19 KiB
FAQ
How do I update youtube-dl?
If you've followed our manual installation instructions, you can simply run youtube-dl -U (or, on Linux, sudo youtube-dl -U).
If you have used pip, a simple sudo pip install -U youtube-dl is sufficient to update.
If you have installed youtube-dl using a package manager like apt-get or yum, use the standard system update mechanism to update. Note that distribution packages are often outdated. As a rule of thumb, youtube-dl releases at least once a month, and often weekly or even daily. Simply go to https://yt-dl.org to find out the current version. Unfortunately, there is nothing we youtube-dl developers can do if your distribution serves a really outdated version. You can (and should) complain to your distribution in their bugtracker or support forum.
As a last resort, you can also uninstall the version installed by your package manager and follow our manual installation instructions. For that, remove the distribution's package, with a line like
sudo apt-get remove -y youtube-dl
Afterwards, simply follow our manual installation instructions:
sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
hash -r
Again, from then on you'll be able to update with sudo youtube-dl -U.
youtube-dl is extremely slow to start on Windows
Add a file exclusion for youtube-dl.exe in Windows Defender settings.
I'm getting an error Unable to extract OpenGraph title on YouTube playlists
YouTube changed their playlist format in March 2014 and later on, so you'll need at least youtube-dl 2014.07.25 to download all YouTube videos.
If you have installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py or a tarball, please use that to update. Note that Ubuntu packages do not seem to get updated anymore. Since we are not affiliated with Ubuntu, there is little we can do. Feel free to report bugs to the Ubuntu packaging people - all they have to do is update the package to a somewhat recent version. See above for a way to update.
I'm getting an error when trying to use output template: error: using output template conflicts with using title, video ID or auto number
Make sure you are not using -o with any of these options -t, --title, --id, -A or --auto-number set in command line or in a configuration file. Remove the latter if any.
Do I always have to pass -citw?
By default, youtube-dl intends to have the best options (incidentally, if you have a convincing case that these should be different, please file an issue where you explain that). Therefore, it is unnecessary and sometimes harmful to copy long option strings from webpages. In particular, the only option out of -citw that is regularly useful is -i.
Can you please put the -b option back?
Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now defaults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer need the -b option. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not report them to be available in a specific high quality format you're interested in. In that case, simply request it with the -f option and youtube-dl will try to download it.
I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's this?
Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download too much. We're considering to provide a way to let you solve the CAPTCHA, but at the moment, your best course of action is pointing a web browser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.
Do I need any other programs?
youtube-dl works fine on its own on most sites. However, if you want to convert video/audio, you'll need avconv or ffmpeg. On some sites - most notably YouTube - videos can be retrieved in a higher quality format without sound. youtube-dl will detect whether avconv/ffmpeg is present and automatically pick the best option.
Videos or video formats streamed via RTMP protocol can only be downloaded when rtmpdump is installed. Downloading MMS and RTSP videos requires either mplayer or mpv to be installed.
I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?
Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as mpv, vlc or mplayer.
I extracted a video URL with -g, but it does not play on another machine / in my web browser.
It depends a lot on the service. In many cases, requests for the video (to download/play it) must come from the same IP address and with the same cookies and/or HTTP headers. Use the --cookies option to write the required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used, use --dump-user-agent to see the one in use by youtube-dl. You can also get necessary cookies and HTTP headers from JSON output obtained with --dump-json.
It may be beneficial to use IPv6; in some cases, the restrictions are only applied to IPv4. Some services (sometimes only for a subset of videos) do not restrict the video URL by IP address, cookie, or user-agent, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
Please bear in mind that some URL protocols are not supported by browsers out of the box, including RTMP. If you are using -g, your own downloader must support these as well.
If you want to play the video on a machine that is not running youtube-dl, you can relay the video content from the machine that runs youtube-dl. You can use -o - to let youtube-dl stream a video to stdout, or simply allow the player to download the files written by youtube-dl in turn.
ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info
YouTube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update youtube-dl.
ERROR: unable to download video
YouTube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update youtube-dl.
