]> Raphaƫl G. Git Repositories - youtubedl/blob - README.txt
129756dff7b9fc324848f0f3442683eff72fe8ac
[youtubedl] / README.txt
1 youtube-dl - download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms
2
3 - INSTALLATION
4 - DESCRIPTION
5 - OPTIONS
6 - CONFIGURATION
7 - OUTPUT TEMPLATE
8 - FORMAT SELECTION
9 - VIDEO SELECTION
10 - FAQ
11 - DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
12 - EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
13 - BUGS
14 - COPYRIGHT
15
16
17
18 INSTALLATION
19
20
21 To install it right away for all UNIX users (Linux, OS X, etc.), type:
22
23 sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
24 sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
25
26 If you do not have curl, you can alternatively use a recent wget:
27
28 sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
29 sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
30
31 Windows users can download an .exe file and place it in any location on
32 their PATH except for %SYSTEMROOT%\System32 (e.g. DO NOT put in
33 C:\Windows\System32).
34
35 You can also use pip:
36
37 sudo -H pip install --upgrade youtube-dl
38
39 This command will update youtube-dl if you have already installed it.
40 See the pypi page for more information.
41
42 OS X users can install youtube-dl with Homebrew:
43
44 brew install youtube-dl
45
46 Or with MacPorts:
47
48 sudo port install youtube-dl
49
50 Alternatively, refer to the developer instructions for how to check out
51 and work with the git repository. For further options, including PGP
52 signatures, see the youtube-dl Download Page.
53
54
55
56 DESCRIPTION
57
58
59 YOUTUBE-DL is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com
60 and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.6,
61 2.7, or 3.2+, and it is not platform specific. It should work on your
62 Unix box, on Windows or on Mac OS X. It is released to the public
63 domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however
64 you like.
65
66 youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]
67
68
69
70 OPTIONS
71
72
73 -h, --help Print this help text and exit
74 --version Print program version and exit
75 -U, --update Update this program to latest version. Make
76 sure that you have sufficient permissions
77 (run with sudo if needed)
78 -i, --ignore-errors Continue on download errors, for example to
79 skip unavailable videos in a playlist
80 --abort-on-error Abort downloading of further videos (in the
81 playlist or the command line) if an error
82 occurs
83 --dump-user-agent Display the current browser identification
84 --list-extractors List all supported extractors
85 --extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported
86 extractors
87 --force-generic-extractor Force extraction to use the generic
88 extractor
89 --default-search PREFIX Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For
90 example "gvsearch2:" downloads two videos
91 from google videos for youtube-dl "large
92 apple". Use the value "auto" to let
93 youtube-dl guess ("auto_warning" to emit a
94 warning when guessing). "error" just throws
95 an error. The default value "fixup_error"
96 repairs broken URLs, but emits an error if
97 this is not possible instead of searching.
98 --ignore-config Do not read configuration files. When given
99 in the global configuration file
100 /etc/youtube-dl.conf: Do not read the user
101 configuration in ~/.config/youtube-
102 dl/config (%APPDATA%/youtube-dl/config.txt
103 on Windows)
104 --config-location PATH Location of the configuration file; either
105 the path to the config or its containing
106 directory.
107 --flat-playlist Do not extract the videos of a playlist,
108 only list them.
109 --mark-watched Mark videos watched (YouTube only)
110 --no-mark-watched Do not mark videos watched (YouTube only)
111 --no-color Do not emit color codes in output
112
113
114 Network Options:
115
116 --proxy URL Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS proxy.
117 To enable experimental SOCKS proxy, specify
118 a proper scheme. For example
119 socks5://127.0.0.1:1080/. Pass in an empty
120 string (--proxy "") for direct connection
121 --socket-timeout SECONDS Time to wait before giving up, in seconds
122 --source-address IP Client-side IP address to bind to
123 -4, --force-ipv4 Make all connections via IPv4
124 -6, --force-ipv6 Make all connections via IPv6
125
126
127 Geo Restriction:
128
129 --geo-verification-proxy URL Use this proxy to verify the IP address for
130 some geo-restricted sites. The default
131 proxy specified by --proxy (or none, if the
132 options is not present) is used for the
133 actual downloading.
134 --geo-bypass Bypass geographic restriction via faking
135 X-Forwarded-For HTTP header (experimental)
136 --no-geo-bypass Do not bypass geographic restriction via
137 faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
138 (experimental)
139 --geo-bypass-country CODE Force bypass geographic restriction with
140 explicitly provided two-letter ISO 3166-2
141 country code (experimental)
142
143
144 Video Selection:
145
146 --playlist-start NUMBER Playlist video to start at (default is 1)
147 --playlist-end NUMBER Playlist video to end at (default is last)
148 --playlist-items ITEM_SPEC Playlist video items to download. Specify
149 indices of the videos in the playlist
150 separated by commas like: "--playlist-items
151 1,2,5,8" if you want to download videos
152 indexed 1, 2, 5, 8 in the playlist. You can
153 specify range: "--playlist-items
154 1-3,7,10-13", it will download the videos
155 at index 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
156 --match-title REGEX Download only matching titles (regex or
157 caseless sub-string)
158 --reject-title REGEX Skip download for matching titles (regex or
159 caseless sub-string)
160 --max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files
161 --min-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos smaller than
162 SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
163 --max-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos larger than SIZE
164 (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
165 --date DATE Download only videos uploaded in this date
166 --datebefore DATE Download only videos uploaded on or before
167 this date (i.e. inclusive)
168 --dateafter DATE Download only videos uploaded on or after
169 this date (i.e. inclusive)
170 --min-views COUNT Do not download any videos with less than
171 COUNT views
172 --max-views COUNT Do not download any videos with more than
173 COUNT views
174 --match-filter FILTER Generic video filter. Specify any key (see
175 help for -o for a list of available keys)
176 to match if the key is present, !key to
177 check if the key is not present, key >
178 NUMBER (like "comment_count > 12", also
179 works with >=, <, <=, !=, =) to compare
180 against a number, key = 'LITERAL' (like
181 "uploader = 'Mike Smith'", also works with
182 !=) to match against a string literal and &
183 to require multiple matches. Values which
184 are not known are excluded unless you put a
185 question mark (?) after the operator. For
186 example, to only match videos that have
187 been liked more than 100 times and disliked
188 less than 50 times (or the dislike
189 functionality is not available at the given
190 service), but who also have a description,
191 use --match-filter "like_count > 100 &
192 dislike_count <? 50 & description" .
193 --no-playlist Download only the video, if the URL refers
194 to a video and a playlist.
195 --yes-playlist Download the playlist, if the URL refers to
196 a video and a playlist.
197 --age-limit YEARS Download only videos suitable for the given
198 age
199 --download-archive FILE Download only videos not listed in the
200 archive file. Record the IDs of all
201 downloaded videos in it.
202 --include-ads Download advertisements as well
203 (experimental)
204
205
206 Download Options:
207
208 -r, --limit-rate RATE Maximum download rate in bytes per second
209 (e.g. 50K or 4.2M)
210 -R, --retries RETRIES Number of retries (default is 10), or
211 "infinite".
212 --fragment-retries RETRIES Number of retries for a fragment (default
213 is 10), or "infinite" (DASH, hlsnative and
214 ISM)
215 --skip-unavailable-fragments Skip unavailable fragments (DASH, hlsnative
216 and ISM)
217 --abort-on-unavailable-fragment Abort downloading when some fragment is not
218 available
219 --keep-fragments Keep downloaded fragments on disk after
220 downloading is finished; fragments are
221 erased by default
222 --buffer-size SIZE Size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16K)
223 (default is 1024)
224 --no-resize-buffer Do not automatically adjust the buffer
225 size. By default, the buffer size is
226 automatically resized from an initial value
227 of SIZE.
