Use yt-dlp to merge best video and best audio formats together into an MPEG-4 container, check for AV1/VP9, and transcode to H.264 if necessary. Usage: ./yt-dlp.sh <video_url>

yt-dlp.sh

#!/bin/bash

youtube_url="$1"

echo "Downloading video..."
video_info=$(yt-dlp -e -o "%(title)s" -- "$youtube_url")
sanitized_title=$(echo "$video_info" | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9_.-]/_/g')
output_file="${sanitized_title}.mp4"

yt-dlp -o "temp.mp4" -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best' -- "$youtube_url"

detected_codec=$(ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries stream=codec_name -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 "temp.mp4")

echo "Detected video codec: $detected_codec"

if [ "$detected_codec" != "h264" ]; then
    echo "Transcoding to H.264 format"
    ffmpeg -i "temp.mp4" -c:v libx264 -preset medium -crf 23 -c:a aac -b:a 128k "$output_file"
else
    echo "No transcoding needed, already in H.264 format"
    cp "temp.mp4" "$output_file"
fi

# Clean up temporary file
rm "temp.mp4"

echo "Video saved as: $output_file"