[FEATURE] ARG help

[amuilyas]

First of all thank you for such a great program which I find incredibly useful for watching videos offline at my own pace and with full playback control on Kodi.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I find the documentation on adding arguments confusing. I am definitely NOT a programmer but like to think of myself as semi-intelligent and struggled to follow the guidelines with respect to the GUI vs CLI that the docs seem to assume.

Describe the solution you'd like
One or two examples in the docs that show the text string within the GUI as a screenshot. My immediate problem is wanting to add file creation/upload date at the start of the file name so I can easily sort channel downloads by date for latest videos. I tried several permutations of arg text based on what I could google but do not get dates at start of file.

I tried below and none worked for me:
-o"%(release_date)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s"
-o "%(release_date)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s"
-o '%(release_date)s.%(title)s.%(ext)s'

Additional context
I am running YDL on Synology in Docker. Picture of my failed attempts. I know I am doing something very wrong, just need some pointers on how do it properly. Thanks again for a great program!

[Tzahi12345]

Will convert this to a discussion as it's more of a question, but I'll answer it there!

[Tzahi12345]

There is a better place to add the output arg specifically, but I'll explain how the args menu works (scroll down for the better solution):

I agree this is a bit confusing! You're close though, the top card is the actual args list and the bottom one is a place to add them, though they kind of both serve as places to add args.

Anyways, if you want to do this in the top card, just type -o then a comma, which should create a little bubble around the -o. Then you can type your custom output %(release_date)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s, even with spaces. After you're done with that, type in another comma to create a bubble around the desired output string. It should look like this in the end:

The bottom card is just a little tool, if you were to do it there you would type in -o in the Arg input, then click on the Use arg value checkbox and type in the output string in the Arg value input. Then click add and it would be added in one go.

---

Now for the more robust way to add a custom output is actually to just use the Default file output setting like so:

Notice how the .%(ext)s is missing: it's not required!

Hope this makes sense, sorry for the huge wall of text. But custom args can be very powerful and I wanted to make sure you weren't lost on that either.

[amuilyas]

Appreciate the reply!

I tried the global settings and do not see the change in the file name. Not sure if related but there is a JSON error in the log file.

• deleted existing subscriptions
• turned YTDL off in docker
• deleted the channel folders in NAS to start from blank slate
• turned YTDL on in docker
• added 3 different channels to subs with low video count uploads

Thanks again for helping me out with this and big fan of YTDL

[Tzahi12345]

Huh, it worked on my end:

Are these subscription videos? If so, I should've mentioned this earlier but the default file output only applies to non-subscription videos. At least it did, I just pushed an update that fixes this,

The JSON error though is strange, would you mind providing the full logs? You can find this in the settings menu, there's a Logs tab.

[amuilyas]

Thanks mate!

My end game is to use YTDL to download videos to watch offline in media player. But the media player will only alpha sort by file name so I want to append creation date to the start of the file names so I can embed a time based sort. All of the channels are non-subscription.

I added my log file here for your reference.

I notice in your screenshot that the file has been appended with "NA - " at the beginning. Am I right that in your example it does not seem to have edited the file name with creation date?

I am running v4.2 of YTDL in Docker, it seems to have grabbed your most recent file update.

thanks again for the support
YTDL_log.txt

[Tzahi12345]

Hm so it seems like an apostrophe was added for whatever reason to the expected name. But, we were getting the file name using a rather unsafe method, which has since been changed to something a lot more robust which I'm almost positive will fix your issue.

You'll have to change your tag to nightly and join us in a more bleeding edge version of YTDL-M. You may want to back up your instance as there's a DB migration involved, but it should be relatively straightforward in your case and the build seems relatively stable. One added benefit is your subscriptions will have %(release_date)s added to their output which you seem to want as well. Let me know if you need more help on this front.

I notice in your screenshot that the file has been appended with "NA - " at the beginning. Am I right that in your example it does not seem to have edited the file name with creation date?

It seems like youtube-dl didn't put that info there for whatever reason. Not sure why.

[amuilyas]

Thanks for that. I'll wait until you push the changes out on to a stable version. Big fan of YTDL!

…

---- On Thu, 29 Jul 2021 20:32:16 -0700 Tzahi12345 ***@***.***> wrote ---- Hm so it seems like an apostrophe was added for whatever reason to the expected name. But, we were getting the file name using a rather unsafe method, which has since been changed to something a lot more robust which I'm almost positive will fix your issue. You'll have to change your tag to nightly and join us in a more bleeding edge version of YTDL-M. You may want to back up your instance as there's a DB migration involved, but it should be relatively straightforward in your case and the build seems relatively stable. Let me know if you need more help on this front. I notice in your screenshot that the file has been appended with "NA - " at the beginning. Am I right that in your example it does not seem to have edited the file name with creation date? It seems like youtube-dl didn't put that info there for whatever reason. Not sure why. — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, #405 (reply in thread), or https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ASRWIPIBI2KDIMSJP6L4UDDT2IMMBANCNFSM5BBEQGKQ.