Multiline options in mpv.conf

[github-account1111]

The formatting for longer option strings can get very unwieldly and barely readable: I would like to have something like this instead, with newlines and indentation:

Is there a syntax for that?

[christoph-heinrich]

I used to use something very similar (generated with a little fish script). I think you can achieve the same with a fairly basic format and format-sort.

ytdl-format=b[ext=mov]/bv+ba/b
ytdl-raw-options=format-sort=[fps,res,vcodec,aext,quality]

I'm not sure about the syntax for the sorting part, because I have mine in my yt-dlp/config, but you get the idea.

Regarding sorting: vcodec (av01 > vp9.2 > vp9 > h265 > h264 > vp8 > h263 > theora > other) aext (m4a > aac > mp3 > ogg > opus > webm > other)

Pro Tip: use ytdl-raw-options=yes-playlist= to have YouTube videos in playlists actually open the whole playlist (it will still start with the correct video).

Edit: You could also create a script-opts/osc.config and script-opts/ytdl_hook.config to avoid using script-opts=.

[github-account1111]

Thanks for all the tips!

I'm using a slightly modified version of https://github.com/TheFrenchGhosty/TheFrenchGhostys-Ultimate-YouTube-DL-Scripts-Collection/blob/master/scripts/Archivist%20Scripts/Archivist%20Scripts/Unique/Unique.sh Why would they use those long format selection strings if the same result is achievable with format & format-sort?

I'm not sure about the syntax for the sorting part, because I have mine in my yt-dlp/config

Are you saying your mpv sees your yt-dlp config so there's no need to duplicate those options? How does one achieve that?

> h265 > h264

Wouldn't you need to account for "hevc" and "avc" being sometimes used for those codecs respectively? Or is that taken care of now?

[christoph-heinrich]

I'm using a slightly modified version of https://github.com/TheFrenchGhosty/TheFrenchGhostys-Ultimate-YouTube-DL-Scripts-Collection/blob/master/scripts/Archivist%20Scripts/Archivist%20Scripts/Unique/Unique.sh Why would they use those long format selection strings if the same result is achievable with format & format-sort?

I don't know why they don't use that. I think that repo has been around for much longer then yt-dlp, and youtube-dl does not support sorting, so maybe they just left things as they were when transitioning to yt-dlp to avoid accidentaly breaking things.

Are you saying your mpv sees your yt-dlp config so there's no need to duplicate those options? How does one achieve that?

mpv calls yt-dlp without the --ignore-config option, so any configuration in .config/yt-dlp/config gets loaded. Now by default it does pass --format=bestvideo+bestaudio/best, but if you use ytdl-format=ytdl it does not do that, and so the format configuration from your yt-dlp config file will apply.

Wouldn't you need to account for "hevc" and "avc" being sometimes used for those codecs respectively? Or is that taken care of now?

I don't understand what you mean. If you want to avoid them, you could add [vcodec!^=?hevc][vcodec!^=?avc] to your formats. By default it prefers av01, vp9.2 and vp9 over them.

[github-account1111]

I don't understand what you mean.

YouTube lists H264 as avc..., and Vimeo lists H265 as hevc..., so wouldn't h265 and h264 end up getting ignored? Or is there a hard-coded list that accounts for those discrepancies?

[christoph-heinrich]

I don't know, I've never noticed any unexpected behavior in that regard, but a quick grep over the yt-dlp codebase didn't reveal any definition of aliases. The man page has this though:

E.g.  +codec:avc:m4a (equivalent to +vcodec:avc,+acodec:m4a) sets the video codec preference to h264 > h265 > vp9 >  vp9.2
>  av01  >  vp8  > h263 > theora and audio codec preference to mp4a > aac > vorbis > opus > mp3 > ac3 > dts.

Suggesting that it should work. It's probably best if you test it out and if it doesn't work, open an issue over at yt-dlp.

[github-account1111]

Turns out I was just confused about how the whole format sorting thing works. Only parameter order can be redefined. Sorting within each parameter is predefined, and only a single element within each parameter can be reordered.

There's an issue (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/2260) requesting multiple elements within each parameter to be reorderable.