Provide a way to choose the best resolution

[utack]

Hi,
currently there seems to be no way of choosing the best resolution video.
Example: I'd like vp9 where possible from Youtube, but would take a 480p H264 stream over the 360p VP9 stream.
Is there a method to achieve this?
If not, it would be great if you could provide something to pick the best resolution video.

Thank you

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[jdmoore0883]

try running:
youtube-dl -f bestvideo "<YOUTUBE_URL>"

[utack]

That works, but unfortunately it ignores the codec preference. For cases where 1080p H264 and VP9 are available it chooses H264

[shizeeg]

try to add --prefer-free-formats to your youtube-dl command line parameters

[utack]

Unfortunately the prefer free formats option applied to youtube-dl in mpv still chooses the 360p version

[linglung]

You want to select best available format? why didn't use youtube-dl -F to check it first before downloading? then pick -f number

[utack]

You want to select best available format? why didn't use youtube-dl -F to check it first before downloading? then pick -f number

Thanks for letting me know, but I read the docs and realized that works
Unfortunately it does not solve the problem the format stream should be able to automatically sort out the one that is best by certain criteria, like for example has the highest resolution. I watch 30+ youtube videos a day starting mpv and youtube-dl from a browser plugin, sorting them out manually is not an option

[shizeeg]

Unfortunately the prefer free formats option applied to youtube-dl in mpv still chooses the 360p version

@utack you can pass youtube-dl parameters using mpv's --ytdl-raw-options or --ytdl-format like that:
$ mpv --ytdl-format=bestvideo --ytdl-raw-options='--prefer-free-formats='
take a note of final =

you may also like to put all that in ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf w/o leading --:
# ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
ytdl-format=bestvideo
ytdl-raw-options='--prefer-free-formats='
# end of mpv.conf

[yan12125]

I'd like vp9 where possible from Youtube, but would take a 480p H264 stream over the 360p VP9 stream.

Sounds like you want to compare resolutions first and then video codecs. That's a missing feature, see #6018. As of now you can use a hardcoded list of known itags as the format filter. See _formats table in youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py for known itags.

[fireattack]

@yan12125 Is there any way to compare resolution first, then video bitrate (I don't care about codecs)? Because you know, sometimes the higher resolution ones have lower bitrates.

[dstftw]

Not possible.

[vikdotdev]

Is there any way to compare resolution first, then video bitrate (I don't care about codecs)? Because you know, sometimes the higher resolution ones have lower bitrates.

@dstftw it's been quite some time, is this still true as of today? Are there workarounds (ignoring bitrate altogether)?