Maximizing YouTube download audio quality

[oltos]

Audio quality of music is my main concern when downloading from YouTube (and Vimeo, which I only just discovered).

But am I wrong or are there relatively few A/V file viewers? Can you recommend a program that displays an audio or video file’s container (i.e. FLV, MP4, Quicktime, AVI, Matroska, WebM), its audio codec (i.e. AC-3, AAC, ALAC, ALS, FLAC, Vorbis, TwinVQ, BSAC, MPEG1 thru-4, SLS, Audio Lossless Coding, MPEG-4 DST, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC,
Windows Media Audio, Wavpack) and bit rate (from 60 up to at least 192Kbps)?

Since transcoding (i.e. file converting) is said to produce somewhat lossy results, I don’t require any software featuring those utilities, all other features being equal. Storage space is sufficiently cheap enough for archiving larger HQ or HD files in their original format.

Free or not doesn’t matter, so long as it reliably displays all popular containers

(Comparison of container formats - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) , the lossy and losslessaudio codecs found in them (Comparison of audio formats - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and the lowest to the highest bit rates in files found on YouTube, Vimeo and HDTracks.com.

[sreten]

Hi, YouTube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, rgds, sreten.

[sreten]

Hi, YouTube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, rgds, sreten.

The encoded audio bitrate may have nothing to do with the actual source rate.

[wwenze]

Video quality is more of my concern...

Can you recommend a program that displays an audio or video file’s container (i.e. FLV, MP4, Quicktime, AVI, Matroska, WebM), its audio codec (i.e. AC-3, AAC, ALAC, ALS, FLAC, Vorbis, TwinVQ, BSAC, MPEG1 thru-4, SLS, Audio Lossless Coding, MPEG-4 DST, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, Windows Media Audio, Wavpack) and bit rate (from 60 up to at least 192Kbps)?

Mediainfo. Download as a standalone program, or use the one inside MPC-HC.

[oltos]

Thanks, I've read YouTube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Audio codec - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Comparison of audio formats - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bit rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sampling rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What are the benefits of recording with a sample rate greater than 44.1? - recordingquestions.com
mp3 - AAC Sample Rate and Bit Rate for High Quality Audio? - Super User

Advanced Audio Coding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3...vs-mp4-quality and
http://www.h3xed.com/web-and-interne...80p-720p-1080p
adding “&hd=1” , “&hd=18” and/or “&hd=22” to the end of a YouTube file’s URL

code, will access the HD version of the file (which by default uses a better quality

audio codec and/or a higher bit rate), if such a file version was created and uploaded.

But what is a video embedder? How does it differ from the player at YouTube’s and/or Vimeo’s site?

Is there a particular player/embedder that I can download (free or not) which, among other things, can be set to also automatically locate the HD or HQ (> 128kbps and/or lower loss codec) version of the file on the web-even it’s no longer posted at YouTube? If yes, please suggest one.

Is there a way to enable that embedder or player so that it always grabs the HD or HQ file first-and so eliminate the need to add the above suffixes to the URL?

I typically use Firefox. Excuse the possibly dumb question but are all browsers the same or might one somehow provide wider access to these HD or HQ version files?

Or are there special HD or video quality browser settings?

[wwenze]

Google keepvid

[dangus]

Jdownloader is useful. Copy the Youtube URL to the clipboard, and Jdownloader will let you choose from the different audio and video formats and containers and resolutions available.

[freax]

just use download helper for firefox plugin, it copies it directly into its native container format, flv or mp4. and its easy as pie to use, just gotta click on the little arrow next to the rotating button up top and save the file while viewing a youtube video.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...ownloadhelper/

inorder to maintain a high level of audio quality ensure that you always try to get the 720p or 1080p version of a video, or if unavailable, 480p.

[UnixMan]

VideoLAN - Official page for VLC media player, the Open Source video framework!

Entering MPlayer homepage

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