Determining file size without downloading

[rikato06]

How do I know the total size of the video without downloading?

Thank you.

[phihag]

In general, we may not know the filesize before actually downloading. You can, however, pass the -j option and look at the filesize or filesize_approx fields in the result:

$ youtube-dl http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-05/australia-to-staff-ebola-treatment-centre-in-sierra-leone/5868334 -j | jq .filesize
37083683
$ youtube-dl 'http://www.snotr.com/video/13708/Drone_flying_through_fireworks' -j | jq .filesize_approx
98566144

Note that support for this feature totally depends on the site, and in some cases, even on the format you're picking (with -f).

I'd leave this issue open as a request for a more comprehensive option --get-filesize, which would actually need to query the URL, but since it lacks any context, I doubt I could design a good solution. Feel free to provide more context.

P.S.: Next time, we'd appreciate if you'd pick a more specific title than hello. This is an issue tracker with lots of issues in it, so we need some sorting.

[rikato06]

Unfortunately.
I have tried them all.
Unable to retrieve video size without downloading.

My Code :

youtubedl . ' --get-filesize -o "'.$randname.'.%(ext)s" ' . $url; ?>

[phihag]

There is no option --get-filesize at the moment. I am not sure what "tried them" refers to. I have posted two examples where this works. As I said before, without context, I do not see a way to move forward with any implementation.

[rikato06]

Thank you very much for the help.

[sjurajpuchky]

Hack /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/youtube_dl/downloader/http.py
update line 142 and add there print(data_len)
do not forget delete /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/youtube_dl/downloader/http.pyc
to update changes
then you can use --max-filesize 1k to skip downloading

[sjurajpuchky]

you can use also grep to filter filesize only
for example
youtube-dl -f 22 --max-filesize 1k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfTta26iiJ4|grep "^[0-9]"

[lorenz944]

@phihag i want to download a mp4 video from here: https://speedvideo.net/embed-2992oz2oqv79.html. Now this url provides 3 mp4 videos (and a php file whose obviously i don't care):each of them has a different quality and so a different filesize. youtube-dl is unable to tell me anything about these videos:

youtube-dl --verbose -F "https://speedvideo.net/embed-2992oz2oqv79.html"
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: ['--verbose', '-F', 'https://speedvideo.net/embed-2992oz2oqv79.html']
[debug] Encodings: locale cp1252, fs mbcs, out cp850, pref cp1252
[debug] youtube-dl version 2020.01.24
[debug] Python version 3.4.4 (CPython) - Windows-10-10.0.18362
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg git-2020-01-26-5e62100, ffprobe git-2020-01-26-5e62100
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[generic] embed-2992oz2oqv79: Requesting header
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
[generic] embed-2992oz2oqv79: Downloading webpage
[generic] embed-2992oz2oqv79: Extracting information
[download] Downloading playlist: None
[generic] playlist None: Collected 4 video ids (downloading 4 of them)
[download] Downloading video 1 of 4
[info] Available formats for 2992oz2oqv79:
format code extension resolution note
0 unknown_video unknown
[download] Downloading video 2 of 4
[info] Available formats for 2992oz2oqv79:
format code extension resolution note
0 unknown_video unknown
[download] Downloading video 3 of 4
[info] Available formats for 2992oz2oqv79:
format code extension resolution note
0 unknown_video unknown
[download] Downloading video 4 of 4
[info] Available formats for thum:
format code extension resolution note
0 php unknown
[download] Finished downloading playlist: None

So i can't select the best quality video to download and i have to download all the videos (succesfully):

youtube-dl https://speedvideo.net/embed-2992oz2oqv79.html
[generic] embed-2992oz2oqv79: Requesting header
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
[generic] embed-2992oz2oqv79: Downloading webpage
[generic] embed-2992oz2oqv79: Extracting information
[download] Downloading playlist: None
[generic] playlist None: Collected 4 video ids (downloading 4 of them)
[download] Downloading video 1 of 4
[download] Destination: Speedvideo.net (1)-2992oz2oqv79.unknown_video
[download] 100% of 285.45MiB in 05:36
[download] Downloading video 2 of 4
[download] Destination: Speedvideo.net (2)-2992oz2oqv79.unknown_video
[download] 71.9% of 702.93MiB at 820.06KiB/s ETA 04:06 [download] Got server HTTP error: [WinError 10054] Connessione in corso interrotta forzatamente dall'host remoto. Retrying (attempt 1 of 10)...
[download] Destination: Speedvideo.net (2)-2992oz2oqv79.unknown_video
[download] 100% of 702.93MiB in 18:48
[download] Downloading video 3 of 4
[download] Destination: Speedvideo.net (3)-2992oz2oqv79.unknown_video
[download] 100% of 143.39MiB in 02:34
[download] Downloading video 4 of 4
[download] Destination: Speedvideo.net (4)-thum.php
[download] 100% of 8.00B in 00:00
[download] Finished downloading playlist: None

So,it seems that at the download moment youtube-dl knows the size of the videos.
Now, the google chrome browser extension "videoDownloadHelper" can tell me the filesize of the videos:

