Problems with format detection / specification

[forthrin]

Not sure if this is a bug or just "how it is", but there doesn't seem to be a uniform way to get the correct streaming URL for any given site.

SVTPlay has video and audio muxed. Dplay has video and audio as separate streams. The way it is now, youtube-dlmust be given a different -f parameter for each site to print the correct streaming URL.

See examples below. "YES" means the correct URL is printed. "NO" means an incorrect (or no) URL is printed. There is no command line that will work for both sites.

Is it possible to patch youtube-dl so that the correct stream URLs will be returned for both sites without having to specifying -f?

~$ S=https://www.svtplay.se/video/21247603/forsta-dejten-australien/forsta-dejten-australien-sasong-2-avsnitt-7
~$ D=https://www.dplay.no/videoer/forste-date/sesong-2-episode-5

~$ youtube-dl -g $S                          # NO
~$ youtube-dl -g -f best $S                  # YES
~$ youtube-dl -g -f bestvideo+bestaudio $S   # NO

~$ youtube-dl -g $D                          # YES
~$ youtube-dl -g -f best $D                  # NO (*)
~$ youtube-dl -g -f bestvideo+bestaudio $D   # YES

(*) "ERROR: requested format not available"

• I've verified and I assure that I'm running youtube-dl 2019.03.01
• At least skimmed through the README, most notably the FAQ and BUGS sections
• Searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones
• Checked that provided video/audio/playlist URLs (if any) are alive and playable in a browser
• Bug report (encountered problems with youtube-dl)

$ youtube-dl --verbose
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'--verbose']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out utf8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2019.03.01
[debug] Python version 2.7.15 (CPython) - Darwin-16.7.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.1, ffprobe 4.1, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}

[dstftw]

What do you mean by correct streaming URL in the first place? Not all formats have plain HTTP URL representing it.

All aforementioned examples are expected behavior:
1. Base URL for DASH manifest is returned.
3. Same as 1.
5. No such format best exists.

[forthrin]

@dstftw: I'd like to do vlc $(youtube-dl -g <any-page-url>) and VLC will play the video on that page, in the best available quality.

From the manual:

By default  youtube-dl  tries  to download the best available quality,
i.e.  if you want the best quality you don't need to pass  any  special
options, youtube-dl will guess it for you by default.

However, at least for SVTPlay this fails, so you have to specify a different -f depending on which site you're using. This makes it hard to use youtube-dl in a script that supports different sites.

I realise my knowledge is limited as I don't understand the purpose of a "Base URL for DASH manifest" and why -f best may fail to return a streamable URL for certain sites.

[dstftw]

I'd like to do vlc $(youtube-dl -g <any-page-url>) and VLC will play the video on that page.

That's not always technically possible since there may be only video-only and audio-only formats resulting in -g returning two URLs correspondingly.
Also even if there is an audiovideo format URL returned by -g this is also not supposed to work the way you use it since you don't pass proper cookies and headers.

at least for SVTPlay this fails

What fails? There is no promise in this citation that any media player will be able to play -g URLs alone. What it states is that youtube-dl will download best overall quality media and there is no need to specify any arguments and this indeed works in most of the cases.

[forthrin]

OK! Thanks for commenting on the issue.