228 --playlist-reverse Download playlist videos in reverse order
229 --playlist-random Download playlist videos in random order
230 --xattr-set-filesize Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with
231 expected file size (experimental)
232 --hls-prefer-native Use the native HLS downloader instead of
233 ffmpeg
234 --hls-prefer-ffmpeg Use ffmpeg instead of the native HLS
235 downloader
236 --hls-use-mpegts Use the mpegts container for HLS videos,
237 allowing to play the video while
238 downloading (some players may not be able
239 to play it)
240 --external-downloader COMMAND Use the specified external downloader.
241 Currently supports
242 aria2c,avconv,axel,curl,ffmpeg,httpie,wget
243 --external-downloader-args ARGS Give these arguments to the external
244 downloader
245
246
247 Filesystem Options:
248
249 -a, --batch-file FILE File containing URLs to download ('-' for
250 stdin)
251 --id Use only video ID in file name
252 -o, --output TEMPLATE Output filename template, see the "OUTPUT
253 TEMPLATE" for all the info
254 --autonumber-start NUMBER Specify the start value for %(autonumber)s
255 (default is 1)
256 --restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII
257 characters, and avoid "&" and spaces in
258 filenames
259 -w, --no-overwrites Do not overwrite files
260 -c, --continue Force resume of partially downloaded files.
261 By default, youtube-dl will resume
262 downloads if possible.
263 --no-continue Do not resume partially downloaded files
264 (restart from beginning)
265 --no-part Do not use .part files - write directly
266 into output file
267 --no-mtime Do not use the Last-modified header to set
268 the file modification time
269 --write-description Write video description to a .description
270 file
271 --write-info-json Write video metadata to a .info.json file
272 --write-annotations Write video annotations to a
273 .annotations.xml file
274 --load-info-json FILE JSON file containing the video information
275 (created with the "--write-info-json"
276 option)
277 --cookies FILE File to read cookies from and dump cookie
278 jar in
279 --cache-dir DIR Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl
280 can store some downloaded information
281 permanently. By default
282 $XDG_CACHE_HOME/youtube-dl or
283 ~/.cache/youtube-dl . At the moment, only
284 YouTube player files (for videos with
285 obfuscated signatures) are cached, but that
286 may change.
287 --no-cache-dir Disable filesystem caching
288 --rm-cache-dir Delete all filesystem cache files
289
290
291 Thumbnail images:
292
293 --write-thumbnail Write thumbnail image to disk
294 --write-all-thumbnails Write all thumbnail image formats to disk
295 --list-thumbnails Simulate and list all available thumbnail
296 formats
297
298
299 Verbosity / Simulation Options:
300
301 -q, --quiet Activate quiet mode
302 --no-warnings Ignore warnings
303 -s, --simulate Do not download the video and do not write
304 anything to disk
305 --skip-download Do not download the video
306 -g, --get-url Simulate, quiet but print URL
307 -e, --get-title Simulate, quiet but print title
308 --get-id Simulate, quiet but print id
309 --get-thumbnail Simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
310 --get-description Simulate, quiet but print video description
311 --get-duration Simulate, quiet but print video length
312 --get-filename Simulate, quiet but print output filename
313 --get-format Simulate, quiet but print output format
314 -j, --dump-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information.
315 See --output for a description of available
316 keys.
317 -J, --dump-single-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information
318 for each command-line argument. If the URL
319 refers to a playlist, dump the whole
320 playlist information in a single line.
321 --print-json Be quiet and print the video information as
322 JSON (video is still being downloaded).
323 --newline Output progress bar as new lines
324 --no-progress Do not print progress bar
325 --console-title Display progress in console titlebar
326 -v, --verbose Print various debugging information
327 --dump-pages Print downloaded pages encoded using base64
328 to debug problems (very verbose)
329 --write-pages Write downloaded intermediary pages to
330 files in the current directory to debug
331 problems
332 --print-traffic Display sent and read HTTP traffic
333 -C, --call-home Contact the youtube-dl server for debugging
334 --no-call-home Do NOT contact the youtube-dl server for
335 debugging
336
337
338 Workarounds:
339
340 --encoding ENCODING Force the specified encoding (experimental)
341 --no-check-certificate Suppress HTTPS certificate validation
342 --prefer-insecure Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve
343 information about the video. (Currently
344 supported only for YouTube)
345 --user-agent UA Specify a custom user agent
346 --referer URL Specify a custom referer, use if the video
347 access is restricted to one domain
348 --add-header FIELD:VALUE Specify a custom HTTP header and its value,
349 separated by a colon ':'. You can use this
350 option multiple times
351 --bidi-workaround Work around terminals that lack
352 bidirectional text support. Requires bidiv
353 or fribidi executable in PATH
354 --sleep-interval SECONDS Number of seconds to sleep before each
355 download when used alone or a lower bound
356 of a range for randomized sleep before each
357 download (minimum possible number of
358 seconds to sleep) when used along with
359 --max-sleep-interval.
360 --max-sleep-interval SECONDS Upper bound of a range for randomized sleep
361 before each download (maximum possible
362 number of seconds to sleep). Must only be
363 used along with --min-sleep-interval.
364
365
366 Video Format Options:
367
368 -f, --format FORMAT Video format code, see the "FORMAT
369 SELECTION" for all the info
370 --all-formats Download all available video formats
371 --prefer-free-formats Prefer free video formats unless a specific
372 one is requested
373 -F, --list-formats List all available formats of requested
374 videos
375 --youtube-skip-dash-manifest Do not download the DASH manifests and
376 related data on YouTube videos
377 --merge-output-format FORMAT If a merge is required (e.g.
378 bestvideo+bestaudio), output to given
379 container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg,
380 webm, flv. Ignored if no merge is required
381
382
383 Subtitle Options:
384
385 --write-sub Write subtitle file
386 --write-auto-sub Write automatically generated subtitle file
387 (YouTube only)
388 --all-subs Download all the available subtitles of the
389 video
390 --list-subs List all available subtitles for the video
391 --sub-format FORMAT Subtitle format, accepts formats
392 preference, for example: "srt" or
393 "ass/srt/best"
394 --sub-lang LANGS Languages of the subtitles to download
395 (optional) separated by commas, use --list-
396 subs for available language tags
397
398
399 Authentication Options:
400
401 -u, --username USERNAME Login with this account ID
402 -p, --password PASSWORD Account password. If this option is left
403 out, youtube-dl will ask interactively.
404 -2, --twofactor TWOFACTOR Two-factor authentication code
405 -n, --netrc Use .netrc authentication data
406 --video-password PASSWORD Video password (vimeo, smotri, youku)
407
408
409 Adobe Pass Options:
410
411 --ap-mso MSO Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV
412 provider) identifier, use --ap-list-mso for
413 a list of available MSOs
414 --ap-username USERNAME Multiple-system operator account login
415 --ap-password PASSWORD Multiple-system operator account password.
416 If this option is left out, youtube-dl will
417 ask interactively.
