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[youtubedl] / README.txt
1 [Build Status]
2
3 youtube-dl - download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms
4
5 - INSTALLATION
6 - DESCRIPTION
7 - OPTIONS
8 - CONFIGURATION
9 - OUTPUT TEMPLATE
10 - FORMAT SELECTION
11 - VIDEO SELECTION
12 - FAQ
13 - DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
14 - EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
15 - BUGS
16 - COPYRIGHT
17
18
19
20 INSTALLATION
21
22
23 To install it right away for all UNIX users (Linux, macOS, etc.), type:
24
25 sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
26 sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
27
28 If you do not have curl, you can alternatively use a recent wget:
29
30 sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
31 sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
32
33 Windows users can download an .exe file and place it in any location on
34 their PATH except for %SYSTEMROOT%\System32 (e.g. DO NOT put in
35 C:\Windows\System32).
36
37 You can also use pip:
38
39 sudo -H pip install --upgrade youtube-dl
40
41 This command will update youtube-dl if you have already installed it.
42 See the pypi page for more information.
43
44 macOS users can install youtube-dl with Homebrew:
45
46 brew install youtube-dl
47
48 Or with MacPorts:
49
50 sudo port install youtube-dl
51
52 Alternatively, refer to the developer instructions for how to check out
53 and work with the git repository. For further options, including PGP
54 signatures, see the youtube-dl Download Page.
55
56
57
58 DESCRIPTION
59
60
61 YOUTUBE-DL is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com
62 and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.6,
63 2.7, or 3.2+, and it is not platform specific. It should work on your
64 Unix box, on Windows or on macOS. It is released to the public domain,
65 which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you
66 like.
67
68 youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]
69
70
71
72 OPTIONS
73
74
75 -h, --help Print this help text and exit
76 --version Print program version and exit
77 -U, --update Update this program to latest version. Make
78 sure that you have sufficient permissions
79 (run with sudo if needed)
80 -i, --ignore-errors Continue on download errors, for example to
81 skip unavailable videos in a playlist
82 --abort-on-error Abort downloading of further videos (in the
83 playlist or the command line) if an error
84 occurs
85 --dump-user-agent Display the current browser identification
86 --list-extractors List all supported extractors
87 --extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported
88 extractors
89 --force-generic-extractor Force extraction to use the generic
90 extractor
91 --default-search PREFIX Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For
92 example "gvsearch2:" downloads two videos
93 from google videos for youtube-dl "large
94 apple". Use the value "auto" to let
95 youtube-dl guess ("auto_warning" to emit a
96 warning when guessing). "error" just throws
97 an error. The default value "fixup_error"
98 repairs broken URLs, but emits an error if
99 this is not possible instead of searching.
100 --ignore-config Do not read configuration files. When given
101 in the global configuration file
102 /etc/youtube-dl.conf: Do not read the user
103 configuration in ~/.config/youtube-
104 dl/config (%APPDATA%/youtube-dl/config.txt
105 on Windows)
106 --config-location PATH Location of the configuration file; either
107 the path to the config or its containing
108 directory.
109 --flat-playlist Do not extract the videos of a playlist,
110 only list them.
111 --mark-watched Mark videos watched (YouTube only)
112 --no-mark-watched Do not mark videos watched (YouTube only)
113 --no-color Do not emit color codes in output
114
115
116 Network Options:
117
118 --proxy URL Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS proxy.
119 To enable SOCKS proxy, specify a proper
120 scheme. For example
121 socks5://127.0.0.1:1080/. Pass in an empty
122 string (--proxy "") for direct connection
123 --socket-timeout SECONDS Time to wait before giving up, in seconds
124 --source-address IP Client-side IP address to bind to
125 -4, --force-ipv4 Make all connections via IPv4
126 -6, --force-ipv6 Make all connections via IPv6
127
128
129 Geo Restriction:
130
131 --geo-verification-proxy URL Use this proxy to verify the IP address for
132 some geo-restricted sites. The default
133 proxy specified by --proxy (or none, if the
134 option is not present) is used for the
135 actual downloading.
