cant get compatible bestvideo+bestaudio for mp4

Checklist

• I’m asking a question
• I’ve looked through the README and FAQ for similar questions
• I’ve searched the bugtracker for similar questions including closed ones

Question

Problem: Can’t Get mp4 format with bestvideo+bestaudio Once i try doing youtube-dl.exe --merge-output-format mp4 URL it will download the MP4 format but with bad video quality I expect the command to download the bestaudio and video format but i cant get it working…

[dirkf]

… What’s wrong with this one, though ? It gets both the best MP4 vid and the best M4A audio (FFmpeg/avconv required), and otherwise the best MP4 combination (which in this case is anything but best, but that’s YT’s fault, not ytdl’s):

youtube-dl -v -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]" "4ukOvwQmJvE"

Yes, apart from “Windows” vs ‘POSIX’ shell quotes. your -f is an alternative way of asking for the selection specified by '(bestvideo+bestaudio/best)[ext!^=web]' in the command that I almost simultaneously posted.

In the first command you were asking to combine two video formats, and the list of alternative formats did not include any that were available. Had one been, you would then have got a message like ERROR: Both formats 399 and 399 are video-only, you must specify "-f video+audio".

Something like this (305/266/304/264/137/bestvideo[ext=mp4])+bestaudio[ext=m4a] would work if one were desperate to get one of the 5 listed formats when available, but the other formulations are simpler and more robust against site changes.

[rautamiekka]

Shame ytdl can’t skip non-existent formats even when setting priorities with the slash, so commands like this won’t work cuz 305 is the 1st between the parentheses and doesn’t exist for 4ukOvwQmJvE:

youtube-dl -v -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4]+(305/266/304/264/137)" "4ukOvwQmJvE"

What’s wrong with this one, though ? It gets both the best MP4 vid and the best M4A audio (FFmpeg/avconv required), and otherwise the best MP4 combination (which in this case is anything but best, but that’s YT’s fault, not ytdl’s):

youtube-dl -v -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]" "4ukOvwQmJvE"