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Youtube-dl, m4a files won't play

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Thrasymachus:
When I download m4a audio files using the youtube-dl script if I choose to directly download a m4a audio file it won't work.

What does work is choosing to download a low-quality mp4 audio/video file and converting it using this command switch: 

--- Code: ---youtube-dl -f 18 -x --audio-format m4a  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQbJfAPKOqA

--- End code ---
-f 18 tells it to download the lowest quality mp4
-x to convert it to audio

Is there a way to get m4a files retrieved from Youtube to work without all that extra command line input and remuxing?

Thanks

saratoga:
Probably you have to remux them into a normal audio m4a stream. Try mp4box.

dreamlayers:
If you look at available formats with youtube-dl -F, you'll see that the audio only options have "DASH audio" in the description. That's a different kind of container format which won't play in some programs. You can easily convert it without re-encoding using ffmpeg or another similar tool: ffmpeg -i input.m4a -vn -acodec copy output.m4a

Current versions of youtube-dl ought to do the conversion automatically if they can find ffmpeg. The --ffmpeg-location switch can be used to tell youtube-dl where ffmpeg is located.

https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/3681

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