp
yt-dlp --version

You don't have to use sudo to download, you can cd to any folder before yt-dlp, use best for the best resolution

Code:
yt-dlp 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilifg26TZrI' best

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/30102

getting 12MB/s now and downloads go now into ~/Downloads

but using best after the URL gives me the following error message (and resulting MP4 is still 720p):

ERROR: [generic] 'best' is not a valid URL. Set --default-search "ytsearch" (or run yt-dlp "ytsearch:best" ) to search YouTube



edit: wait a minute - i think i might have just been using a video that atually was 720p 😂

edit2: nope, even a proper higher res video downloaded in 720p
 
getting 12MB/s now and downloads go now into ~/Downloads

but using best after the URL gives me the following error message (and resulting MP4 is still 720p):





edit: wait a minute - i think i might have just been using a video that atually was 720p 😂
Be sure to put the whole URL in quotes, “URL” or ‘URL’, and best after them.
 
getting 12MB/s now and downloads go now into ~/Downloads

but using best after the URL gives me the following error message (and resulting MP4 is still 720p):





edit: wait a minute - i think i might have just been using a video that atually was 720p 😂
Be sure to put the whole URL in quotes, “URL” or ‘URL’, and best after them.

nope, i just even copied your exact example line, it gave me the exact same message and it was 720p instead of 4K

i also tried putting it in front of the link, also with a dash before it
 
just did yt-dlp --help and man, that thing has tons of options! 😱

though on a first glance i couldn't find anything anything that would be responsible for video quality settings


in the end it isn't as important at the moment anyway and you helped me so much already anyway! 💕
 
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I was wrong, best is not used there in yt-dlp.
From the help file I see you can
-use -F to see a list of available formats
Code:
yt-dlp -F 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilifg26TZrI'

- and -f to download the desired format, best available for mp4, 720p in this case
Code:
yt-dlp -f mp4 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilifg26TZrI'

- or use a combination to merge the desired video and audio, 1080p mp4 with m4a audio
Code:
yt-dlp -f 137+140 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilifg26TZrI'
 
still capped at 720p for me.

but i just stumbled upon some page that had some examples that worked in highest resulutions- it just seems it is just captured web stream in .webm file format using those methods. even putting mp4 behind those b / bv options listed there doesn't seem to change this

here's the link in case anyone might be interested:

https://linuxconfig.org/yt-dlp-vs-youtube-dl
 
thanks, but i think it should be possible with the VLC player that i'm already using

never needed that feature before (only extracted audio from videos into MP3 before)
so i'm not sure if it will actually do, but i think it will

and if you only use b or bv (not bv+ba for best video+best audio that are shown in those examples) you will get one single .webm file containing both video and audio. no need for merging

will experiment more with those options. there must be some way to get it to download the MP4 with the highest video quality from those YT servers, but maybe YT is simply restricting download quality to 720p for me somehow? - as VLC is showing the exact same behavior
 
I might not have an ultra highspeed internet connection, but 100Mbit still shouldn’t be too awful. It’s also streaming 4k vids @60Hz no problem

I also forgot to mention that when I’m trying to download some old videos, which are 480p only, i will get 360p files, so it‘s really looking more like YT saying FU, you won’t get stuff on the highest quality available, and not due to some technical limitations
 
anyone know the technical reason behind this?

i just updated Apple's Command Line Tools to version 14

when i tried to launch yt-dlp to verify it's function, which had been installed on my system, i got an error message

looking inside it's folder (/usr/local/bin) all the files i remembered seemed to still be present

pip3 uninstall yt-dlp resulted in an error message, that yt-dlp isn't installed on my system

installing it again made it work again, but i wonder how the installation of CLT "broke" yt-dlp and my system even thought it was not installed?
had some python library been reset? or is there a dedicated plist for terminal commands, or something?
 
but i wonder how the installation of CLT "broke" yt-dlp and my system even thought it was not installed?
I’m not certain, but I think CLT 14 switched from Python 3.8 to 3.9
Running
sudo -H pip3 install --upgrade pip
and
sudo -H pip3 install --upgrade yt-dlp
fixes the problem
yt-dlp files are stored in /Library/Python/3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp
 
that might make sense, thanks! 👍

but why was this moderated into the yt thread?

i also just checked the /library/python folder and i now have a 3.8 and a 3.9 folder which seemigly carry mostly the same files (with 3.8 missing an “etc“ folder and maybe contain older python scripts in the other locations

i just deleted the two yt-dlp related folders inside 3.8 without any issues related to the function of yt-dlp, so assume it is safe to delete the whole 3.8 folder with no bad side effects?

edit: just checked the actual contents and /library/python/3.8 and all it's subfolders were only containing yt-dlp related files, at least for me.
For people who use more 3rd party Python scripts than me, it's probably not the case, so i just deleted the whole 3.8 folder
 
so assume it is safe to delete the whole 3.8 folder with no bad side effects?
Yes.
Python versions installed by CLT are in /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Library/Frameworks/Python3.framework/Versions/
and the Current alias should lead to 3.9 in your case.

It seems CLT 14 was released only for Monterey and above, I get no update in Big Sur and the Python version is 3.8.
 
Novice user here too. I've read yt-dlp_macos now has Python built in. Could someone post idiot-proof instructions for installing/using? Do I still use the above method? TIA.
 
Novice user here too. I've read yt-dlp_macos now has Python built in. Could someone post idiot-proof instructions for installing/using? Do I still use the above method? TIA.
No, the installation instructions for macOS are now:

Code:
sudo curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp -o /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Installation
The first command downloads the latest yt-dlp into /usr/local/bin/, the second one makes it executable.

You can also download yt-dlp from any browser https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp and move it into /usr/local/, but you still have to run the second command (sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp) in Terminal to make it executable.

To uninstall yt-dlp installed with the previous method:
Code:
sudo -H pip3 uninstall yt-dlp
 
Last edited:
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So the above link seems to install the non-Python version and then I can't uninstall it without Python.

Have tried to substitute the Python-esque version in the folder but no dice so far.
 
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