This instructs yt-dlp to use 10 concurrent threads to fetch different parts of the same video simultaneously.
If you have a text file of URLs ( urls.txt ), you can pipe them to xargs to run several downloads at once. xargs -a urls.txt -n 1 -P 5 yt-dlp Use code with caution. -n 1 : Send 1 URL to each instance of yt-dlp . -P 5 : Run 5 instances in parallel. B. Using GNU Parallel (The power-user choice) yt-dlp parallel download
2. The Advanced Way: Downloading Multiple Videos in Parallel This instructs yt-dlp to use 10 concurrent threads
Use the -N flag followed by the number of threads. yt-dlp -N 10 "URL" Use code with caution. -n 1 : Send 1 URL to each instance of yt-dlp
Run your batch through xargs as shown above. Because each xargs worker is a separate process, Worker A can be merging Video 1 while Worker B is already 50% through downloading Video 2. Comparison: Which Method to Use?
A common bottleneck is that yt-dlp pauses the network download while the CPU works on merging (FFmpeg) or post-processing a finished file. You can "pipeline" these tasks so that the next download starts as soon as the previous one finishes downloading, even if it's still being processed.
GNU Parallel offers more robust job control and cleaner output logs. cat urls.txt | parallel -j 4 yt-dlp {} Use code with caution. -j 4 : Limits the task to 4 concurrent jobs. 3. Combining Parallel Download and Processing