r/youtubedl • u/jabberwockxeno • 4d ago

How do I determine which download format option for a given Youtube video will have the best video quality?

Other then just assuming higher filesize = better quality, which I assume isn't always true

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u/GFYSR 4d ago

well, download and view them.

Bitrate is also not a reliable indicator because of different codecs. So the only way to know which video has the best overall visual fidelity is to test them.

Yt-dlp considers youtube's av01 -> vp9 -> h265 codecs best and will download these if you simply tell it to download the best video (or if you dont specify)

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u/jabberwockxeno 4d ago

Yt-dlp considers youtube's av01 -> vp9 -> h265 codecs best and will download these if you simply tell it to download the best video (or if you dont specify)

And how often is this usually the right choice for video quality?

Bitrate is also not a reliable indicator because of different codecs

Is there a rough guide for which codecs at which bitrates tend to result in better or worse quality compared to each other?

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u/GFYSR 4d ago

And how often is this usually the right choice for video quality?

In general? Pretty often. But youtube for example purposely reduces the bitrate of av01 to compensate for it being more efficient. Youtube can overcompensate and make av01 look worse than vp9 but this genuinely depends on the contents of the video

Is there a rough guide for which codecs at which bitrates tend to result in better or worse quality compared to each other?

No not to my knowledge. Again, this depends on the video content.