A commandline application for downloading media content from a DASH MPD file, as used for on-demand replay of TV content and video streaming services like YouTube.

DASH (dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP), also called MPEG-DASH, is a technology used for media streaming over the web, commonly used for video on demand (VOD) services. The Media Presentation Description (MPD) is a description of the resources (manifest or “playlist”) forming a streaming service, that a DASH client uses to determine which assets to request in order to perform adaptive streaming of the content. DASH MPD manifests can be used with content encoded in different formats and containers, including H264/MP4, HEVC/MP4 and VP9/WebM. There is a good explanation of adaptive bitrate video streaming at howvideo.works.

This commandline application allows you to download content (audio or video) described by an MPD manifest. This involves selecting the alternative with the most appropriate encoding (in terms of bitrate, codec, etc.), fetching segments of the content using HTTP or HTTPS requests and muxing audio and video segments together. There is also support for downloading subtitles (mostly WebVTT, TTML and SMIL formats, with some support for wvtt format).

This application builds on the dash-mpd crate.

The following features are supported:

• VOD (static) stream manifests (this application can't download from dynamic MPD manifests, that are used for live streaming and OTT television).

• Multi-period content.

• The application can download content available over HTTP, HTTPS and HTTP/2. Network bandwidth can be throttled (see the --limit-rate commandline argument).

• Support for SOCKS and HTTP proxies, via the --proxy commandline argument. The following environment variables can also be used to specify the proxy at a system level: HTTP_PROXY or http_proxy for HTTP connections, HTTPS_PROXY or https_proxy for HTTPS connections, and ALL_PROXY or all_proxy for all connection types. The system proxy can be disabled using the --no-proxy commandline argument.

• Support for HTTP Basic authentication (see the --auth-username and --auth-password commandline arguments). This authentication information is sent both to the server which hosts the DASH manifest, and to the server that hosts the media segments (the latter often being a CDN).

• Subtitles: download support for WebVTT, TTML and SMIL streams, as well as some support for the wvtt format.

• The application can read cookies from the Firefox, Chromium, Chrome, ChromeBeta, Safari and Edge browsers on Linux, Windows and MacOS, thanks to the bench_scraper crate. See the --cookies-from-browser commandline argument. Browsers that support multiple profiles will have all their profiles scraped for cookies.

• XLink elements (only with actuate=onLoad semantics), including resolve-to-zero.

• All forms of segment index info: SegmentBase@indexRange, SegmentTimeline, SegmentTemplate@duration, SegmentTemplate@index, SegmentList.

• Media containers of types supported by mkvmerge, ffmpeg, VLC or MP4Box (this includes ISO-BMFF / CMAF / MP4, Matroska, WebM, MPEG-2 TS).

• Support for decrypting media streams that use MPEG Common Encryption (cenc) ContentProtection. This requires the mp4decrypt commandline application from the Bento4 suite to be installed (binaries are available for common platforms). See the --key commandline argument.

The following are not supported:

• XLink elements with actuate=onRequest semantics

Binary releases are available on GitHub for GNU/Linux on AMD64 (statically linked against musl libc to avoid glibc versioning problems), Microsoft Windows on AMD64 and MacOS on aarch64 (“Apple Silicon”) and AMD64. These are built automatically on the GitHub continuous integration infrastructure.

You can also build from source using an installed Rust development environment:

cargo install dash-mpd-cli

This installs the binary to your installation root's bin directory, which is typically $HOME/.cargo/bin.

You should also install the following dependencies:

• the mkvmerge commandline utility from the MkvToolnix suite, if you download to the Matroska container format (.mkv filename extension). mkvmerge is used as a subprocess for muxing (combining) audio and video streams. See the --mkvmerge-location commandline argument if it's not installed in a standard location.

• ffmpeg or vlc to download to the MP4 container format, also for muxing audio and video streams (see the --ffmpeg-location and --vlc-location commandline arguments if these are installed in non-standard locations).

• the MP4Box commandline utility from the GPAC project, if you want to test the preliminary support for retrieving subtitles in wvtt format. If it's installed, MP4Box will be used to convert the wvtt stream to the more widely recognized SRT format. MP4Box can also be used for muxing audio and video streams to an MP4 container, as a fallback if ffmpeg and vlc are not available. See the --mp4box-location commandline argument if this is installed in a non-standard location.

