bestvideo+bestaudio formats says "requested format not available"

[forthrin]

Posting a couple of related issues that should be fixed.

Issue 1: When not specifying any format options, Flash Video is downloaded from this site, though MPEG-4 is available. MPEG-4 is clearly superior and should be default.

youtube-dl https://tv.nrk.no/serie/historia-om-walt-disney/KOID24008615/sesong-1/episode-1

Issue 2: When trying to select best video/audio to get the best quality (MPEG-4 with highest bitrate), an error occurs. This seems like a bug that should be fixed.

youtube-dl -f bestaudio+bestvideo https://tv.nrk.no/serie/historia-om-walt-disney/KOID24008615/sesong-1/episode-1
ERROR: requested format not available

Formats on this site are named according to bitrate (eg. hls-2389 for 2389k). Bitrate varies per video. Since bestvideo doesn't work, the best quality must be manually found with -F per video. Annoying.

[dstftw]

bestvideo and bestaudio are video-only and audio-only formats correspondingly. NRK serves no such formats therefore you get requested format not available.

[dstftw]

As for issue 1, preferring hls over hds is questionable and they are both of the same quality.

[forthrin]

I thought the .flv file was some sort of Flash video codec, men I realise now that the .flv file contains h264 video. However, how do I get the file with a .mp4 wrapper/extension rather than .flv?

[dstftw]

Use --recode-video mp4.

[forthrin]

The above does a full re-encoding of the video, which eats 100% CPU and takes forever. How can I do the equivalent of the following (which takes but a second) from youtube-dl itself.

ffmpeg -i video.flv -codec copy video.mp4

[dstftw]

You can't do it with option but can run arbitrary command on final file using --exec 'ffmpeg -i {} -c copy video.mp4'.

[forthrin]

Flash being a dying and much-loathed technology, I propose .mp4 to be a better default container and file extension. Can't see why anyone would prefer .flv.

[dstftw]

There is no such thing as a default container. youtube-dl downloads files as is. User decides what to do next.

[forthrin]

By specifying mp4 from available formats, it downloads mp4 directly without flv as an intermediate format. However, it isn't possible without specifying the format manually like mentioned earlier:

$ youtube-dl -F https://tv.nrk.no/serie/oeyeblikket/DMPV73050115/sesong-1/episode-1
hls-2229     mp4        1280x720   2229k , avc1,  mp4a
$ youtube-dl -f hls-2229 https://tv.nrk.no/serie/oeyeblikket/DMPV73050115/sesong-1/episode-1
[download] Destination: Oppvasken-DMPV73050115.mp4

I still think there should be some intelligent way to get the mp4 format. I can come up with some suggestions, but I guess the developers who know the product by heart would be better at this.

[dstftw]

There is an intelligent way. -f best[ext=mp4] or even shorter -f mp4.

[forthrin]

Previous responses seemed to hint that this was impossible. Thanks for letting me know a shorthand way of getting the preferred format. PS! I still think mp4 would be a considered as a better default than flv.

[dstftw]

You asked how to extract mp4 from flv - you've got responses on that. With format selection you simply download mp4 (delivered via hls) instead of flv (delivered via hds). mp4 should not be default until native hls downloader is well enough to handle all kind of m3u8 streams.

[forthrin]

Sounds like it will be fixed in the future then. Evidently a bit of knowledge on formats and how the software is implemented is required to get the full picture of things :) Thanks!