418 --ap-list-mso List all supported multiple-system
419 operators
420
421
422 Post-processing Options:
423
424 -x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files
425 (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or
426 avprobe)
427 --audio-format FORMAT Specify audio format: "best", "aac",
428 "flac", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", "vorbis", or
429 "wav"; "best" by default; No effect without
430 -x
431 --audio-quality QUALITY Specify ffmpeg/avconv audio quality, insert
432 a value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse)
433 for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K
434 (default 5)
435 --recode-video FORMAT Encode the video to another format if
436 necessary (currently supported:
437 mp4|flv|ogg|webm|mkv|avi)
438 --postprocessor-args ARGS Give these arguments to the postprocessor
439 -k, --keep-video Keep the video file on disk after the post-
440 processing; the video is erased by default
441 --no-post-overwrites Do not overwrite post-processed files; the
442 post-processed files are overwritten by
443 default
444 --embed-subs Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4,
445 webm and mkv videos)
446 --embed-thumbnail Embed thumbnail in the audio as cover art
447 --add-metadata Write metadata to the video file
448 --metadata-from-title FORMAT Parse additional metadata like song title /
449 artist from the video title. The format
450 syntax is the same as --output. Regular
451 expression with named capture groups may
452 also be used. The parsed parameters replace
453 existing values. Example: --metadata-from-
454 title "%(artist)s - %(title)s" matches a
455 title like "Coldplay - Paradise". Example
456 (regex): --metadata-from-title
457 "(?P<artist>.+?) - (?P<title>.+)"
458 --xattrs Write metadata to the video file's xattrs
459 (using dublin core and xdg standards)
460 --fixup POLICY Automatically correct known faults of the
461 file. One of never (do nothing), warn (only
462 emit a warning), detect_or_warn (the
463 default; fix file if we can, warn
464 otherwise)
465 --prefer-avconv Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running the
466 postprocessors (default)
467 --prefer-ffmpeg Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running the
468 postprocessors
469 --ffmpeg-location PATH Location of the ffmpeg/avconv binary;
470 either the path to the binary or its
471 containing directory.
472 --exec CMD Execute a command on the file after
473 downloading, similar to find's -exec
474 syntax. Example: --exec 'adb push {}
475 /sdcard/Music/ && rm {}'
476 --convert-subs FORMAT Convert the subtitles to other format
477 (currently supported: srt|ass|vtt)
478
479
480
481 CONFIGURATION
482
483
484 You can configure youtube-dl by placing any supported command line
485 option to a configuration file. On Linux and OS X, the system wide
486 configuration file is located at /etc/youtube-dl.conf and the user wide
487 configuration file at ~/.config/youtube-dl/config. On Windows, the user
488 wide configuration file locations are %APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt or
489 C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf. Note that by default configuration
490 file may not exist so you may need to create it yourself.
491
492 For example, with the following configuration file youtube-dl will
493 always extract the audio, not copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all
494 videos under Movies directory in your home directory:
495
496 # Lines starting with # are comments
497
498 # Always extract audio
499 -x
500
501 # Do not copy the mtime
502 --no-mtime
503
504 # Use this proxy
505 --proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
506
507 # Save all videos under Movies directory in your home directory
508 -o ~/Movies/%(title)s.%(ext)s
509
510 Note that options in configuration file are just the same options aka
511 switches used in regular command line calls thus there MUST BE NO
512 WHITESPACE after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy.
513
514 You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable the configuration
515 file for a particular youtube-dl run.
516
517 You can also use --config-location if you want to use custom
518 configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.
519
520 Authentication with .netrc file
521
522 You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for
523 extractors that support authentication (by providing login and password
524 with --username and --password) in order not to pass credentials as
525 command line arguments on every youtube-dl execution and prevent
526 tracking plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can
527 achieve this using a .netrc file on a per extractor basis. For that you
528 will need to create a .netrc file in your $HOME and restrict permissions
529 to read/write by only you:
530
531 touch $HOME/.netrc
532 chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc
533
534 After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following
535 format, where _extractor_ is the name of the extractor in lowercase:
536
537 machine <extractor> login <login> password <password>
538
539 For example:
540
541 machine youtube login myaccount@gmail.com password my_youtube_password
542 machine twitch login my_twitch_account_name password my_twitch_password
543
544 To activate authentication with the .netrc file you should pass --netrc
545 to youtube-dl or place it in the configuration file.
546
547 On Windows you may also need to setup the %HOME% environment variable
548 manually.
549
550
551
552 OUTPUT TEMPLATE
553
554
555 The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file
556 names.
557
558 TL;DR: navigate me to examples.
559
560 The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a
561 single file, like in youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv "http://some/video".
562 However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced when
563 downloading each video. The special sequences may be formatted according
564 to python string formatting operations. For example, %(NAME)s or
565 %(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in
566 parentheses, followed by a formatting operations. Allowed names along
567 with sequence type are:
568
569 - id (string): Video identifier
570 - title (string): Video title
571 - url (string): Video URL
572 - ext (string): Video filename extension
573 - alt_title (string): A secondary title of the video
574 - display_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video
575 - uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader
576 - license (string): License name the video is licensed under
577 - creator (string): The creator of the video
578 - release_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was
579 released
580 - timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became
581 available
582 - upload_date (string): Video upload date (YYYYMMDD)
583 - uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader
584 - location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed
585 - duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds
586 - view_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the
587 platform
588 - like_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video
589 - dislike_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video
590 - repost_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video
591 - average_rating (numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale
592 used depends on the webpage
593 - comment_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video
594 - age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)
595 - format (string): A human-readable description of the format
596 - format_id (string): Format code specified by --format
597 - format_note (string): Additional info about the format
598 - width (numeric): Width of the video
599 - height (numeric): Height of the video
600 - resolution (string): Textual description of width and height
601 - tbr (numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
602 - abr (numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
603 - acodec (string): Name of the audio codec in use
604 - asr (numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertz
605 - vbr (numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/s
606 - fps (numeric): Frame rate
607 - vcodec (string): Name of the video codec in use
608 - container (string): Name of the container format
609 - filesize (numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advance
610 - filesize_approx (numeric): An estimate for the number of bytes
611 - protocol (string): The protocol that will be used for the actual
612 download
613 - extractor (string): Name of the extractor
614 - extractor_key (string): Key name of the extractor
615 - epoch (numeric): Unix epoch when creating the file
616 - autonumber (numeric): Five-digit number that will be increased with
617 each download, starting at zero
618 - playlist (string): Name or id of the playlist that contains the
619 video
620 - playlist_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded
621 with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist
622 - playlist_id (string): Playlist identifier
623 - playlist_title (string): Playlist title
624
625 Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:
626 - chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to -
627 chapter_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to -
628 chapter_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to
629
630 Available for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:
631 - series (string): Title of the series or programme the video episode
632 belongs to - season (string): Title of the season the video episode
633 belongs to - season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video
634 episode belongs to - season_id (string): Id of the season the video
635 episode belongs to - episode (string): Title of the video episode -
636 episode_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a season -
637 episode_id (string): Id of the video episode
638
639 Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album: -
640 track (string): Title of the track - track_number (numeric): Number of
641 the track within an album or a disc - track_id (string): Id of the track
642 - artist (string): Artist(s) of the track - genre (string): Genre(s) of
643 the track - album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to -
644 album_type (string): Type of the album - album_artist (string): List of
645 all artists appeared on the album - disc_number (numeric): Number of the
646 disc or other physical medium the track belongs to - release_year
647 (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released
648
649 Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will
650 be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. Note
651 that some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since they
652 depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such
653 sequences will be replaced with NA.
654
655 For example for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title
656 youtube-dl test video and id BaW_jenozKcj, this will result in a
657 youtube-dl test video-BaW_jenozKcj.mp4 file created in the current
658 directory.
659
660 For numeric sequences you can use numeric related formatting, for
661 example, %(view_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded
662 with zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042.
663
664 Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g.
665 -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' which will
666 result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this
667 path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for
668 you.
669
670 To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to
671 stdout use -o -.
672
673 The current default template is %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s.
674
675 In some cases, you don't want special characters such as äø­, spaces, or
676 &, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows system
677 or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the
678 --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title:
679
680 Output template and Windows batch files
681
682 If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then you
683 must escape plain percent characters (%) by doubling, so that
684 -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" should become
685 -o "%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s". However you should not touch %'s that
686 are not plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion
687 should stay intact: -o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s".
