<p>Adaptive streaming is accomplished by switching between pre-encoded streams of different bitrates and/or resolutions. But the bitrate within any given pre-encoded stream does not vary too much.</p>

<p>YT-DL, with your command, will select the 'best' video stream, usually the one with the highest bitrate and resolution, and return its URL. This URL is a direct resource address, and there will be no switching when downloading it, even if your network gets congested.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-17T18:41:43.027Z
That does makes sense. I thought youtube-dl only evaluated resolution and extension since video formats are always categorized by resolution and extension. But having a deeper look in the 'format selection' docs section, it seems like it does take bitrate into account, but keeps it hidden? Is that it?
paternostrox
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-17T18:54:34.813Z
Running `youtube-dl URL -F` will show all the variants it detects. One of them will be marked as the best.
Gyan
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-17T18:05:08.283Z
2019-08-17T18:05:08.283Z
Gyan
<p>I'm using youtube-dl and ffmpeg to get videos/frames of videos from the web. I was told that youtube (and others) use adaptive bitrate streaming, so depending on the network conditions of the user the bitrate should drop/rise, then even though resolution stays the same, image quality should change.</p>

<p>That got me wondering if youtube-dl has some mechanism for downloading videos with the same (presumably best) bitrate.</p>

<hr>

<p><strong>So my questions are:</strong></p>

<p>1) When downloading videos through youtube-dl, because of ABR, the quality of the downloaded video depends on network conditions?</p>

<p>2) The following shell script will get a frame of a video at 1:30, will the image quality of this frame be affected by ABR?</p>

<pre><code>MP4URL=`youtube-dl -g MYVIDEOLINK`
ffmpeg -ss 1:30 -i $MP4URL -frames:v 1 myframe.png
</code></pre>

<p>3) If one of the previous questions is true: Is there a way to ensure a network independent quality? How?</p>

<ffmpeg><video-quality><bitrate>
Using youtube-dl: Does adaptive bitrate (ABR) affect image quality?
paternostrox
# Using youtube-dl: Does adaptive bitrate (ABR) affect image quality?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-08-17)

I'm using youtube-dl and ffmpeg to get videos/frames of videos from the web. I was told that youtube (and others) use adaptive bitrate streaming, so depending on the network conditions of the user the bitrate should drop/rise, then even though resolution stays the same, image quality should change.
That got me wondering if youtube-dl has some mechanism for downloading videos with the same (presumably best) bitrate.

So my questions are:
1) When downloading videos through youtube-dl, because of ABR, the quality of the downloaded video depends on network conditions?
2) The following shell script will get a frame of a video at 1:30, will the image quality of this frame be affected by ABR?
MP4URL=`youtube-dl -g MYVIDEOLINK`
ffmpeg -ss 1:30 -i $MP4URL -frames:v 1 myframe.png

3) If one of the previous questions is true: Is there a way to ensure a network independent quality? How?

**Tags:** ffmpeg, video-quality, bitrate


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2019-08-17. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

Adaptive streaming is accomplished by switching between pre-encoded streams of different bitrates and/or resolutions. But the bitrate within any given pre-encoded stream does not vary too much.

YT-DL, with your command, will select the 'best' video stream, usually the one with the highest bitrate and resolution, and return its URL. This URL is a direct resource address, and there will be no switching when downloading it, even if your network gets congested.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: That does makes sense. I thought youtube-dl only evaluated resolution and extension since video formats are always categorized by resolution and extension. But having a deeper look in the 'format selection' docs section, it seems like it does take bitrate into account, but keeps it hidden? Is that it?  
> **username_1**: Running `youtube-dl URL -F` will show all the variants it detects. One of them will be marked as the best.  

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