Youtube-dl only download specific codec if it has best resolution

[Sci3ntia]

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Question

OK so I've been using youtube-dl --cookies cookies.txt -f '(bestvideo[vcodec*=av01]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9]/bestvideo)+(bestaudio[acodec=opus]/bestaudio[acodec=vorbis]/bestaudio[acodec=aac]/bestaudio)/best' --sub-lang en --embed-subs --add-metadata %video% -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' to download videos and have a question, when such a video has an av1 encode that is below the best resolution (let's say it has av1 144p but vp9 1080p) how would I tell it to download the best (less preferred) codec (in the case of the previous example vp9), instead of the lower quality (more preferred) codec?

[pukkandan]

There is sadly no easy way to do this.

1. You can either make a list of all format codes like this guy
   or
2. You could use a large format selection with seperate codec check for each resolution. Something like:
   ((bestvideo[vcodec*=av01]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9]/bestvideo)[height>2160]/(bestvideo[vcodec*=av01]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9]/bestvideo)[height>1080]/.../(bestvideo[vcodec*=av01]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9]/bestvideo)[height>144]/(bestvideo[vcodec*=av01]/bestvideo[vcodec=vp9]/bestvideo))+bestaudio...

[Sci3ntia]

Sorry to hear that, but thanks for the workarounds

[pukkandan]

If you are willing to use #25959, you can use --format-sort "height,codec" to select the best codec av01>vp9>avc1...