Video URL contains an ampersand and I'm getting some strange output [1] 2839 or 'v' is not recognized as an internal or external command
That's actually the output from your shell. Since ampersand is one of the special shell characters it's interpreted by the shell preventing you from passing the whole URL to youtube-dl. To disable your shell from interpreting the ampersands (or any other special characters) you have to either put the whole URL in quotes or escape them with a backslash (which approach will work depends on your shell).
For example if your URL is https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc you should end up with following command:
youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc'
or
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKc
For Windows you have to use the double quotes:
youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc"
ExtractorError: Could not find JS function u'OF'
In February 2015, the new YouTube player contained a character sequence in a string that was misinterpreted by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update youtube-dl.
HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests or 402: Payment Required
These two error codes indicate that the service is blocking your IP address because of overuse. Contact the service and ask them to unblock your IP address, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address already - use the --proxy or --source-address options to select another IP address.
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character
The error
File "youtube-dl", line 2
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x93' ...
means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to Python 2.6 or 2.7.
What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?
Since June 2012 (#342) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile, simply unzip it (might need renaming to youtube-dl.zip first on some systems) or clone the git repository, as laid out above. If you modify the code, you can run it by executing the __main__.py file. To recompile the executable, run make youtube-dl.
The exe throws an error due to missing MSVCR100.dll
To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86).
On Windows, how should I set up ffmpeg and youtube-dl? Where should I put the exe files?
If you put youtube-dl and ffmpeg in the same directory that you're running the command from, it will work, but that's rather cumbersome.
To make a different directory work - either for ffmpeg, or for youtube-dl, or for both - simply create the directory (say, C:\bin, or C:\Users\<User name>\bin), put all the executables directly in there, and then set your PATH environment variable to include that directory.
From then on, after restarting your shell, you will be able to access both youtube-dl and ffmpeg (and youtube-dl will be able to find ffmpeg) by simply typing youtube-dl or ffmpeg, no matter what directory you're in.
How do I put downloads into a specific folder?
Use the -o to specify an output template, for example -o "/home/user/videos/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s". If you want this for all of your downloads, put the option into your configuration file.
How do I download a video starting with a -?
Either prepend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= or separate the ID from the options with --:
youtube-dl -- -wNyEUrxzFU
youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"
How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?
Use the --cookies option, for example --cookies /path/to/cookies/file.txt.
In order to extract cookies from browser use any conforming browser extension for exporting cookies. For example, cookies.txt (for Chrome) or cookies.txt (for Firefox).
Note that the cookies file must be in Mozilla/Netscape format and the first line of the cookies file must be either # HTTP Cookie File or # Netscape HTTP Cookie File. Make sure you have correct newline format in the cookies file and convert newlines if necessary to correspond with your OS, namely CRLF (\r\n) for Windows and LF (\n) for Unix and Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS, etc.). HTTP Error 400: Bad Request when using --cookies is a good sign of invalid newline format.
Passing cookies to youtube-dl is a good way to workaround login when a particular extractor does not implement it explicitly. Another use case is working around CAPTCHA some websites require you to solve in particular cases in order to get access (e.g. YouTube, CloudFlare).
How do I stream directly to media player?
You will first need to tell youtube-dl to stream media to stdout with -o -, and also tell your media player to read from stdin (it must be capable of this for streaming) and then pipe former to latter. For example, streaming to vlc can be achieved with:
youtube-dl -o - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj" | vlc -
How do I download only new videos from a playlist?
Use download-archive feature. With this feature you should initially download the complete playlist with --download-archive /path/to/download/archive/file.txt that will record identifiers of all the videos in a special file. Each subsequent run with the same --download-archive will download only new videos and skip all videos that have been downloaded before. Note that only successful downloads are recorded in the file.
For example, at first,
youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
will download the complete PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re playlist and create a file archive.txt. Each subsequent run will only download new videos if any:
youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
Should I add --hls-prefer-native into my config?
When youtube-dl detects an HLS video, it can download it either with the built-in downloader or ffmpeg. Since many HLS streams are slightly invalid and ffmpeg/youtube-dl each handle some invalid cases better than the other, there is an option to switch the downloader if needed.
When youtube-dl knows that one particular downloader works better for a given website, that downloader will be picked. Otherwise, youtube-dl will pick the best downloader for general compatibility, which at the moment happens to be ffmpeg. This choice may change in future versions of youtube-dl, with improvements of the built-in downloader and/or ffmpeg.