136 --geo-bypass Bypass geographic restriction via faking
137 X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
138 --no-geo-bypass Do not bypass geographic restriction via
139 faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
140 --geo-bypass-country CODE Force bypass geographic restriction with
141 explicitly provided two-letter ISO 3166-2
142 country code
143 --geo-bypass-ip-block IP_BLOCK Force bypass geographic restriction with
144 explicitly provided IP block in CIDR
145 notation
146
147
148 Video Selection:
149
150 --playlist-start NUMBER Playlist video to start at (default is 1)
151 --playlist-end NUMBER Playlist video to end at (default is last)
152 --playlist-items ITEM_SPEC Playlist video items to download. Specify
153 indices of the videos in the playlist
154 separated by commas like: "--playlist-items
155 1,2,5,8" if you want to download videos
156 indexed 1, 2, 5, 8 in the playlist. You can
157 specify range: "--playlist-items
158 1-3,7,10-13", it will download the videos
159 at index 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
160 --match-title REGEX Download only matching titles (regex or
161 caseless sub-string)
162 --reject-title REGEX Skip download for matching titles (regex or
163 caseless sub-string)
164 --max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files
165 --min-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos smaller than
166 SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
167 --max-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos larger than SIZE
168 (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
169 --date DATE Download only videos uploaded in this date
170 --datebefore DATE Download only videos uploaded on or before
171 this date (i.e. inclusive)
172 --dateafter DATE Download only videos uploaded on or after
173 this date (i.e. inclusive)
174 --min-views COUNT Do not download any videos with less than
175 COUNT views
176 --max-views COUNT Do not download any videos with more than
177 COUNT views
178 --match-filter FILTER Generic video filter. Specify any key (see
179 the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a list of
180 available keys) to match if the key is
181 present, !key to check if the key is not
182 present, key > NUMBER (like "comment_count
183 > 12", also works with >=, <, <=, !=, =) to
184 compare against a number, key = 'LITERAL'
185 (like "uploader = 'Mike Smith'", also works
186 with !=) to match against a string literal
187 and & to require multiple matches. Values
188 which are not known are excluded unless you
189 put a question mark (?) after the operator.
190 For example, to only match videos that have
191 been liked more than 100 times and disliked
192 less than 50 times (or the dislike
193 functionality is not available at the given
194 service), but who also have a description,
195 use --match-filter "like_count > 100 &
196 dislike_count <? 50 & description" .
197 --no-playlist Download only the video, if the URL refers
198 to a video and a playlist.
199 --yes-playlist Download the playlist, if the URL refers to
200 a video and a playlist.
201 --age-limit YEARS Download only videos suitable for the given
202 age
203 --download-archive FILE Download only videos not listed in the
204 archive file. Record the IDs of all
205 downloaded videos in it.
206 --include-ads Download advertisements as well
207 (experimental)
208
209
210 Download Options:
211
212 -r, --limit-rate RATE Maximum download rate in bytes per second
213 (e.g. 50K or 4.2M)
214 -R, --retries RETRIES Number of retries (default is 10), or
215 "infinite".
216 --fragment-retries RETRIES Number of retries for a fragment (default
217 is 10), or "infinite" (DASH, hlsnative and
218 ISM)
219 --skip-unavailable-fragments Skip unavailable fragments (DASH, hlsnative
220 and ISM)
221 --abort-on-unavailable-fragment Abort downloading when some fragment is not
222 available
223 --keep-fragments Keep downloaded fragments on disk after
224 downloading is finished; fragments are
225 erased by default
226 --buffer-size SIZE Size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16K)
227 (default is 1024)
228 --no-resize-buffer Do not automatically adjust the buffer
229 size. By default, the buffer size is
230 automatically resized from an initial value
231 of SIZE.
232 --http-chunk-size SIZE Size of a chunk for chunk-based HTTP
233 downloading (e.g. 10485760 or 10M) (default
234 is disabled). May be useful for bypassing
235 bandwidth throttling imposed by a webserver
236 (experimental)
237 --playlist-reverse Download playlist videos in reverse order
238 --playlist-random Download playlist videos in random order
239 --xattr-set-filesize Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with
240 expected file size
241 --hls-prefer-native Use the native HLS downloader instead of
242 ffmpeg
243 --hls-prefer-ffmpeg Use ffmpeg instead of the native HLS
244 downloader
245 --hls-use-mpegts Use the mpegts container for HLS videos,
246 allowing to play the video while
247 downloading (some players may not be able
248 to play it)
249 --external-downloader COMMAND Use the specified external downloader.
