If you have a massive playlist (1,000+ videos) and only need basic info like titles and IDs, use the --flat-playlist flag. This prevents yt-dlp from visiting every individual video page, making the JSON extraction significantly faster. yt-dlp --dump-json --flat-playlist [Playlist-URL] 3. Using JSON for Subtitles and Comments
To see the full metadata of a video in your console, use: yt-dlp --dump-json [URL] yt-dlp download json
Use jq (a command-line JSON processor) to wrap these lines into a valid array: yt-dlp --dump-json [Playlist-URL] | jq -s '.' > playlist_data.json 2. Flat Playlists If you have a massive playlist (1,000+ videos)
Alternatively, you can use the --write-info-json flag. This is the preferred method when you want to download the video AND save its metadata simultaneously: yt-dlp --write-info-json [URL] Filtering the Output Using JSON for Subtitles and Comments To see
Whether you are scraping video descriptions, fetching view counts, or automating a custom player, here is everything you need to know about using yt-dlp to download and manage JSON data. The Foundation: Extracting Metadata Without Downloading
This outputs a massive, single-line JSON object containing every piece of data yt-dlp can find: titles, timestamps, format IDs, thumbnails, subtitles, and even internal video IDs. Writing to a File
import yt_dlp ydl_opts = 'quiet': True, 'skip_download': True, with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl: info = ydl.extract_info("https://youtube.com", download=False) # 'info' is now a standard Python dictionary print(info['title']) Use code with caution. Summary Checklist --dump-json Save JSON: --write-info-json No Video: --skip-download Fast Playlist: --flat-playlist Format JSON: Use jq for post-processing.