Here is the detail of the best of the 3 videos:

youtube-dl does not provide me any informations about size or approximated size:

youtube-dl --skip-download -j https://speedvideo.net/embed-2992oz2oqv79.html
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
{"url": "https://speedvideo.net/getvideo///:8779/stl424biu3xyftxxypl5eqapjxmxpmsn62vh33qwvburkr2xushk5xxhlmwq/v.mp4/2992oz2oqv79", "age_limit": 0, "format_id": "0", "_filename": "Speedvideo.net (1)-2992oz2oqv79.unknown_video", "playlist_id": null, "playlist": null, "display_id": "2992oz2oqv79", "fulltitle": "Speedvideo.net (1)", "format": "0 - unknown", "ext": "unknown_video", "title": "Speedvideo.net (1)", "webpage_url_basename": "embed-2992oz2oqv79.html", "playlist_uploader": null, "protocol": "https", "http_headers": {"Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate", "Accept-Language": "en-us,en;q=0.5", "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3611.2 Safari/537.36", "Accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,/;q=0.8", "Accept-Charset": "ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,;q=0.7", "Cookie": "lang=1; __cfduid=dd7615b34b31b70dec5e8f4fb183bcd951580232527"}, "id": "2992oz2oqv79", "extractor": "generic", "webpage_url": "https://speedvideo.net/embed-2992oz2oqv79.html", "playlist_uploader_id": null, "n_entries": 4, "requested_subtitles": null, "extractor_key": "Generic", "playlist_index": 1, "playlist_title": null, "uploader": "speedvideo.net"}
{"url": "https://speedvideo.net/getvideo///:8779/stl424biu3xyftxxypl5eqapjxmxpmsn62vh33qwvzurkr2xushgp3gu3qca/v.mp4/2992oz2oqv79", "age_limit": 0, "format_id": "0", "_filename": "Speedvideo.net (2)-2992oz2oqv79.unknown_video", "playlist_id": null, "playlist": null, "display_id": "2992oz2oqv79", "fulltitle": "Speedvideo.net (2)", "format": "0 - unknown", "ext": "unknown_video", "title": "Speedvideo.net (2)", "webpage_url_basename": "embed-2992oz2oqv79.html", "playlist_uploader": null, "protocol": "https", "http_headers": {"Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate", "Accept-Language": "en-us,en;q=0.5", "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3611.2 Safari/537.36", "Accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,/;q=0.8", "Accept-Charset": "ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,;q=0.7", "Cookie": "lang=1; __cfduid=dd7615b34b31b70dec5e8f4fb183bcd951580232527"}, "id": "2992oz2oqv79", "extractor": "generic", "webpage_url": "https://speedvideo.net/embed-2992oz2oqv79.html", "playlist_uploader_id": null, "n_entries": 4, "requested_subtitles": null, "extractor_key": "Generic", "playlist_index": 2, "playlist_title": null, "uploader": "speedvideo.net"}
{"url": "https://speedvideo.net/getvideo/////:8779/stl424biu3xyftxxypl5eqapjxmxpmsn62vh33qwvjurkr2xushnwzzbuvcq/v.mp4/2992oz2oqv79", "age_limit": 0, "format_id": "0", "_filename": "Speedvideo.net (3)-2992oz2oqv79.unknown_video", "playlist_id": null, "playlist": null, "display_id": "2992oz2oqv79", "fulltitle": "Speedvideo.net (3)", "format": "0 - unknown", "ext": "unknown_video", "title": "Speedvideo.net (3)", "webpage_url_basename": "embed-2992oz2oqv79.html", "playlist_uploader": null, "protocol": "https", "http_headers": {"Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate", "Accept-Language": "en-us,en;q=0.5", "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3611.2 Safari/537.36", "Accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,/;q=0.8", "Accept-Charset": "ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,;q=0.7", "Cookie": "lang=1; __cfduid=dd7615b34b31b70dec5e8f4fb183bcd951580232527"}, "id": "2992oz2oqv79", "extractor": "generic", "webpage_url": "https://speedvideo.net/embed-2992oz2oqv79.html", "playlist_uploader_id": null, "n_entries": 4, "requested_subtitles": null, "extractor_key": "Generic", "playlist_index": 3, "playlist_title": null, "uploader": "speedvideo.net"}
{"url": "https://prw.speedvideo.net/thum.php?file=", "age_limit": 0, "format_id": "0", "_filename": "Speedvideo.net (4)-thum.php", "playlist_id": null, "playlist": null, "display_id": "thum", "fulltitle": "Speedvideo.net (4)", "format": "0 - unknown", "ext": "php", "title": "Speedvideo.net (4)", "webpage_url_basename": "embed-2992oz2oqv79.html", "playlist_uploader": null, "protocol": "https", "http_headers": {"Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate", "Accept-Language": "en-us,en;q=0.5", "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3611.2 Safari/537.36", "Accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,/;q=0.8", "Accept-Charset": "ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,;q=0.7", "Cookie": "lang=1; __cfduid=dd7615b34b31b70dec5e8f4fb183bcd951580232527"}, "id": "thum", "extractor": "generic", "webpage_url": "https://speedvideo.net/embed-2992oz2oqv79.html", "playlist_uploader_id": null, "n_entries": 4, "requested_subtitles": null, "extractor_key": "Generic", "playlist_index": 4, "playlist_title": null, "uploader": "speedvideo.net"}

One possible solution: I could consult videodownloadhelper and download the heaviest file in terms of MegaByte and it works:

youtube-dl --min-filesize 700M "https://speedvideo.net/embed-2992oz2oqv79.html"
[generic] embed-2992oz2oqv79: Requesting header
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
[generic] embed-2992oz2oqv79: Downloading webpage
[generic] embed-2992oz2oqv79: Extracting information
[download] Downloading playlist: None
[generic] playlist None: Collected 4 video ids (downloading 4 of them)
[download] Downloading video 1 of 4
[download] File is smaller than min-filesize (299315010 bytes < 734003200 bytes). Aborting.
[download] Downloading video 2 of 4
[download] Destination: Speedvideo.net (2)-2992oz2oqv79.unknown_video
[download] 2.9% of 702.93MiB at 3.11MiB/s ETA 03:39
ERROR: Interrupted by user

but it's a cumbersome solution. Is there another solution? thank you by the way, youtube-dl is amazing and you contributors are awesome to doing this for free.