YouTube

Quality and formats

To select quality and format of a YouTube video, run you-get first with -i to see all available options:

$ you-get -i 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6g0ncregRc'
site:                YouTube
title:               蘇打綠 sodagreen -【痛快的哀艷】痛快版 Official Music Video
streams:             # Available quality and codecs
    [ DASH ] ____________________________________
    - itag:          248
      container:     webm
      quality:       1920x1080
      size:          125.9 MiB (132040628 bytes)
    # download-with: you-get --itag=248 [URL]

    - itag:          137
      container:     mp4
      quality:       1920x1080
      size:          181.0 MiB (189779336 bytes)
    # download-with: you-get --itag=137 [URL]

    [ DEFAULT ] _________________________________
    - itag:          22
      container:     mp4
      quality:       hd720
      size:          142.8 MiB (149765066 bytes)
    # download-with: you-get --itag=22 [URL]

    - itag:          43
      container:     webm
      quality:       medium
    # download-with: you-get --itag=43 [URL]

    - itag:          18
      container:     mp4
      quality:       medium
    # download-with: you-get --itag=18 [URL]

    - itag:          5
      container:     flv
      quality:       small
    # download-with: you-get --itag=5 [URL]

    - itag:          36
      container:     3gp
      quality:       small
    # download-with: you-get --itag=36 [URL]

    - itag:          17
      container:     3gp
      quality:       small
    # download-with: you-get --itag=17 [URL]

The default quality you-get downloads (if no extra option specified) is the one marked with "[DEFAULT]", in the above example, the hd720 version (--itag=22).

DASH streams (for 1080p and above)

DASH (Adaptive bitrate streaming) often allows for higher quality streaming of certain YouTube videos. However, because (1) DASH streams could be rather big in size, (2) Videos are served separately for audio / video DASH streams and require FFmpeg to process, they are not downloaded by you-getby default.

To get a YouTube video in its DASH stream (if 1080p or any higher quality is available), you must pass the explicit itag option to you-get, as shown in the above example:

$ you-get --itag=137 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6g0ncregRc'

What are these "itag"s?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=YouTube&oldid=800910021#Quality_and_formats.