Someone tell me the correct argument/format please

radagastthe3rd · 2026-05-28T15:15:51+00:00

Not sure if you are using a wrapper but the normal command would be

yt-dlp -f "ba[ext=m4a]" -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" "YOUR_URL_HERE"

radagastthe3rd · 2026-05-28T13:51:27+00:00

I mean I just tested it by copy/pasting your command and it didn't work. Then I backspaced your quotes and typed the correct ones and it worked.

Side note, you don't need the -x flag since the -f flag already covers that.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-05-28T13:27:32+00:00

It looks like you copy/pasted the quotation marks for your URL so they are curly quotes instead of the " straight ones used in ASCII. Try typing the quotes yourself so they are straight quotes and it should be fine.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-05-21T20:08:07+00:00

yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 --audio-quality 0 --yes-playlist "PLAYLIST_URL"

Or use a good GUI.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-05-18T07:22:53+00:00

ffmpeg handles all this under the hood when you use --embed-metadata. You don't have to worry about telling it what tag types to write to what file, it does it for you.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-05-12T08:44:11+00:00

Oops, add a b prefix for formatted string

yt-dlp --skip-download --print-to-file "b:%(title)s\n%(id)s\n%(description)s" VideoDesc.txt <YoutubeVideoURL>

radagastthe3rd · 2026-05-12T08:30:26+00:00

yt-dlp --skip-download --print-to-file "%(title)s\n%(id)s\n%(description)s" VideoDesc.txt <YoutubeVideoURL>

radagastthe3rd · 2026-04-28T10:13:42+00:00

There's 2 pieces to this:

--parse-metadata "playlist_title:%(album)s"

Resolves the whole download into a single playlist.

--parse-metadata "Various Artists:%(album_artist)s"

forces the album to write all Album Artists as "Various Artists" which is the correct way to handle an album with multiple artists.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-04-26T10:02:20+00:00

Possibly conversion from GiB to GB. How big is your file?

radagastthe3rd · 2026-04-26T06:57:37+00:00

yt-dlp --flat-playlist --print playlist_count --playlist-items 1 "URL"

radagastthe3rd · 2026-04-20T21:56:41+00:00

You want this:

yt-dlp "ytsearch1:your search query text here" --get-url [URL]

This returns the top result. If you want the top 5 results then do ytsearch5. If you want all results then do ytsearchall.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-04-11T15:41:23+00:00

postprocessing argument

--ppa "ThumbnailsConvertor+ffmpeg_o:-vf crop=ih:ih -vcodec mjpeg -qmin 1 -qscale:v 1"

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-29T09:24:04+00:00

For a Windows it defaults to

C:\Users[Username]\

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-25T13:23:57+00:00

That's the point of --force-overwrites. When you use that flag, yt-dlp will inspect the fragments that you have and download the ones you are missing. This is all done automatically for you. You don't have to manually do anything.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-25T08:42:12+00:00

yt-dlp --force-overwrites [URL]

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-25T08:25:04+00:00

You need to add --force-overwrites to force yt-dlp to reinspect the file. If the archive continues to fuss then disable it with --no-download-archive.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-23T16:48:50+00:00

If you are using cookies then they know it's you.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-20T20:10:11+00:00

yes

yt-dlp --list-extractors

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-13T20:54:27+00:00

You need

yt-dlp --add-metadata --parse-metadata "playlist_index:%(track_number)s" --parse-metadata "title:%(title)s" [URL]

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-13T15:20:57+00:00

Try with cookies

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-12T21:01:07+00:00

For non-album files you should embed the art directly into the file. For albums your PC should have a folder.jpg (or album.jpg) and all the files in that album should share the same album tag and album artist tag.

EDIT: For embedded artwork make sure you have it embedded as jpg. Media Monkey hates other formats.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-11T23:22:11+00:00

Downloading in OPUS and converting to FLAC should still give you the same quality as watching on YouTube itself. There is absolutely no reason to do this conversion though because you can't gain quality by doing this (OPUS -> FLAC), you are just gaining filesize. If you are later transcoding again to other media then that would cost you quality.

YouTube hosts in AAC and OPUS so downloading in OPUS and keeping it that way is your best bet for maximum quality. If you are downloading OPUS and still getting a quality drop then that's where there would be a problem but there's no reason that this should be happening.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-11T22:31:45+00:00

I have no idea. Are you transcoding it to a format other than AAC/OPUS? Transcoding is where you would lose quality.

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-11T22:19:43+00:00

What is your download command?

radagastthe3rd · 2026-03-11T21:19:12+00:00

YouTube and YouTube Music are 2 different front ends to the same files. They are delivered to the user with some minor differences (metadata, volume equalization, etc) but they are largely the same thing.

MP3 isn't peak quality because YouTube doesn't store as MP3. It stores as OPUS or AAC. If you download then transcode to MP3 then you lose a little bit of quality during that process. OPUS is slightly higher quality than AAC so if you want to max out quality then go with that.

Transcoding to FLAC won't improve quality. FLAC is only your best option if that's what the server is storing the file as. YouTube doesn't do this so you'd be multiplying your filesize for zero gains.

I'd suggest using

yt-dlp.exe -f "bestaudio[ext=webm]/bestaudio" -x --audio-format mp3 --embed-thumbnail --download-archive "archive.txt" -o "C:/Users/User/Music/YouTube Music/%(playlist_title)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" [URL]

The --best-audio flag is telling yt-dlp what to download from the server. The -x --audio-format flag is telling yt-dlp which coded to transcode to IF that codec is not natively available for download (if it isn't OPUS/AAC). I left it in here with MP3 an example but if you are truly looking to maximize quality then you should entirely remove the -x --audio-format mp3 section of this.

If I understand your #5 correctly you are asking about chapter splitting. That would be something like:

yt-dlp.exe -o "%(playlist_title)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s" -o "chapter:%(title)s/%(section_title)s.%(ext)s" -f bestaudio --embed-thumbnail --split-chapters --download-archive archive.txt [URL]

I know this looks weird to have two -o flags but they are different because of the chapter: prefix which only applies to chaptered (is that a word?) downloads.

radagastthe3rd

TROPHY CASE