[feature request] QUIC (http/3) and Brotli

[ghost]

Checklist

• I'm reporting a feature request
• I've verified that I'm running yt-dlp version 2021.11.10.1. (update instructions)
• I've searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones. DO NOT post duplicates
• I've read the guidelines for opening an issue

Description

it seems that CURL has builds with QUIC support,
which could smooth out quirks and boost downloads stability (for YouTube and dozens more websites).

https://everything.curl.dev/http/http3
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2019/08/05/first-http-3-with-curl/

for now, it can be employed into yt-dlp with external downloader arguments such as
--http3-direct or --alt-svc altcache

wget has some early builds: https://github.com/MoofMonkey/quic-wget

aria2c not so much: rust-lang/rustup#2212

as for python (for the native downloader)
https://github.com/aiortc/aioquic
wraps around the newest openssl dev and provide a very convenient handling. it is pretty stable too.

---

you may opt-in to use QUIC and brotli by default, and it will make connections and downloads (especially when downloading a huge video)

product stability wise, integrating this into the product can really attract users, as the "next gen." file downloader. and I know I've mentioned it before, but multi-part downloading from YouTube with QUIC is extremely stable and provide proper 'range' in the response.

it is extremely safe and falls back to normal http/2 if it isn't possible. it is all high-level..

[pukkandan]

Unless some extractor specifically needs it, we will wait atleast till either HTTP/3 standardization is complete or python starts supporting it natively

[Seirdy]

This isn't something yt-dlp needs to implement. This is something that Python or external downloaders like aria2, wget, or axel should implement.

yt-dlp supports using cURL as an external downloader, and cURL can be built with support for HTTP/3 using Quiche or ngtcp2. cURL should automatically upgrade to HTTP/3 when available, perhaps by checking for the recently-introduced HTTPS/SVCB DNS records. If cURL doesn't do this already, maybe this could be an issue for cURL.

Perhaps this issue should be closed because it doesn't seem like something to be fixed in yt-dlp.

[pukkandan]

What?