OT Question on audio downloads from youtube

[VeniVidiVideo]

On Sep 23, 2020, at 6:27 AM, Jim web <web at audiomisc.co.uk> wrote:
> Erm... I think there may be a misunderstanding... Possibly you misunderstod
> my use of 'best' in inverted commas.

Ah, yes, though the misunderstanding came from your comment about uploaders having to provide multiple versions.

But, yes, finding the original uploaded version should correspond to “best”.

However, I don’t believe YouTube does any upconverting.  Only downconverting, to be able to serve lower bandwidth viewers without the video hanging mid-stream.  I suppose as better and better tools, like the Topaz AI package, become available they might change that, but while downconverting is cheap computationally, upconverting effectively is going to remain computationally expensive, so maybe not.

So unless and until they begin doing automatic upconverting, grabbing the highest resolution is equivalent to “bestvideo” (or just "best") *and* the originally uploaded video, as you were suggesting.

-vvv