No manifest requested for Youtube non-live

[tarunmangla]

For live content I see calls made to manifest.googlevideo.com. However, for non-live content no such calls are made. Can you please tell me how does youtube-dl downloads manifest for non-live content? Plus, how is the manifest downloaded in a regular browser, given that there are no calls to manifest.googlevideo.com in the browser network trace.

[yan12125]

Some formats are served via DASH, which are available as manifests. Browsers may pick non-DASH formats so no manifests are downloaded.

[tarunmangla]

Can you please elaborate or point me where to look at on what other non-DASH formats does Youtube uses? I was under the impression that most of the adaptive streaming protocols such as MPEG-DASH and HLS require a manifest to be downloaded. Thanks!

[yan12125]

In general, YouTube uses monolithic files for non-DASH formats in non-live streams. You can get their URLs with --get-url via youtube-dl. On the webpage it's usually stored in a variable url_encoded_fmt_stream_map.