688
689 Output template examples
690
691 Note on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of single.
692
693 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc
694 youtube-dl test video ''_Ƥā†­š•.mp4 # All kinds of weird characters
695
696 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
697 youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4 # A simple file name
698
699 # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
700 $ youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re
701
702 # Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory:
703 $ youtube-dl -o '%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists
704
705 # Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home
706 $ youtube-dl -u user -p password -o '~/MyVideos/%(playlist)s/%(chapter_number)s - %(chapter)s/%(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.udemy.com/java-tutorial/
707
708 # Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos
709 $ youtube-dl -o "C:/MyVideos/%(series)s/%(season_number)s - %(season)s/%(episode_number)s - %(episode)s.%(ext)s" http://videomore.ru/kino_v_detalayah/5_sezon/367617
710
711 # Stream the video being downloaded to stdout
712 $ youtube-dl -o - BaW_jenozKc
713
714
715
716 FORMAT SELECTION
717
718
719 By default youtube-dl tries to download the best available quality, i.e.
720 if you want the best quality you DON'T NEED to pass any special options,
721 youtube-dl will guess it for you by DEFAULT.
722
723 But sometimes you may want to download in a different format, for
724 example when you are on a slow or intermittent connection. The key
725 mechanism for achieving this is so-called _format selection_ based on
726 which you can explicitly specify desired format, select formats based on
727 some criterion or criteria, setup precedence and much more.
728
729 The general syntax for format selection is --format FORMAT or shorter
730 -f FORMAT where FORMAT is a _selector expression_, i.e. an expression
731 that describes format or formats you would like to download.
732
733 TL;DR: navigate me to examples.
734
735 The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example with
736 -f 22 you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can
737 get the list of available format codes for particular video using
738 --list-formats or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor
739 specific.
740
741 You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3,
742 mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format
743 of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm
744 will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as
745 a single file.
746
747 You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats: -
748 best: Select the best quality format represented by a single file with
749 video and audio. - worst: Select the worst quality format represented by
750 a single file with video and audio. - bestvideo: Select the best quality
751 video-only format (e.g. DASH video). May not be available. - worstvideo:
752 Select the worst quality video-only format. May not be available. -
753 bestaudio: Select the best quality audio only-format. May not be
754 available. - worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio only-format. May
755 not be available.
756
757 For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use
758 -f worstvideo.
759
760 If you want to download multiple videos and they don't have the same
761 formats available, you can specify the order of preference using
762 slashes. Note that slash is left-associative, i.e. formats on the left
763 hand side are preferred, for example -f 22/17/18 will download format 22
764 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's
765 available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available,
766 otherwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for
767 download.
768
769 If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as
770 a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three formats, of
771 course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined
772 with the precedence feature: -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.
773
774 You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in
775 brackets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]").
776
777 The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons <, <=, >,
778 >=, = (equals), != (not equals): - filesize: The number of bytes, if
779 known in advance - width: Width of the video, if known - height: Height
780 of the video, if known - tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in
781 KBit/s - abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s - vbr: Average video
782 bitrate in KBit/s - asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz - fps: Frame rate
783
784 Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), != (not equals), ^=
785 (begins with), $= (ends with), *= (contains) and following string meta
786 fields: - ext: File extension - acodec: Name of the audio codec in use -
787 vcodec: Name of the video codec in use - container: Name of the
788 container format - protocol: The protocol that will be used for the
789 actual download, lower-case (http, https, rtsp, rtmp, rtmpe, mms, f4m,
790 ism, m3u8, or m3u8_native) - format_id: A short description of the
791 format
792
793 Note that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be
794 present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particular
795 extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the video hoster.
796
797 Formats for which the value is not known are excluded unless you put a
798 question mark (?) after the operator. You can combine format filters, so
799 -f "[height <=? 720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos
800 where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s.
801
802 You can merge the video and audio of two formats into a single file
803 using -f <video-format>+<audio-format> (requires ffmpeg or avconv
804 installed), for example -f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best
805 video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with
806 ffmpeg/avconv.
807
808 Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if
809 you want to download the best mp4 and webm formats with a height lower
810 than 480 you can use -f '(mp4,webm)[height<480]'.
811
812 Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26, youtube-dl uses
813 -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best as the default format selection (see #5447,
814 #5456). If ffmpeg or avconv are installed this results in downloading
815 bestvideo and bestaudio separately and muxing them together into a
816 single file giving the best overall quality available. Otherwise it
817 falls back to best and results in downloading the best available quality
818 served as a single file. best is also needed for videos that don't come
819 from YouTube because they don't provide the audio and video in two
820 different files. If you want to only download some DASH formats (for
821 example if you are not interested in getting videos with a resolution
822 higher than 1080p), you can add
823 -f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best to your configuration file.
824 Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream to stdout (and most likely to
825 pipe it to your media player then), i.e. you explicitly specify output
826 template as -o -, youtube-dl still uses -f best format selection in
827 order to start content delivery immediately to your player and not to
828 wait until bestvideo and bestaudio are downloaded and muxed.
829
830 If you want to preserve the old format selection behavior (prior to
831 youtube-dl 2015.04.26), i.e. you want to download the best available
832 quality media served as a single file, you should explicitly specify
833 your choice with -f best. You may want to add it to the configuration
834 file in order not to type it every time you run youtube-dl.
835
836 Format selection examples
837
838 Note on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of single.
839
840 # Download best mp4 format available or any other best if no mp4 available
841 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best'
842
843 # Download best format available but not better that 480p
844 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]'
845
846 # Download best video only format but no bigger than 50 MB
847 $ youtube-dl -f 'best[filesize<50M]'
848
849 # Download best format available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol
850 $ youtube-dl -f '(bestvideo+bestaudio/best)[protocol^=http]'
851
852 # Download the best video format and the best audio format without merging them
853 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo,bestaudio' -o '%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s'
854
855 Note that in the last example, an output template is recommended as
856 bestvideo and bestaudio may have the same file name.
857
858
859
860 VIDEO SELECTION
861
862
863 Videos can be filtered by their upload date using the options --date,
864 --datebefore or --dateafter. They accept dates in two formats:
865
866 - Absolute dates: Dates in the format YYYYMMDD.
867 - Relative dates: Dates in the format
868 (now|today)[+-][0-9](day|week|month|year)(s)?
869
870 Examples:
871
872 # Download only the videos uploaded in the last 6 months
873 $ youtube-dl --dateafter now-6months
874
875 # Download only the videos uploaded on January 1, 1970
876 $ youtube-dl --date 19700101
877
878 $ # Download only the videos uploaded in the 200x decade
879 $ youtube-dl --dateafter 20000101 --datebefore 20091231
880
881
882
883 FAQ
884
885
886 How do I update youtube-dl?
887
888 If you've followed our manual installation instructions, you can simply
889 run youtube-dl -U (or, on Linux, sudo youtube-dl -U).
890
891 If you have used pip, a simple sudo pip install -U youtube-dl is
892 sufficient to update.
893
894 If you have installed youtube-dl using a package manager like _apt-get_
895 or _yum_, use the standard system update mechanism to update. Note that
896 distribution packages are often outdated. As a rule of thumb, youtube-dl
897 releases at least once a month, and often weekly or even daily. Simply
898 go to http://yt-dl.org/ to find out the current version. Unfortunately,
899 there is nothing we youtube-dl developers can do if your distribution
900 serves a really outdated version. You can (and should) complain to your
901 distribution in their bugtracker or support forum.
902
903 As a last resort, you can also uninstall the version installed by your
904 package manager and follow our manual installation instructions. For
905 that, remove the distribution's package, with a line like
906
907 sudo apt-get remove -y youtube-dl
908
909 Afterwards, simply follow our manual installation instructions:
910
911 sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
912 sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
913 hash -r
914
915 Again, from then on you'll be able to update with sudo youtube-dl -U.
916
917 youtube-dl is extremely slow to start on Windows
918
919 Add a file exclusion for youtube-dl.exe in Windows Defender settings.
920
921 I'm getting an error Unable to extract OpenGraph title on YouTube playlists
922
923 YouTube changed their playlist format in March 2014 and later on, so
924 you'll need at least youtube-dl 2014.07.25 to download all YouTube
925 videos.
