Is youtube-dl able to make use of multiple cores ? #3137

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opened 2026-02-20 23:16:05 -05:00 by deekerman · 2 comments

deekerman commented

2026-02-20 23:16:05 -05:00

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Originally created by @TheGr33k on GitHub (Sep 29, 2014).

It would have been awesome if youtube-dl can generate direct url while making use of multiple cores .I believe this can really speed things up .

On a side note youtube-dl uses a lot of cpu on my cpu (20-25% per process) and i use a Dual Xeon E5-2620.I would love some optimization on that front to make the cpu usage lower

I am using python 2.7 atm :)

Originally created by @TheGr33k on GitHub (Sep 29, 2014). It would have been awesome if youtube-dl can generate direct url while making use of multiple cores .I believe this can really speed things up . On a side note youtube-dl uses a lot of cpu on my cpu (20-25% per process) and i use a Dual Xeon E5-2620.I would love some optimization on that front to make the cpu usage lower I am using python 2.7 atm :)

deekerman closed this issue

2026-02-20 23:16:07 -05:00

deekerman commented

2026-02-20 23:16:08 -05:00

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@phihag commented on GitHub (Sep 29, 2014):

cpython 2.7 limits youtube-dl to 1 CPU without multiprocessing. While multiprocessing is definitely an option we would consider (to download multiple videos in parallel), it won't help if bandwidth is your limit. Note that you can run as many instances of youtube-dl as you want. youtube-dl explicitly supports this.

We are pursuing speedups by compiling, for example with pyston (see #3029 ). There is also the possibility that the http downloader and youtube-dl core can be sped up significantly by changing the youtube-dl code (as opposed to its interpretation) directly. Pull requests to that effect are welcome.

@phihag commented on GitHub (Sep 29, 2014): cpython 2.7 limits youtube-dl to 1 CPU without multiprocessing. While multiprocessing is definitely an option we would consider (to download multiple videos in parallel), it won't help if bandwidth is your limit. Note that you can run as many instances of youtube-dl as you want. youtube-dl explicitly supports this. We are pursuing speedups by compiling, for example with [pyston](https://github.com/dropbox/pyston) (see #3029 ). There is also the possibility that the http downloader and youtube-dl core can be sped up significantly by changing the youtube-dl code (as opposed to its interpretation) directly. Pull requests to that effect are welcome.

deekerman commented

2026-02-20 23:16:08 -05:00

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@STonEDSTonE commented on GitHub (Nov 20, 2018):

This is a very old post, but i did not find a newer one regarding this topic.
Since 4 years have passed, is there a posibility to use multiple cores now? Or will there be one in the future? Or is this sth. that will never happen?

@STonEDSTonE commented on GitHub (Nov 20, 2018): This is a very old post, but i did not find a newer one regarding this topic. Since 4 years have passed, is there a posibility to use multiple cores now? Or will there be one in the future? Or is this sth. that will never happen?

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starred/youtube-dl#3137

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