• the mp4decrypt commandline application from the Bento4 suite, if you need to fetch encrypted content. Binaries are available for common platforms. See the --mp4decrypt-location commandline argument if this is installed in a non-standard location.

This crate is tested on the following platforms:

• Linux on AMD64 (x86-64) and Aarch64 architectures

• MacOS on AMD64 and Aarch64 architectures

• Microsoft Windows 10 and Windows 11 on AMD64

• Android 12 on Aarch64 via termux (you'll need to install the rust, binutils and ffmpeg packages, and optionally the mkvtoolnix, vlc and gpac packages). You'll need to disable the cookies feature by building with --no-default-features.

• FreeBSD/AMD64 and OpenBSD/AMD64. You'll need to disable the cookies feature.

Download content from an MPEG-DASH streaming media manifest.

Usage: dash-mpd-cli [OPTIONS] <MPD-URL>

Arguments:
  <MPD-URL>
          URL of the DASH manifest to retrieve.

Options:
  -U, --user-agent <user-agent>
          

      --proxy <URL>
          URL of Socks or HTTP proxy (e.g. https://example.net/ or socks5://example.net/).

      --no-proxy
          Disable use of Socks or HTTP proxy even if related environment variables are set.

      --auth-username <USER>
          Username to use for authentication with the server(s) hosting the DASH manifest and the media segments (HTTP Basic authentication only).

      --auth-password <PASSWORD>
          Password to use for authentication with the server(s) hosting the DASH manifest and the media segments (HTTP Basic authentication only).

      --timeout <SECONDS>
          Timeout for network requests (from the start to the end of the request), in seconds.

      --sleep-requests <SECONDS>
          Number of seconds to sleep between network requests (default 0).

  -r, --limit-rate <RATE>
          Maximum network bandwidth in octets per second (default no limit), e.g. 200K, 1M.

      --max-error-count <COUNT>
          Maximum number of non-transient network errors that should be ignored before a download is aborted (default is 10).

      --source-address <source-address>
          Source IP address to use for network requests, either IPv4 or IPv6. Network requests will be made using the version of this IP address (e.g. using an IPv6 source-address will select IPv6 network traffic).

      --add-root-certificate <CERT>
          Add a root certificate (in PEM format) to be used when verifying TLS network connections.

      --client-identity-certificate <CERT>
          Client private key and certificate (in PEM format) to be used when authenticating TLS network connections.

      --prefer-video-width <WIDTH>
          When multiple video streams are available, choose that with horizontal resolution closest to WIDTH.

      --prefer-video-height <HEIGHT>
          When multiple video streams are available, choose that with vertical resolution closest to HEIGHT.

      --quality <quality>
          Prefer best quality (and highest bandwidth) representation, or lowest quality.
          
          [possible values: best, intermediate, worst]

      --prefer-language <LANG>
          Preferred language when multiple audio streams with different languages are available. Must be in RFC 5646 format (e.g. fr or en-AU). If a preference is not specified and multiple audio streams are present, the first one listed in the DASH manifest will be downloaded.

      --video-only
          If media stream has separate audio and video streams, only download the video stream.

      --audio-only
          If media stream has separate audio and video streams, only download the audio stream.

      --simulate
          Download the manifest and print diagnostic information, but do not download audio, video or subtitle content, and write nothing to disk.

      --write-subs
          Write subtitle file, if subtitles are available.

      --keep-video <VIDEO-PATH>
          Keep video stream in file specified by VIDEO-PATH.

      --keep-audio <AUDIO-PATH>
          Keep audio stream (if audio is available as a separate media stream) in file specified by AUDIO-PATH.

      --no-period-concatenation
          Never attempt to concatenate media from different Periods (keep one output file per Period).

      --key <KID:KEY>
          Use KID:KEY to decrypt encrypted media streams. KID should be either a track id in decimal (e.g. 1), or a 128-bit keyid (32 hexadecimal characters). KEY should be 32 hexadecimal characters. Example: --key eb676abbcb345e96bbcf616630f1a3da:100b6c20940f779a4589152b57d2dacb. You can use this option multiple times.

      --save-fragments <FRAGMENTS-DIR>
          Save media fragments to this directory (will be created if it does not exist).

      --ignore-content-type
          Don't check the content-type of media fragments (may be required for some poorly configured servers).

      --add-header <NAME:VALUE>
          Add a custom HTTP header and its value, separated by a colon ':'. You can use this option multiple times.

  -H, --header <HEADER>
          Add a custom HTTP header, in cURL-compatible format. You can use this option multiple times.