926
927 If you have installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py
928 or a tarball, please use that to update. Note that Ubuntu packages do
929 not seem to get updated anymore. Since we are not affiliated with
930 Ubuntu, there is little we can do. Feel free to report bugs to the
931 Ubuntu packaging people - all they have to do is update the package to a
932 somewhat recent version. See above for a way to update.
933
934 I'm getting an error when trying to use output template: error: using output template conflicts with using title, video ID or auto number
935
936 Make sure you are not using -o with any of these options -t, --title,
937 --id, -A or --auto-number set in command line or in a configuration
938 file. Remove the latter if any.
939
940 Do I always have to pass -citw?
941
942 By default, youtube-dl intends to have the best options (incidentally,
943 if you have a convincing case that these should be different, please
944 file an issue where you explain that). Therefore, it is unnecessary and
945 sometimes harmful to copy long option strings from webpages. In
946 particular, the only option out of -citw that is regularly useful is -i.
947
948 Can you please put the -b option back?
949
950 Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now
951 defaults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by
952 YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer
953 need the -b option. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not
954 report them to be available in a specific high quality format you're
955 interested in. In that case, simply request it with the -f option and
956 youtube-dl will try to download it.
957
958 I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's this?
959
960 Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download
961 too much. We're considering to provide a way to let you solve the
962 CAPTCHA, but at the moment, your best course of action is pointing a web
963 browser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.
964
965 Do I need any other programs?
966
967 youtube-dl works fine on its own on most sites. However, if you want to
968 convert video/audio, you'll need avconv or ffmpeg. On some sites - most
969 notably YouTube - videos can be retrieved in a higher quality format
970 without sound. youtube-dl will detect whether avconv/ffmpeg is present
971 and automatically pick the best option.
972
973 Videos or video formats streamed via RTMP protocol can only be
974 downloaded when rtmpdump is installed. Downloading MMS and RTSP videos
975 requires either mplayer or mpv to be installed.
976
977 I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?
978
979 Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as mpv,
980 vlc or mplayer.
981
982 I extracted a video URL with -g, but it does not play on another machine / in my web browser.
983
984 It depends a lot on the service. In many cases, requests for the video
985 (to download/play it) must come from the same IP address and with the
986 same cookies and/or HTTP headers. Use the --cookies option to write the
987 required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies
988 from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used,
989 use --dump-user-agent to see the one in use by youtube-dl. You can also
990 get necessary cookies and HTTP headers from JSON output obtained with
991 --dump-json.
992
993 It may be beneficial to use IPv6; in some cases, the restrictions are
994 only applied to IPv4. Some services (sometimes only for a subset of
995 videos) do not restrict the video URL by IP address, cookie, or
996 user-agent, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
997
998 Please bear in mind that some URL protocols are NOT supported by
999 browsers out of the box, including RTMP. If you are using -g, your own
1000 downloader must support these as well.
1001
1002 If you want to play the video on a machine that is not running
1003 youtube-dl, you can relay the video content from the machine that runs
1004 youtube-dl. You can use -o - to let youtube-dl stream a video to stdout,
1005 or simply allow the player to download the files written by youtube-dl
1006 in turn.
1007
1008 ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info
1009
1010 YouTube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is
1011 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update
1012 youtube-dl.
1013
1014 ERROR: unable to download video
1015
1016 YouTube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is
1017 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update
1018 youtube-dl.
1019
1020 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
1021
1022 That's actually the output from your shell. Since ampersand is one of
1023 the special shell characters it's interpreted by the shell preventing
1024 you from passing the whole URL to youtube-dl. To disable your shell from
1025 interpreting the ampersands (or any other special characters) you have
1026 to either put the whole URL in quotes or escape them with a backslash
1027 (which approach will work depends on your shell).
1028
1029 For example if your URL is
1030 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc you should end up with
1031 following command:
1032
1033 youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc'
1034
1035 or
1036
1037 youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKc
1038
1039 For Windows you have to use the double quotes:
1040
1041 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc"
1042
1043 ExtractorError: Could not find JS function u'OF'
1044
1045 In February 2015, the new YouTube player contained a character sequence
1046 in a string that was misinterpreted by old versions of youtube-dl. See
1047 above for how to update youtube-dl.
1048
1049 HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests or 402: Payment Required
1050
1051 These two error codes indicate that the service is blocking your IP
1052 address because of overuse. Contact the service and ask them to unblock
1053 your IP address, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address
1054 already - use the --proxy or --source-address options to select another
1055 IP address.
1056
1057 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character
1058
1059 The error
1060
1061 File "youtube-dl", line 2
1062 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x93' ...
1063
1064 means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to
1065 Python 2.6 or 2.7.
1066
1067 What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?
1068
1069 Since June 2012 (#342) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile,
1070 simply unzip it (might need renaming to youtube-dl.zip first on some
1071 systems) or clone the git repository, as laid out above. If you modify
1072 the code, you can run it by executing the __main__.py file. To recompile
1073 the executable, run make youtube-dl.
1074
1075 The exe throws an error due to missing MSVCR100.dll
1076
1077 To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010
1078 Redistributable Package (x86).
1079
1080 On Windows, how should I set up ffmpeg and youtube-dl? Where should I put the exe files?
1081
1082 If you put youtube-dl and ffmpeg in the same directory that you're
1083 running the command from, it will work, but that's rather cumbersome.
1084
1085 To make a different directory work - either for ffmpeg, or for
1086 youtube-dl, or for both - simply create the directory (say, C:\bin, or
1087 C:\Users\<User name>\bin), put all the executables directly in there,
1088 and then set your PATH environment variable to include that directory.
1089
1090 From then on, after restarting your shell, you will be able to access
1091 both youtube-dl and ffmpeg (and youtube-dl will be able to find ffmpeg)
1092 by simply typing youtube-dl or ffmpeg, no matter what directory you're
1093 in.
1094
1095 How do I put downloads into a specific folder?
1096
1097 Use the -o to specify an output template, for example
1098 -o "/home/user/videos/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s". If you want this for
1099 all of your downloads, put the option into your configuration file.
1100
1101 How do I download a video starting with a -?
1102
1103 Either prepend http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= or separate the ID from
1104 the options with --:
1105
1106 youtube-dl -- -wNyEUrxzFU
1107 youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"
1108
1109 How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?
1110
1111 Use the --cookies option, for example
1112 --cookies /path/to/cookies/file.txt.
1113
1114 In order to extract cookies from browser use any conforming browser
1115 extension for exporting cookies. For example, cookies.txt (for Chrome)
1116 or Export Cookies (for Firefox).
1117
1118 Note that the cookies file must be in Mozilla/Netscape format and the
1119 first line of the cookies file must be either # HTTP Cookie File or
1120 # Netscape HTTP Cookie File. Make sure you have correct newline format
1121 in the cookies file and convert newlines if necessary to correspond with
1122 your OS, namely CRLF (\r\n) for Windows and LF (\n) for Unix and
1123 Unix-like systems (Linux, Mac OS, etc.). HTTP Error 400: Bad Request
1124 when using --cookies is a good sign of invalid newline format.
1125
1126 Passing cookies to youtube-dl is a good way to workaround login when a
1127 particular extractor does not implement it explicitly. Another use case
1128 is working around CAPTCHA some websites require you to solve in
1129 particular cases in order to get access (e.g. YouTube, CloudFlare).
