HEVC recode. Is that possible?

[gabriellluz]

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Hi there.
I'm currently using Youtube-DL as an archiving tool and it works great. The problem is I always have to use Handbrake after downloading new videos in order to encode them to hevc.
I see Youtube-DL has a recode option but that option doesn't seem to use HEVC as a codec. Is there a way I can use directly HEVC video and OPUS audio with youtube-dl? It'd be so much easier to me since HEVC and OPUS are great standards in the YouTube archiving community. Yes, we do have a community against censorship and we provide archiving of some very important YouTube channels in case they get removed or banned.

[bato3]

If I know Youtube-dl don't change encoding. This can be do in post-process

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.265
https://wiki.libav.org/Encoding/hevc

eg youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc --postprocessor-args "-c:v libx265"

[WolfganP]

I see Youtube-DL has a recode option but that option doesn't seem to use HEVC as a codec. Is there a way I can use directly HEVC video and OPUS audio with youtube-dl? It'd be so much easier to me since HEVC and OPUS are great standards in the YouTube archiving community. Yes, we do have a community against censorship and we provide archiving of some very important YouTube channels in case they get removed or banned.

Try youtube-dl -v yourvideoURL -F and see if any of the offered resolutions is hvec encoded already and audio is offered in opus format.
Then you can choose your video+audio specific streams and download them selectively as in youtube-dl -v yourvideoURL -f 135+140

[Hrxn]

Try youtube-dl -v yourvideoURL -F and see if any of the offered resolutions is hvec encoded already and audio is offered in opus format.

YouTube already offers HEVC encoded streams? This is new to me.. since when?

[WolfganP]

YouTube already offers HEVC encoded streams? This is new to me.. since when?

IIRC, some 4K videos may be offered both in HEVC and VP9. I don't remember if that also extended to lower resolutions' encoding, or if that was simple testing/experiments on YT side

[gabriellluz]

Hi guys.
I've tried youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc --postprocessor-args "-c:v libx265 -b:v 800k -c:a opus -b:a 128k" It works with HEVC (thanks :)), but I can't convert audio to OPUS. I want the output as an MKV file. Also, adding -x --audio-format opus --audio-quality 128k doesn't work because it renders an OPUS file. I want a MKV file but I don't want separate files (MP4 + OPUS).

[bato3]

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc --postprocessor-args "-c:v libx265 -b:v 800k -c:a opus -strict experimental -b:a 128k"
but it still mp4

[WolfganP]

Did you try --merge-output-format mkv ?

[gabriellluz]

Yes, I've tried. Now it works! Can we also use CRF instead of bitrate? YES, WE CAN:

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc --postprocessor-args "-c:v libx265 -preset slow -crf 15 -c:a opus -strict experimental -b:a 128k" --merge-output-format mkv

Please, put that in the Wiki because many people need that info. Thank you guys so much!

[williamjmorenor]

Also works for mp4:

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc --postprocessor-args "-c:v libx265 -preset slow -crf 15 -c:a opus -strict experimental -b:a 128k" --merge-output-format mp4

I preffer a higher -crf, 28 is the default.

[AravindhStanley]

@williamjmorenor This works amazing. Any way to show progress for the post processing?

[Littlesloths]

It looks like all the postprocessing is done after the file is fully downloaded?
I tried this on a continuous stream and it does not work.
Any idea how to recode a stream on the fly?

[rautamiekka]

Quality loss is a problem only if you use the wrong settings, but re-encoding for smaller size is pretty hard due to the amount of trial-and-error required, I know from trying it so many times.