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UltimaDLZero-disk-IO media pipeline in Rust

Zero-disk-IO media pipeline in Rust

UltimaDL

  • Rust
  • yt-dlp
  • FFmpeg
  • std::process pipes
  • anyhow

Overview

A command-line YouTube-to-audio pipeline in Rust. It streams yt-dlp straight into FFmpeg over in-memory pipes, so the conversion to MP3 happens with no intermediate file ever touching disk.

Architecture

yt-dlpstream
Rust pipein-memory
FFmpeg→ MP3

Highlights

  • Streaming architecture: yt-dlp stdout → Rust pipe → FFmpeg stdin, fully in memory — constant RAM footprint regardless of length.
  • ~52× real-time: a 6-hour stream converts to MP3 in under 7 minutes.
  • No disk IO for the intermediate, so it’s fast on slow disks and leaves nothing to clean up.
  • Built on std::process + anyhow; a small, dependency-light, single-purpose tool.