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Yt-dlp is the best way to download videos and audio
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I still have to wait a long time for the video to load in the Mpv cache, and sometimes I want a bunch of videos to watch later (or watch multiple times if they're educational). In which case, I either open up a bunch of videos in their own mpv windows and they all load while I'm watching the first one, or I download them while I'm doing something else.
But loading a bunch of mpv windows is heavier than a bunch of terminals running yt-dlp (and I could also just switch to using tmux.... which I probably should get around to at some point).
In my experience the video loads in a few seconds compared to the minutes it'd take for it to download, but I get your second point.
Depends on the options mpv passes to yt-dlp—I personally have in my mpv config to grab 720p videos, so that it’s faster than downloading full quality.