      --referer <URL>
          Specify content of Referer HTTP header.

  -q, --quiet
          

  -v, --verbose...
          Level of verbosity (can be used several times).

      --no-progress
          Disable the progress bar

      --no-xattr
          Don't record metainformation as extended attributes in the output file.

      --no-version-check
          Disable the check for availability of a more recent version on startup.

      --ffmpeg-location <PATH>
          Path to the ffmpeg binary (necessary if not located in your PATH).

      --vlc-location <PATH>
          Path to the VLC binary (necessary if not located in your PATH).

      --mkvmerge-location <PATH>
          Path to the mkvmerge binary (necessary if not located in your PATH).

      --mp4box-location <PATH>
          Path to the MP4Box binary (necessary if not located in your PATH).

      --mp4decrypt-location <PATH>
          Path to the mp4decrypt binary (necessary if not located in your PATH).

  -o, --output <PATH>
          Save media content to this file.

      --cookies-from-browser <BROWSER>
          Load cookies from BROWSER (Firefox, Chrome, ChromeBeta, Chromium).

      --list-cookie-sources
          Show valid values for BROWSER argument to --cookies-from-browser on this computer, then exit.

  -h, --help
          Print help (see a summary with '-h')

  -V, --version
          Print version

If your filesystem supports extended attributes, the application will save the following metainformation in the output file:

• user.xdg.origin.url: the URL of the MPD manifest
• user.dublincore.title: the title, if specified in the manifest metainformation
• user.dublincore.source: the source, if specified in the manifest metainformation
• user.dublincore.rights: copyright information, if specified in the manifest metainformation

You can examine these attributes using xattr -l (you may need to install your distribution's xattr package). Disable this feature using the --no-xattr commandline argument.

The underlying library dash-mpd-rs has two methods for muxing audio and video streams together. If the library feature libav is enabled (which is not the default configuration), muxing support is provided by ffmpeg’s libav library, via the ac_ffmpeg crate. Otherwise, muxing is implemented by calling an external muxer, mkvmerge (from the MkvToolnix suite), ffmpeg, vlc or MP4Box as a subprocess. Note that these commandline applications implement a number of checks and workarounds to fix invalid input streams that tend to exist in the wild. Some of these workarounds are implemented here when using libav as a library, but not all of them, so download support tends to be more robust with the default configuration (using an external application as a subprocess). The libav feature currently only works on Linux.

The choice of external muxer depends on the filename extension of the path supplied to --output or -o (which will be ".mp4" if you don't specify the output path explicitly):

• .mkv: call mkvmerge first, then if that fails call ffmpeg, then try MP4Box
• .mp4: call ffmpeg first, then if that fails call vlc, then try MP4Box
• other: try ffmpeg, which supports many container formats, then try MP4Box

This project is licensed under the MIT license. For more information, see the LICENSE-MIT file.

Similar commandline tools that are able to download content from a DASH manifest:

• yt-dlp <MPD-URL>

• N_m3u8DL-RE <MPD-URL>

• streamlink -o /tmp/output.mp4 <MPD-URL> worst

• ffmpeg -i <MPD-URL> -vcodec copy /tmp/output.mp4

• vlc <MPD-URL>

• gst-launch-1.0 playbin uri=<MPD-URL>

However, dash-mpd-cli (this application) is able to download content from certain streams that do not work with other applications:

• streams using xHE-AAC codecs are currently unsupported by ffmpeg, streamlink, VLC, and gstreamer
• streams in multi-period manifests
• streams using XLink elements

$ git clone https://github.com/emarsden/dash-mpd-cli
$ cd dash-mpd-cli
$ cargo build --release
$ target/release/dash-mpd-cli --help

The application can also be built statically with the musl-libc target on Linux. First install the MUSL C standard library on your system. Add linux-musl as a target to your Rust toolchain, then rebuild for the relevant target:

$ sudo apt install musl-dev
$ rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
$ cargo build --release --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

Static musl-libc builds don’t work with OpenSSL, which is why we disable default features on the dash-mpd crate and build it with rustls support (a Rust TLS stack). You may encounter some situations where rustls fails to connect (handshake errors, for example) but other applications on your system can connect. These differences in behaviour are typically due to different configurations for the set of root certificates. If you prefer to use your machine’s native TLS stack, replace both instances of rustls-tls by native-tls in Cargo.toml and rebuild.