1130
1131 How do I stream directly to media player?
1132
1133 You will first need to tell youtube-dl to stream media to stdout with
1134 -o -, and also tell your media player to read from stdin (it must be
1135 capable of this for streaming) and then pipe former to latter. For
1136 example, streaming to vlc can be achieved with:
1137
1138 youtube-dl -o - "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj" | vlc -
1139
1140 How do I download only new videos from a playlist?
1141
1142 Use download-archive feature. With this feature you should initially
1143 download the complete playlist with
1144 --download-archive /path/to/download/archive/file.txt that will record
1145 identifiers of all the videos in a special file. Each subsequent run
1146 with the same --download-archive will download only new videos and skip
1147 all videos that have been downloaded before. Note that only successful
1148 downloads are recorded in the file.
1149
1150 For example, at first,
1151
1152 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1153
1154 will download the complete PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re playlist
1155 and create a file archive.txt. Each subsequent run will only download
1156 new videos if any:
1157
1158 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1159
1160 Should I add --hls-prefer-native into my config?
1161
1162 When youtube-dl detects an HLS video, it can download it either with the
1163 built-in downloader or ffmpeg. Since many HLS streams are slightly
1164 invalid and ffmpeg/youtube-dl each handle some invalid cases better than
1165 the other, there is an option to switch the downloader if needed.
1166
1167 When youtube-dl knows that one particular downloader works better for a
1168 given website, that downloader will be picked. Otherwise, youtube-dl
1169 will pick the best downloader for general compatibility, which at the
1170 moment happens to be ffmpeg. This choice may change in future versions
1171 of youtube-dl, with improvements of the built-in downloader and/or
1172 ffmpeg.
1173
1174 In particular, the generic extractor (used when your website is not in
1175 the list of supported sites by youtube-dl cannot mandate one specific
1176 downloader.
1177
1178 If you put either --hls-prefer-native or --hls-prefer-ffmpeg into your
1179 configuration, a different subset of videos will fail to download
1180 correctly. Instead, it is much better to file an issue or a pull request
1181 which details why the native or the ffmpeg HLS downloader is a better
1182 choice for your use case.
1183
1184 Can you add support for this anime video site, or site which shows current movies for free?
1185
1186 As a matter of policy (as well as legality), youtube-dl does not include
1187 support for services that specialize in infringing copyright. As a rule
1188 of thumb, if you cannot easily find a video that the service is quite
1189 obviously allowed to distribute (i.e. that has been uploaded by the
1190 creator, the creator's distributor, or is published under a free
1191 license), the service is probably unfit for inclusion to youtube-dl.
1192
1193 A note on the service that they don't host the infringing content, but
1194 just link to those who do, is evidence that the service should NOT be
1195 included into youtube-dl. The same goes for any DMCA note when the whole
1196 front page of the service is filled with videos they are not allowed to
1197 distribute. A "fair use" note is equally unconvincing if the service
1198 shows copyright-protected videos in full without authorization.
1199
1200 Support requests for services that DO purchase the rights to distribute
1201 their content are perfectly fine though. If in doubt, you can simply
1202 include a source that mentions the legitimate purchase of content.
1203
1204 How can I speed up work on my issue?
1205
1206 (Also known as: Help, my important issue not being solved!) The
1207 youtube-dl core developer team is quite small. While we do our best to
1208 solve as many issues as possible, sometimes that can take quite a while.
1209 To speed up your issue, here's what you can do:
1210
1211 First of all, please do report the issue at our issue tracker. That
1212 allows us to coordinate all efforts by users and developers, and serves
1213 as a unified point. Unfortunately, the youtube-dl project has grown too
1214 large to use personal email as an effective communication channel.
1215
1216 Please read the bug reporting instructions below. A lot of bugs lack all
1217 the necessary information. If you can, offer proxy, VPN, or shell access
1218 to the youtube-dl developers. If you are able to, test the issue from
1219 multiple computers in multiple countries to exclude local censorship or
1220 misconfiguration issues.
1221
1222 If nobody is interested in solving your issue, you are welcome to take
1223 matters into your own hands and submit a pull request (or coerce/pay
1224 somebody else to do so).
1225
1226 Feel free to bump the issue from time to time by writing a small comment
1227 ("Issue is still present in youtube-dl version ...from France, but fixed
1228 from Belgium"), but please not more than once a month. Please do not
1229 declare your issue as important or urgent.
1230
1231 How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
1232
1233 For one, have a look at the list of supported sites. Note that it can
1234 sometimes happen that the site changes its URL scheme (say, from
1235 http://example.com/video/1234567 to http://example.com/v/1234567 ) and
1236 youtube-dl reports an URL of a service in that list as unsupported. In
1237 that case, simply report a bug.
1238
1239 It is _not_ possible to detect whether a URL is supported or not. That's
1240 because youtube-dl contains a generic extractor which matches ALL URLs.
1241 You may be tempted to disable, exclude, or remove the generic extractor,
1242 but the generic extractor not only allows users to extract videos from
1243 lots of websites that embed a video from another service, but may also
1244 be used to extract video from a service that it's hosting itself.
1245 Therefore, we neither recommend nor support disabling, excluding, or
1246 removing the generic extractor.
1247
1248 If you want to find out whether a given URL is supported, simply call
1249 youtube-dl with it. If you get no videos back, chances are the URL is
1250 either not referring to a video or unsupported. You can find out which
1251 by examining the output (if you run youtube-dl on the console) or
1252 catching an UnsupportedError exception if you run it from a Python
1253 program.
1254
1255
1256
1257 WHY DO I NEED TO GO THROUGH THAT MUCH RED TAPE WHEN FILING BUGS?
1258
1259
1260 Before we had the issue template, despite our extensive bug reporting
1261 instructions, about 80% of the issue reports we got were useless, for
1262 instance because people used ancient versions hundreds of releases old,
1263 because of simple syntactic errors (not in youtube-dl but in general
1264 shell usage), because the problem was already reported multiple times
1265 before, because people did not actually read an error message, even if
1266 it said "please install ffmpeg", because people did not mention the URL
1267 they were trying to download and many more simple, easy-to-avoid
1268 problems, many of whom were totally unrelated to youtube-dl.
1269
1270 youtube-dl is an open-source project manned by too few volunteers, so
1271 we'd rather spend time fixing bugs where we are certain none of those
1272 simple problems apply, and where we can be reasonably confident to be
1273 able to reproduce the issue without asking the reporter repeatedly. As
1274 such, the output of youtube-dl -v YOUR_URL_HERE is really all that's
1275 required to file an issue. The issue template also guides you through
1276 some basic steps you can do, such as checking that your version of
1277 youtube-dl is current.
1278
1279
1280
1281 DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
1282
1283
1284 Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can download the builds
1285 or get them from their distribution.
1286
1287 To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything
1288 either. Simply execute
1289
1290 python -m youtube_dl
1291
1292 To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a
1293 test file directly; any of the following work:
1294
1295 python -m unittest discover
1296 python test/test_download.py
1297 nosetests
1298
1299 If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need
1300
1301 - python
1302 - make (only GNU make is supported)
1303 - pandoc
1304 - zip
1305 - nosetests
1306
1307 Adding support for a new site
1308
1309 If you want to add support for a new site, first of all MAKE SURE this
1310 site is NOT DEDICATED TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. youtube-dl does NOT
1311 SUPPORT such sites thus pull requests adding support for them WILL BE
1312 REJECTED.
1313
1314 After you have ensured this site is distributing its content legally,
1315 you can follow this quick list (assuming your service is called
1316 yourextractor):
1317
1318 1. Fork this repository
1319 2. Check out the source code with:
1320
1321 git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
1322
1323 3. Start a new git branch with
1324
1325 cd youtube-dl
1326 git checkout -b yourextractor
1327
1328 4. Start with this simple template and save it to
1329 youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py:
1330
1331 # coding: utf-8
1332 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1333
1334 from .common import InfoExtractor
1335
1336
1337 class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
1338 _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
1339 _TEST = {
1340 'url': 'http://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
1341 'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
1342 'info_dict': {
1343 'id': '42',
1344 'ext': 'mp4',
1345 'title': 'Video title goes here',
1346 'thumbnail': r're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
1347 # TODO more properties, either as:
1348 # * A value
1349 # * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
1350 # * A regular expression; start the string with re:
1351 # * Any Python type (for example int or float)
1352 }
1353 }
1354
1355 def _real_extract(self, url):
1356 video_id = self._match_id(url)
1357 webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
1358
1359 # TODO more code goes here, for example ...
