Severity: important
Howdy
On Sun, 26 Mar 2023, Francesco Poli (wintermute) wrote:
Package: yt-dlp
Version: 2023.03.04-1
Severity: grave
Justification: renders package unusable
This doesn't actually render the package unusuable, on the contrary it
works around throttling. Instead, it hinders compatibility with another
package.
Hello and thanks for maintaining this useful package!
After upgrading from yt-dlp/2023.02.17-1 to yt-dlp/2023.03.04-1, mpv
is no longer able to use yt-dlp to play YouTube videos:
<snip>
This actually "only" happens when you use bestvideo, other formats such as
'22' still work.
Eg, `mpv --ytdl-format=22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZAq-_gz_W8`
What's wrong?
Did yt-dlp change API? If this is the case, the new version of yt-dlp
Debian package should wait for an updated mpv Debian package, before
migrating to testing...
Not API, but yt-dlp made a change to solve widespread, severe
throttling, to the point of being unusable really. I saw one report that
had it going at an average speed of 30kb/s.
mpv didn't cope well, but that has been fixed upstream in subsequent[0]
commits[1].
[0]:
https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/commit/94c189dae76ba280d9883b16346c3dfb9720687e
[1]:
https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/commit/362256edbc4f95c63e69c1fa8c8dce9cc6c44288
Or is it a bug in yt-dlp that shows up only when yt-dlp is called by mpv
behind the scenes, and not when it is directly invoked from the user's
command line?
It's not really a bug in yt-dlp, but instead in mpv.
Please fix this issue as soon as possible, or revert to the previous
version (yt-dlp/2023.02.17-1), until this behavior has been properly
investigated and solved.
And here lies the problem. Seemingly one of the big fixes in 2023.03.03
is a workaround for the aforementioned throttling, to revert would mean to
make yt-dlp unusably slow. But to leave it as is, mpv can't directly
utilize yt-dlp with the default quality option.
If we weren't so close to the freeze I'd say the right option would be to
simply patch the yt-dlp hook in mpv and move on, but that's not precisely
an option anymore either.
So to sum up, at least for things I can do:
1. Break yt-dlp integration with mpv under the default options for one
specific (granted, highly popular) site, but usable by itself and other
tools.
2. Revert and break the ability to use yt-dlp to watch a video without
first downloading, for all tools.
Reverting also wouldn't cover backporting new releases to bookworm
eventually either.
Thanks for your time and patience!
Regards,
~Unit 193
Unit193 @ Libera
Unit193 @ OFTC
