Answers.Body: <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>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-08-17T18:41:43.027Z
Answers.Text: 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?
Answers.UserDisplayName: paternostrox
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-08-17T18:54:34.813Z
Answers.Text: Running `youtube-dl URL -F` will show all the variants it detects. One of them will be marked as the best.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Gyan
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-08-17T18:05:08.283Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2019-08-17T18:05:08.283Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Gyan
Body: <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>
  
Tags: <ffmpeg><video-quality><bitrate>
Title: Using youtube-dl: Does adaptive bitrate (ABR) affect image quality?
UserDisplayName: paternostrox
ThreadText: # 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
  
  
  ---
  
  ## 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.  
  
  ---
  
  