1360 title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
1361
1362 return {
1363 'id': video_id,
1364 'title': title,
1365 'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
1366 'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
1367 # TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
1368 }
1369
1370 5. Add an import in youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py.
1371 6. Run python test/test_download.py TestDownload.test_YourExtractor.
1372 This _should fail_ at first, but you can continually re-run it until
1373 you're done. If you decide to add more than one test, then rename
1374 _TEST to _TESTS and make it into a list of dictionaries. The tests
1375 will then be named TestDownload.test_YourExtractor,
1376 TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_1,
1377 TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_2, etc.
1378 7. Have a look at youtube_dl/extractor/common.py for possible helper
1379 methods and a detailed description of what your extractor should and
1380 may return. Add tests and code for as many as you want.
1381 8. Make sure your code follows youtube-dl coding conventions and check
1382 the code with flake8. Also make sure your code works under all
1383 Python versions claimed supported by youtube-dl, namely 2.6, 2.7,
1384 and 3.2+.
1385 9. When the tests pass, add the new files and commit them and push the
1386 result, like this:
1387
1388 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
1389 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
1390 $ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
1391 $ git push origin yourextractor
1392
1393 10. Finally, create a pull request. We'll then review and merge it.
1394
1395 In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!
1396
1397
1398 youtube-dl coding conventions
1399
1400 This section introduces a guide lines for writing idiomatic, robust and
1401 future-proof extractor code.
1402
1403 Extractors are very fragile by nature since they depend on the layout of
1404 the source data provided by 3rd party media hosters out of your control
1405 and this layout tends to change. As an extractor implementer your task
1406 is not only to write code that will extract media links and metadata
1407 correctly but also to minimize dependency on the source's layout and
1408 even to make the code foresee potential future changes and be ready for
1409 that. This is important because it will allow the extractor not to break
1410 on minor layout changes thus keeping old youtube-dl versions working.
1411 Even though this breakage issue is easily fixed by emitting a new
1412 version of youtube-dl with a fix incorporated, all the previous versions
1413 become broken in all repositories and distros' packages that may not be
1414 so prompt in fetching the update from us. Needless to say, some non
1415 rolling release distros may never receive an update at all.
1416
1417 Mandatory and optional metafields
1418
1419 For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor
1420 extracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by an information
1421 dictionary or simply _info dict_. Only the following meta fields in the
1422 _info dict_ are considered mandatory for a successful extraction process
1423 by youtube-dl:
1424
1425 - id (media identifier)
1426 - title (media title)
1427 - url (media download URL) or formats
1428
1429 In fact only the last option is technically mandatory (i.e. if you can't
1430 figure out the download location of the media the extraction does not
1431 make any sense). But by convention youtube-dl also treats id and title
1432 as mandatory. Thus the aforementioned metafields are the critical data
1433 that the extraction does not make any sense without and if any of them
1434 fail to be extracted then the extractor is considered completely broken.
1435
1436 Any field apart from the aforementioned ones are considered OPTIONAL.
1437 That means that extraction should be TOLERANT to situations when sources
1438 for these fields can potentially be unavailable (even if they are always
1439 available at the moment) and FUTURE-PROOF in order not to break the
1440 extraction of general purpose mandatory fields.
1441
1442 Example
1443
1444 Say you have some source dictionary meta that you've fetched as JSON
1445 with HTTP request and it has a key summary:
1446
1447 meta = self._download_json(url, video_id)
1448
1449 Assume at this point meta's layout is:
1450
1451 {
1452 ...
1453 "summary": "some fancy summary text",
1454 ...
1455 }
1456
1457 Assume you want to extract summary and put it into the resulting info
1458 dict as description. Since description is an optional meta field you
1459 should be ready that this key may be missing from the meta dict, so that
1460 you should extract it like:
1461
1462 description = meta.get('summary') # correct
1463
1464 and not like:
1465
1466 description = meta['summary'] # incorrect
1467
1468 The latter will break extraction process with KeyError if summary
1469 disappears from meta at some later time but with the former approach
1470 extraction will just go ahead with description set to None which is
1471 perfectly fine (remember None is equivalent to the absence of data).
1472
1473 Similarly, you should pass fatal=False when extracting optional data
1474 from a webpage with _search_regex, _html_search_regex or similar
1475 methods, for instance:
1476
1477 description = self._search_regex(
1478 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1479 webpage, 'description', fatal=False)
1480
1481 With fatal set to False if _search_regex fails to extract description it
1482 will emit a warning and continue extraction.
1483
1484 You can also pass default=<some fallback value>, for example:
1485
1486 description = self._search_regex(
1487 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1488 webpage, 'description', default=None)
1489
1490 On failure this code will silently continue the extraction with
1491 description set to None. That is useful for metafields that may or may
1492 not be present.
1493
1494 Provide fallbacks
1495
1496 When extracting metadata try to do so from multiple sources. For example
1497 if title is present in several places, try extracting from at least some
1498 of them. This makes it more future-proof in case some of the sources
1499 become unavailable.
1500
1501 Example
1502
1503 Say meta from the previous example has a title and you are about to
1504 extract it. Since title is a mandatory meta field you should end up with
1505 something like:
1506
1507 title = meta['title']
1508
1509 If title disappears from meta in future due to some changes on the
1510 hoster's side the extraction would fail since title is mandatory. That's
1511 expected.
1512
1513 Assume that you have some another source you can extract title from, for
1514 example og:title HTML meta of a webpage. In this case you can provide a
1515 fallback scenario:
1516
1517 title = meta.get('title') or self._og_search_title(webpage)
1518
1519 This code will try to extract from meta first and if it fails it will
1520 try extracting og:title from a webpage.
1521
1522 Make regular expressions flexible
1523
1524 When using regular expressions try to write them fuzzy and flexible.
1525
1526 Example
1527
1528 Say you need to extract title from the following HTML code:
1529
1530 <span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">some fancy title</span>
1531
1532 The code for that task should look similar to:
1533
1534 title = self._search_regex(
1535 r'<span[^>]+class="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)', webpage, 'title')
1536
1537 Or even better:
1538
1539 title = self._search_regex(
1540 r'<span[^>]+class=(["\'])title\1[^>]*>(?P<title>[^<]+)',
1541 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1542
1543 Note how you tolerate potential changes in the style attribute's value
1544 or switch from using double quotes to single for class attribute:
1545
1546 The code definitely should not look like:
1547
1548 title = self._search_regex(
1549 r'<span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">(.*?)</span>',
1550 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1551
1552 Use safe conversion functions
1553
1554 Wrap all extracted numeric data into safe functions from utils:
1555 int_or_none, float_or_none. Use them for string to number conversions as
1556 well.
1557
1558
1559
1560 EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
1561
1562
1563 youtube-dl makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and
1564 thus should be callable from any programming language. If you encounter
1565 any problems parsing its output, feel free to create a report.
1566
1567 From a Python program, you can embed youtube-dl in a more powerful
1568 fashion, like this:
1569
1570 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1571 import youtube_dl
1572
1573 ydl_opts = {}
1574 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1575 ydl.download(['http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1576
1577 Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options
1578 available, have a look at youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py. For a start, if you
1579 want to intercept youtube-dl's output, set a logger object.
