youtube-dl lacks an easy way to download best 4K format, adding sound and converting to mp4

[finnianr]

A Better -best
It seems the -best option only selects streams which include both the video and sound in one container. However most UHD 4K is in a video only stream. If you want to watch 4K you have to merge it with the a separately downloaded sound stream. Also the youtube 4K format is more often than not webm, which is not very portable. Playstation consoles for example, cannot play it. It would be nice to have automatic conversion to mp4.
To solve this problem I created a utility wrapper for youtube-dl with the Eiffel programming language. See this article: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/eiffel-users/DZHqE7EO3Ww
The nice thing about my tool is it very simple to use and just does this one thing well.

It would would be nice to see the youtube-dl development team making my utility redundant by improving youtube-dl. Or perhaps there is already a way to achieve what my utility does but I just didn't realise it?

[dstftw]

youtube-dl does this by default out of the box if ffmpeg is installed.

[finnianr]

Can you please offer an example of how it works. I have ffmpeg installed.

[dstftw]

youtube-dl URL.

[finnianr]

Really! I will give it a try.

[finnianr]

I am sorry, but this does not work on my machine as you say. I have recently updated youtube-dl to latest version. This example only downloaded the resolution 1280 x 676 mp4. No 4K video. Is this because for some reason youtube-dl has failed to detect that I have ffmpeg installed?

finnian@MacMini ~/Videos $ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_nutbvGX8M 
[youtube] B_nutbvGX8M: Downloading webpage
[youtube] B_nutbvGX8M: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] B_nutbvGX8M: Extracting video information
WARNING: Your copy of avconv is outdated and unable to properly mux separate video and audio files, youtube-dl will download single file media. Update avconv to version 10-0 or newer to fix this.
[download] Destination: Taichi Wakita at Pipeline, Jan 23rd, 2018-B_nutbvGX8M.mp4
[download] 100% of 6.89MiB in 00:16

[finnianr]

Here is my configuration

finnian@MacMini ~/Videos $ youtube-dl -v
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs UTF-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2018.02.08
[debug] Python version 2.7.6 (CPython) - Linux-3.13.0-141-generic-x86_64-with-LinuxMint-17-qiana
[debug] exe versions: avconv 9.20-6, avprobe 9.20-6, ffmpeg 3.3.3, ffprobe 3.3.3
[debug] Proxy map: {}

[dstftw]

WARNING: Your copy of avconv is outdated and unable to properly mux separate video and audio files, youtube-dl will download single file media. Update avconv to version 10-0 or newer to fix this.

[dstftw]

Remove avconv from $PATH or use --prefer-ffmpeg.

[finnianr]

Ok lets give that a go.

[finnianr]

I tried it but it only partially solves my problem. It does download the best 4K version and adds sound, but the V9 codec is not very portable. I won't be able to play it on my Playstation. Is there an easy way to make it re-encode with H.26x and make the container mp4?

[dstftw]

--recode-video.

[finnianr]

Thanks! will try later. Gotta go now.

[avagraha]

Finniarn did you successfully use recode video for your link? I failed anytime with zero warnings. Very strange