Many Crunchyroll videos can only be downloaded at a low bitrate

[oxguy3]

Please follow the guide below

• You will be asked some questions and requested to provide some information, please read them carefully and answer honestly
• Put an x into all the boxes [ ] relevant to your issue (like that [x])
• Use Preview tab to see how your issue will actually look like

---

Make sure you are using the latest version: run youtube-dl --version and ensure your version is 2017.01.18. If it's not read this FAQ entry and update. Issues with outdated version will be rejected.

• I've verified and I assure that I'm running youtube-dl 2017.01.18

Before submitting an issue make sure you have:

• At least skimmed through README and most notably FAQ and BUGS sections
• Searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones

What is the purpose of your issue?

• Bug report (encountered problems with youtube-dl)
• Site support request (request for adding support for a new site)
• Feature request (request for a new functionality)
• Question
• Other

---

For many Crunchyroll videos, youtube-dl is only able to find an ugly low bitrate version of the video, even though Crunchyroll's web player shows a much better version of the video. As far as I can tell, there are two types of videos that youtube-dl will find: videos that only have FLV files (which are always high bitrate afaik), and videos that only have MP4 files (which are always low bitrate afaik). Typically, the newest episode of a simulcast will be a good FLV file, and all older episodes of the same series will be the bad MP4 files. Most old library shows (i.e. non-simulcast) show up as the bad MP4 files.

For a particularly bad example, here's the log for an episode of Log Horizon:

$ youtube-dl -v --cookies cookies.txt -F http://www.crunchyroll.com/log-horizon/episode-1-shiroe-of-the-northern-lands-661779
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'--cookies', u'cookies.txt', u'-F', u'http://www.crunchyroll.com/log-horizon/episode-1-shiroe-of-the-northern-lands-661779']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2017.01.18
[debug] Python version 2.7.13 - Darwin-14.5.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 3.2.2, ffprobe 3.2.2, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[Crunchyroll] 661779: Downloading webpage
[Crunchyroll] 661779: Downloading media info for 360p
[Crunchyroll] 661779: Downloading m3u8 information
[Crunchyroll] 661779: Downloading media info for 480p
[Crunchyroll] 661779: Downloading m3u8 information
[Crunchyroll] 661779: Downloading media info for 720p
[Crunchyroll] 661779: Downloading m3u8 information
[Crunchyroll] 661779: Downloading media info for 1080p
[Crunchyroll] 661779: Downloading m3u8 information
[Crunchyroll] 661779: Downloading media info
[info] Available formats for 661779:
format code  extension  resolution note
hls-meta-0   mp4        multiple   Quality selection URL
hls-meta-1   mp4        multiple   Quality selection URL
hls-meta-2   mp4        multiple   Quality selection URL
hls-meta-3   mp4        multiple   Quality selection URL
hls-428      mp4        640x360     428k , avc1.4d401e, 23.98fps, mp4a.40.2
hls-624-0    mp4        848x480     624k , avc1.4d401e, 23.98fps, mp4a.40.2
hls-624-1    mp4        848x480     624k , avc1.4d401e, 23.98fps, mp4a.40.2
hls-624-2    mp4        848x480     624k , avc1.4d401e, 23.98fps, mp4a.40.2
hls-935      mp4        1280x720    935k , avc1.64001f, 23.98fps, mp4a.40.2
hls-1739-0   mp4        1920x1080  1739k , avc1.640028, 23.98fps, mp4a.40.2
hls-1739-1   mp4        1920x1080  1739k , avc1.640028, 23.98fps, mp4a.40.2
hls-1739-2   mp4        1920x1080  1739k , avc1.640028, 23.98fps, mp4a.40.2 (best)

That video (Log Horizon s02e01) is only available at a bitrate of 1739kbps for 1080p, which looks awful, especially given how much fast movement/action there is in that series. By contrast, the video on Crunchyroll's web player appears to be much higher bitrate and looks much better. For another example, see Attack on Titan -- it's not as egregious, with a bitrate of ~2200k, but it still looks worse than the video on the web player.

Side note, possibly helpful for debugging?: I also notice that, when youtube-dl finds MP4s, often it will be inconsistent how many versions it finds. In the example above, it found 3 versions of the 480p and 1080p streams, and 1 version of the 360p and 720p streams. Other times, even for that same video URL, I've seen it find only 1 version of each of those streams, or 3 versions of every stream, or some other mix of 3 versions and 1 version.

[oxguy3]

This was actually the result of Crunchyroll lowering the resolutions a day after episodes came out. They've stopped doing that and this was never a youtube-dl issue in the first place; I was mistaken in thinking the videos were higher resolution on crunchyroll.com. More info: https://medium.com/@Daiz/crunchyrolls-reduced-video-quality-is-deliberate-cost-cutting-at-the-expense-of-paying-customers-c86c6899033b