Defaults for a start

[rafnov]

Hi.
I'm trying to set up YTDLnis for a first time and I'm bit confused, mainly because YTDLnis settings don't say what really defaults are.

My question is: what are the defaults for formats/codecs/quality?

My main goal is: downloading music videos from YouTube for easy offline playback. I would probably need audio only for the same content too.
Use case scenario after downloading my be: playing back both video and bare audio at least at 3 devices: phone / computer (mostly laptop) and tv.

ATM I've found out how to download whole playlist from the particular channel, which is great function that I'll need mostly.
ATM I don't think I'd ever need anything more than FHD/1080p video quality (while 720p seems good optimal for size vs quality), but I'd like, maybe not best, but good audio too.
What about formats?
I've chosen m4a, mp4 for popularity/compatibility.
Are my choices good for my needs? What's your thoughts?

I'm trying to test my settings against dozen of files, before I decide, but facing downloading hundreds of them, I don't want to make a mistake, that I would regret after downloading tons of material, I think you get me here, right? 😉

[Semak12345]

Your MP4 + M4A choice is sensible if compatibility across a phone, computer, and TV is the priority.\n\nThe current defaults are intentionally mostly automatic:\n\n- Video quality defaults to best.\n- Preferred video/audio containers and codecs are empty, so they are not forced.\n- Preferred format IDs are empty.\n- Compatibility mode is off.\n\nYou can see those defaults in processing_preferences.xml and the fallback to best in FormatUtil.kt. This is why the UI cannot show one concrete default codec: the selected stream depends on what each source offers.\n\nFor your use case I would start with:\n\nVideo\n- Quality: 1080p, or 720p if storage matters more.\n- Container: MP4.\n- Video codec: AVC/H.264.\n- Audio codec: AAC/M4A.\n\nThat combination is usually the safest for TVs and older devices. YTDLnis's compatibility mode also targets MP4/H.264/AAC in YTDLPUtil.kt. The trade-off is that compatibility mode can recode video, which takes longer and can lose a little quality, so I would only enable it if one of your devices cannot play the normal download.\n\nAudio-only\n- M4A is the safer compatibility choice.\n- Opus is often better for quality per byte, but some TVs and older players do not support it well.\n- Avoid converting an already-lossy track repeatedly; choose one final format and keep it.\n\nBefore downloading hundreds, test 3-5 representative items: a 720p video, a 1080p video, a long video, and an audio-only item. Play each on all three devices and verify seeking, sound, and subtitles. If all pass, save those settings as your baseline.

[rafnov]

Another thing as of now: some material from the playlist fails to download with 403 Forbidden. Why is that?

Second one would be: why H. 264, not H.265?

[Semak12345]

403 is the HTTP status, not the root cause, so the useful part is the warning immediately before it.

For YouTube, first open Settings > Updating settings and update yt-dlp (try the Nightly channel), then retry one failed playlist item by itself. A very recent playlist report was fixed exactly this way: #1253 (comment)

If it still fails, paste the log from the first warning through the 403. Depending on that warning, the next step may be refreshing cookies/PO token, disabling stale cookies for a public video, or fixing a JS challenge. I would not change all of those at once because then we cannot tell which setting caused it.

I suggested H.264 because your requirement was one file that works on phone, computer, and TV. H.265/HEVC can be smaller at similar visual quality, but playback support is less universal, especially on older TVs and some browser/software combinations. If all three devices pass a test file, HEVC is a good storage-saving option. Prefer a native HEVC source when available; forcing a transcode takes time and adds another lossy encode.

[rafnov]

Tv is LG50UK6470PLC, should run HEVC, I'm not sure about ancient laptop that serves mainly as a music player...

OK, as I now know how to configure and download a playlist, I can focus on one file and different options for it, regarding devices.

Happy that my basic intuition was correct and thank you for all the clues so far! 🫡

How really option to prevent downloading duplicates works? What do I set to download only newer things since last download from the same playlist URL?

[Semak12345]

If you want the same playlist URL to only download videos that appeared after the last run, set Prevent duplicate downloads to Download archive.

That uses yt-dlp's archive file and stores the video IDs that were already downloaded. When you run the same playlist again later, entries already in the archive are skipped and only new ones get downloaded.

URL and type is the app's own duplicate check, but for the "same playlist, only new videos" workflow the archive option is the better fit.