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I'm on Xubuntu. Two days ago, I wanted to download a mp3 song from YouTube: this one using this firefox extension or any other. The size is 82 MB. It's clearly not an mp3 file; it's a video that has an .mp3 extension. All the video data are still there.

So I wonder, do all downloaders work the same? For example, could I download this video using this extension, in the lowest possible quality to save bandwidth, and then convert it to HD using ffmpeg or whatever?

I don't think that downloaders are capable of converting videos; they just change the extension of the file to reduce its size a bit. Am I wrong?

Braiam
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Lynob
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    if this question is not a good fit to this site, please migrate it to superuser, otherwise delete this comment :) – Lynob Feb 16 '14 at 20:00
  • With you first plugin, have you tried renaming it to .flv/.mp4? Whichever works, you should be able to then convert with something like ffmpeg -i File.mp4 File.mp3 – Wilf Feb 16 '14 at 20:13
  • @Wilf I have tried and the video works, but no difference in quality as indicated in the answer below, so as much as i hate it I might have to accept the answer :) – Lynob Feb 16 '14 at 21:35
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    Can't do the impossible as such - higher quality takes up more space, so for small bandwidth, go for low quality. – Wilf Feb 16 '14 at 21:41

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You can't download low-quality and UP-convert anything in order to get better quality using any plugin - be it audio or video. Period. You could use some filters to clean up garbage / noise but that's it.

Kitet
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  • why? it works when converting .flv to mp3. have you try it? – Lynob Feb 16 '14 at 20:04
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    As I said, you can not get BETTER QUALITY. Compression they use is lossy. You can't expect audio encoded in 8 bit to sound better when you convert it to 16, 24 or 100000 bits. If you have an MP3 or Flash audio at 128kbps and convert to 320kbps there will be no difference in QUALITY. It will be the same, low-quality sound but it will take more space on your disk. YES you can convert but there's no point. – Kitet Feb 16 '14 at 20:11