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Download raw media segments

By default, ypb downloads YouTube live stream excerpts and merges them into a single output file. To keep the raw media segments for your own post-processing instead (including custom muxing and encoding, inspecting the embedded metadata, etc.), use one of the two methods below.

Prerequisites

  • ypb installed locally, or running in a container
  • yt-dlp installed (already included as a requirement)

Download with yt-dlp

  1. Append -- --keep-fragments --ffmpeg-location /dev/null to your download command:
ypb download --interval 10s/now Mm_zVDDUeNA-g -- --keep-fragments --ffmpeg-location /dev/null
  • --keep-fragments keeps the individual .part-FragN files alongside each format’s assembled file
  • --ffmpeg-location /dev/null points yt-dlp at a missing ffmpeg binary, so the final audio and video merge fails while fragment download and assembly (which don’t need ffmpeg) still succeed.

If you only need one stream, select it directly and drop --ffmpeg-location:

    ypb download --interval 10s/now Mm_zVDDUeNA-g -- --keep-fragments -f bestvideo
  1. Run as usual. yt-dlp will report a merge warning, then download each format separately:
(<<) Downloading and merging media...
[generic] Extracting URL: http://localhost:9000/mpd
[generic] mpd: Downloading webpage
WARNING: [generic] Forcing generic information extractor
[generic] mpd: Extracting information
[info] mpd: Downloading 1 format(s): 313+140
WARNING: You have requested merging of multiple formats but ffmpeg is not installed. The formats won't be merged
[dashsegments] Total fragments: 2
[download] Destination: MaunaKea-West-view-and-Meteor_MPokOMJvZ-g_20260731T085352+00_10s.f313.webm
[download] 100% of    5.52MiB in 00:00:17 at 323.13KiB/s
[dashsegments] Total fragments: 2
[download] Destination: MaunaKea-West-view-and-Meteor_MPokOMJvZ-g_20260731T085352+00_10s.f140.m4a
[download] 100% of  159.71KiB in 00:00:20 at 7.82KiB/s
  1. Check your working directory:
MaunaKea-West-view-and-Meteor_MPokOMJvZ-g_20260731T085352+00_10s.f140.m4a
MaunaKea-West-view-and-Meteor_MPokOMJvZ-g_20260731T085352+00_10s.f140.m4a.part-Frag1
MaunaKea-West-view-and-Meteor_MPokOMJvZ-g_20260731T085352+00_10s.f140.m4a.part-Frag2
MaunaKea-West-view-and-Meteor_MPokOMJvZ-g_20260731T085352+00_10s.f313.webm
MaunaKea-West-view-and-Meteor_MPokOMJvZ-g_20260731T085352+00_10s.f313.webm.part-Frag1
MaunaKea-West-view-and-Meteor_MPokOMJvZ-g_20260731T085352+00_10s.f313.webm.part-Frag2

The plain .f140.m4a / .f313.webm files are each format’s assembled stream; .part-FragN are its raw segments.

Download with dash-mpd-cli

As an alternative, dash-mpd-cli, a command-line application for downloading media content from a MPEG-DASH manifest file, can save the raw media segments and skip keeping the merged output entirely.

Prerequisite: dash-mpd-cli installed.

  1. Start a playback server for the video:

    ypb serve MPokOMJvZ-g

  2. In another terminal, point dash-mpd-cli at it and save segments to a directory:

    dash-mpd-cli http://localhost:9000/mpd/10s--now --save-fragments output -o /dev/null

Use NUL instead of /dev/null on Windows.

  1. Check the output directory. Segments are split into audio and video subfolders:
output
├── audio
│   ├── 1974777
│   └── 1974778
└── video
    ├── 1974777
    └── 1974778