Videos

The video command resolves one or more videos to their full metadata in one shot. It bootstraps a session from the watch page, then combines the HTML, the /player response (description, dates, category, tags, formats, captions), and the /next response (chapters, related videos, comment token) into a single record.

ytb video dQw4w9WgXcQ

On a terminal this prints a table. Piped, it emits JSONL. Override with -o (table, json, jsonl, csv, tsv, url, id, raw). See Output formats for the full list, and the CLI reference for every flag.

What it returns

The resolved record carries the fields you see in the browser: title, channel name and id, view count, like count, publish and upload dates, duration, category, tags, the full description, thumbnails, and the live/short markers. The --player-derived sections (formats and caption tracks) and the /next-derived sections (chapters, related videos) are attached too, and the sub-flags below pull each of those out as its own row stream.

Narrow the table columns with --fields (lowercase column names, not JSON keys):

ytb video dQw4w9WgXcQ --fields title,channel,views -o table

Many ids, and stdin

video takes more than one id or URL. Mix bare ids and full watch URLs freely:

ytb video dQw4w9WgXcQ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0"

Pass - to read ids or URLs from stdin, one per line. This is how the other commands chain into video:

ytb search "go programming" -o id | ytb video -

-j/--workers sets how many detail fetches run at once when you pass many ids.

Sub-views of one video

The sub-flags switch video from printing one metadata row to streaming the matching sub-list instead:

ytb video dQw4w9WgXcQ --chapters    # chapter list (title and start time)
ytb video dQw4w9WgXcQ --captions    # available caption tracks
ytb video dQw4w9WgXcQ --formats     # streaming formats, deduped by itag
ytb video dQw4w9WgXcQ --related     # the related-videos graph

--transcript fetches the transcript text and attaches it to the record. --lang picks the preferred caption language (it defaults to auto, English):

ytb video dQw4w9WgXcQ --transcript --lang es

Faster and rawer

--no-player skips the /player call and resolves from the HTML bootstrap only. It is faster, at the cost of the formats, captions, and some /player exclusive fields:

ytb video dQw4w9WgXcQ --no-player

--raw emits the full VideoResult as the value, the whole parsed model rather than the projected row:

ytb video dQw4w9WgXcQ --raw -o json

Sibling commands

Two commands operate on a single video and overlap with the video sub-flags, handy when that is all you want:

related prints the related-videos graph for one video:

ytb related dQw4w9WgXcQ

formats lists the muxed and adaptive formats from /player streamingData, deduped by itag. It lists metadata only and does not resolve playable URLs. Filter by track type with --audio or --video, or show only progressive streams with --muxed:

ytb formats dQw4w9WgXcQ --muxed
ytb formats dQw4w9WgXcQ --audio

Persisting

Add --db <path> to any of these and ytb writes everything it fetches into a local SQLite store as it streams. See The store.