In particular, the generic extractor (used when your website is not in the list of supported sites by youtube-dl cannot mandate one specific downloader.
If you put either --hls-prefer-native or --hls-prefer-ffmpeg into your configuration, a different subset of videos will fail to download correctly. Instead, it is much better to file an issue or a pull request which details why the native or the ffmpeg HLS downloader is a better choice for your use case.
Can you add support for this anime video site, or site which shows current movies for free?
As a matter of policy (as well as legality), youtube-dl does not include support for services that specialize in infringing copyright. As a rule of thumb, if you cannot easily find a video that the service is quite obviously allowed to distribute (i.e. that has been uploaded by the creator, the creator's distributor, or is published under a free license), the service is probably unfit for inclusion to youtube-dl.
A note on the service that they don't host the infringing content, but just link to those who do, is evidence that the service should not be included into youtube-dl. The same goes for any DMCA note when the whole front page of the service is filled with videos they are not allowed to distribute. A "fair use" note is equally unconvincing if the service shows copyright-protected videos in full without authorization.
Support requests for services that do purchase the rights to distribute their content are perfectly fine though. If in doubt, you can simply include a source that mentions the legitimate purchase of content.
How can I speed up work on my issue?
(Also known as: Help, my important issue not being solved!) The youtube-dl core developer team is quite small. While we do our best to solve as many issues as possible, sometimes that can take quite a while. To speed up your issue, here's what you can do:
First of all, please do report the issue at our issue tracker. That allows us to coordinate all efforts by users and developers, and serves as a unified point. Unfortunately, the youtube-dl project has grown too large to use personal email as an effective communication channel.
Please read the bug reporting instructions below. A lot of bugs lack all the necessary information. If you can, offer proxy, VPN, or shell access to the youtube-dl developers. If you are able to, test the issue from multiple computers in multiple countries to exclude local censorship or misconfiguration issues.
If nobody is interested in solving your issue, you are welcome to take matters into your own hands and submit a pull request (or coerce/pay somebody else to do so).
Feel free to bump the issue from time to time by writing a small comment ("Issue is still present in youtube-dl version ...from France, but fixed from Belgium"), but please not more than once a month. Please do not declare your issue as important or urgent.
How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
For one, have a look at the list of supported sites. Note that it can sometimes happen that the site changes its URL scheme (say, from https://example.com/video/1234567 to https://example.com/v/1234567 ) and youtube-dl reports an URL of a service in that list as unsupported. In that case, simply report a bug.
It is not possible to detect whether a URL is supported or not. That's because youtube-dl contains a generic extractor which matches all URLs. You may be tempted to disable, exclude, or remove the generic extractor, but the generic extractor not only allows users to extract videos from lots of websites that embed a video from another service, but may also be used to extract video from a service that it's hosting itself. Therefore, we neither recommend nor support disabling, excluding, or removing the generic extractor.
If you want to find out whether a given URL is supported, simply call youtube-dl with it. If you get no videos back, chances are the URL is either not referring to a video or unsupported. You can find out which by examining the output (if you run youtube-dl on the console) or catching an UnsupportedError exception if you run it from a Python program.
Why do I need to go through that much red tape when filing bugs?
Before we had the issue template, despite our extensive bug reporting instructions, about 80% of the issue reports we got were useless, for instance because people used ancient versions hundreds of releases old, because of simple syntactic errors (not in youtube-dl but in general shell usage), because the problem was already reported multiple times before, because people did not actually read an error message, even if it said "please install ffmpeg", because people did not mention the URL they were trying to download and many more simple, easy-to-avoid problems, many of whom were totally unrelated to youtube-dl.
youtube-dl is an open-source project manned by too few volunteers, so we'd rather spend time fixing bugs where we are certain none of those simple problems apply, and where we can be reasonably confident to be able to reproduce the issue without asking the reporter repeatedly. As such, the output of youtube-dl -v YOUR_URL_HERE is really all that's required to file an issue. The issue template also guides you through some basic steps you can do, such as checking that your version of youtube-dl is current.