1580
1581 Here's a more complete example of a program that outputs only errors
1582 (and a short message after the download is finished), and
1583 downloads/converts the video to an mp3 file:
1584
1585 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1586 import youtube_dl
1587
1588
1589 class MyLogger(object):
1590 def debug(self, msg):
1591 pass
1592
1593 def warning(self, msg):
1594 pass
1595
1596 def error(self, msg):
1597 print(msg)
1598
1599
1600 def my_hook(d):
1601 if d['status'] == 'finished':
1602 print('Done downloading, now converting ...')
1603
1604
1605 ydl_opts = {
1606 'format': 'bestaudio/best',
1607 'postprocessors': [{
1608 'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
1609 'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
1610 'preferredquality': '192',
1611 }],
1612 'logger': MyLogger(),
1613 'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
1614 }
1615 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1616 ydl.download(['http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1617
1618
1619
1620 BUGS
1621
1622
1623 Bugs and suggestions should be reported at:
1624 https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues. Unless you were prompted to or
1625 there is another pertinent reason (e.g. GitHub fails to accept the bug
1626 report), please do not send bug reports via personal email. For
1627 discussions, join us in the IRC channel #youtube-dl on freenode
1628 (webchat).
1629
1630 PLEASE INCLUDE THE FULL OUTPUT OF YOUTUBE-DL WHEN RUN WITH -v, i.e. ADD
1631 -v flag to YOUR COMMAND LINE, copy the WHOLE output and post it in the
1632 issue body wrapped in ``` for better formatting. It should look similar
1633 to this:
1634
1635 $ youtube-dl -v <your command line>
1636 [debug] System config: []
1637 [debug] User config: []
1638 [debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
1639 [debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
1640 [debug] youtube-dl version 2015.12.06
1641 [debug] Git HEAD: 135392e
1642 [debug] Python version 2.6.6 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
1643 [debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
1644 [debug] Proxy map: {}
1645 ...
1646
1647 DO NOT POST SCREENSHOTS OF VERBOSE LOGS; ONLY PLAIN TEXT IS ACCEPTABLE.
1648
1649 The output (including the first lines) contains important debugging
1650 information. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible
1651 and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
1652
1653 Please re-read your issue once again to avoid a couple of common
1654 mistakes (you can and should use this as a checklist):
1655
1656 Is the description of the issue itself sufficient?
1657
1658 We often get issue reports that we cannot really decipher. While in most
1659 cases we eventually get the required information after asking back
1660 multiple times, this poses an unnecessary drain on our resources. Many
1661 contributors, including myself, are also not native speakers, so we may
1662 misread some parts.
1663
1664 So please elaborate on what feature you are requesting, or what bug you
1665 want to be fixed. Make sure that it's obvious
1666
1667 - What the problem is
1668 - How it could be fixed
1669 - How your proposed solution would look like
1670
1671 If your report is shorter than two lines, it is almost certainly missing
1672 some of these, which makes it hard for us to respond to it. We're often
1673 too polite to close the issue outright, but the missing info makes
1674 misinterpretation likely. As a committer myself, I often get frustrated
1675 by these issues, since the only possible way for me to move forward on
1676 them is to ask for clarification over and over.
1677
1678 For bug reports, this means that your report should contain the
1679 _complete_ output of youtube-dl when called with the -v flag. The error
1680 message you get for (most) bugs even says so, but you would not believe
1681 how many of our bug reports do not contain this information.
1682
1683 If your server has multiple IPs or you suspect censorship, adding
1684 --call-home may be a good idea to get more diagnostics. If the error is
1685 ERROR: Unable to extract ... and you cannot reproduce it from multiple
1686 countries, add --dump-pages (warning: this will yield a rather large
1687 output, redirect it to the file log.txt by adding >log.txt 2>&1 to your
1688 command-line) or upload the .dump files you get when you add
1689 --write-pages somewhere.
1690
1691 SITE SUPPORT REQUESTS MUST CONTAIN AN EXAMPLE URL. An example URL is a
1692 URL you might want to download, like
1693 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc. There should be an obvious
1694 video present. Except under very special circumstances, the main page of
1695 a video service (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/) is _not_ an example URL.
1696
1697 Are you using the latest version?
1698
1699 Before reporting any issue, type youtube-dl -U. This should report that
1700 you're up-to-date. About 20% of the reports we receive are already
1701 fixed, but people are using outdated versions. This goes for feature
1702 requests as well.
1703
1704 Is the issue already documented?
1705
1706 Make sure that someone has not already opened the issue you're trying to
1707 open. Search at the top of the window or browse the GitHub Issues of
1708 this repository. If there is an issue, feel free to write something
1709 along the lines of "This affects me as well, with version 2015.01.01.
1710 Here is some more information on the issue: ...". While some issues may
1711 be old, a new post into them often spurs rapid activity.
1712
1713 Why are existing options not enough?
1714
1715 Before requesting a new feature, please have a quick peek at the list of
1716 supported options. Many feature requests are for features that actually
1717 exist already! Please, absolutely do show off your work in the issue
1718 report and detail how the existing similar options do _not_ solve your
1719 problem.
1720
1721 Is there enough context in your bug report?
1722
1723 People want to solve problems, and often think they do us a favor by
1724 breaking down their larger problems (e.g. wanting to skip already
1725 downloaded files) to a specific request (e.g. requesting us to look
1726 whether the file exists before downloading the info page). However, what
1727 often happens is that they break down the problem into two steps: One
1728 simple, and one impossible (or extremely complicated one).
1729
1730 We are then presented with a very complicated request when the original
1731 problem could be solved far easier, e.g. by recording the downloaded
1732 video IDs in a separate file. To avoid this, you must include the
1733 greater context where it is non-obvious. In particular, every feature
1734 request that does not consist of adding support for a new site should
1735 contain a use case scenario that explains in what situation the missing
1736 feature would be useful.
1737
1738 Does the issue involve one problem, and one problem only?
1739
1740 Some of our users seem to think there is a limit of issues they can or
1741 should open. There is no limit of issues they can or should open. While
1742 it may seem appealing to be able to dump all your issues into one
1743 ticket, that means that someone who solves one of your issues cannot
1744 mark the issue as closed. Typically, reporting a bunch of issues leads
1745 to the ticket lingering since nobody wants to attack that behemoth,
1746 until someone mercifully splits the issue into multiple ones.
1747
1748 In particular, every site support request issue should only pertain to
1749 services at one site (generally under a common domain, but always using
1750 the same backend technology). Do not request support for vimeo user
1751 videos, White house podcasts, and Google Plus pages in the same issue.
1752 Also, make sure that you don't post bug reports alongside feature
1753 requests. As a rule of thumb, a feature request does not include outputs
1754 of youtube-dl that are not immediately related to the feature at hand.
1755 Do not post reports of a network error alongside the request for a new
1756 video service.
1757
1758 Is anyone going to need the feature?
1759
1760 Only post features that you (or an incapacitated friend you can
1761 personally talk to) require. Do not post features because they seem like
1762 a good idea. If they are really useful, they will be requested by
1763 someone who requires them.
1764
1765 Is your question about youtube-dl?
1766
1767 It may sound strange, but some bug reports we receive are completely
1768 unrelated to youtube-dl and relate to a different, or even the
1769 reporter's own, application. Please make sure that you are actually
1770 using youtube-dl. If you are using a UI for youtube-dl, report the bug
1771 to the maintainer of the actual application providing the UI. On the
1772 other hand, if your UI for youtube-dl fails in some way you believe is
1773 related to youtube-dl, by all means, go ahead and report the bug.
1774
1775
1776
1777 COPYRIGHT
1778
1779
1780 youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
1781
1782 This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton and is likewise
1783 released into the public domain.