250 Currently supports
251 aria2c,avconv,axel,curl,ffmpeg,httpie,wget
252 --external-downloader-args ARGS Give these arguments to the external
253 downloader
254
255
256 Filesystem Options:
257
258 -a, --batch-file FILE File containing URLs to download ('-' for
259 stdin), one URL per line. Lines starting
260 with '#', ';' or ']' are considered as
261 comments and ignored.
262 --id Use only video ID in file name
263 -o, --output TEMPLATE Output filename template, see the "OUTPUT
264 TEMPLATE" for all the info
265 --autonumber-start NUMBER Specify the start value for %(autonumber)s
266 (default is 1)
267 --restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII
268 characters, and avoid "&" and spaces in
269 filenames
270 -w, --no-overwrites Do not overwrite files
271 -c, --continue Force resume of partially downloaded files.
272 By default, youtube-dl will resume
273 downloads if possible.
274 --no-continue Do not resume partially downloaded files
275 (restart from beginning)
276 --no-part Do not use .part files - write directly
277 into output file
278 --no-mtime Do not use the Last-modified header to set
279 the file modification time
280 --write-description Write video description to a .description
281 file
282 --write-info-json Write video metadata to a .info.json file
283 --write-annotations Write video annotations to a
284 .annotations.xml file
285 --load-info-json FILE JSON file containing the video information
286 (created with the "--write-info-json"
287 option)
288 --cookies FILE File to read cookies from and dump cookie
289 jar in
290 --cache-dir DIR Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl
291 can store some downloaded information
292 permanently. By default
293 $XDG_CACHE_HOME/youtube-dl or
294 ~/.cache/youtube-dl . At the moment, only
295 YouTube player files (for videos with
296 obfuscated signatures) are cached, but that
297 may change.
298 --no-cache-dir Disable filesystem caching
299 --rm-cache-dir Delete all filesystem cache files
300
301
302 Thumbnail images:
303
304 --write-thumbnail Write thumbnail image to disk
305 --write-all-thumbnails Write all thumbnail image formats to disk
306 --list-thumbnails Simulate and list all available thumbnail
307 formats
308
309
310 Verbosity / Simulation Options:
311
312 -q, --quiet Activate quiet mode
313 --no-warnings Ignore warnings
314 -s, --simulate Do not download the video and do not write
315 anything to disk
316 --skip-download Do not download the video
317 -g, --get-url Simulate, quiet but print URL
318 -e, --get-title Simulate, quiet but print title
319 --get-id Simulate, quiet but print id
320 --get-thumbnail Simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
321 --get-description Simulate, quiet but print video description
322 --get-duration Simulate, quiet but print video length
323 --get-filename Simulate, quiet but print output filename
324 --get-format Simulate, quiet but print output format
325 -j, --dump-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information.
326 See the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a description
327 of available keys.
328 -J, --dump-single-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information
329 for each command-line argument. If the URL
330 refers to a playlist, dump the whole
331 playlist information in a single line.
332 --print-json Be quiet and print the video information as
333 JSON (video is still being downloaded).
334 --newline Output progress bar as new lines
335 --no-progress Do not print progress bar
336 --console-title Display progress in console titlebar
337 -v, --verbose Print various debugging information
338 --dump-pages Print downloaded pages encoded using base64
339 to debug problems (very verbose)
340 --write-pages Write downloaded intermediary pages to
341 files in the current directory to debug
342 problems
343 --print-traffic Display sent and read HTTP traffic
344 -C, --call-home Contact the youtube-dl server for debugging
345 --no-call-home Do NOT contact the youtube-dl server for
346 debugging
347
348
349 Workarounds:
350
351 --encoding ENCODING Force the specified encoding (experimental)
352 --no-check-certificate Suppress HTTPS certificate validation
353 --prefer-insecure Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve
354 information about the video. (Currently
355 supported only for YouTube)
356 --user-agent UA Specify a custom user agent
357 --referer URL Specify a custom referer, use if the video
358 access is restricted to one domain
359 --add-header FIELD:VALUE Specify a custom HTTP header and its value,
360 separated by a colon ':'. You can use this
361 option multiple times
362 --bidi-workaround Work around terminals that lack
363 bidirectional text support. Requires bidiv
364 or fribidi executable in PATH
365 --sleep-interval SECONDS Number of seconds to sleep before each
366 download when used alone or a lower bound
367 of a range for randomized sleep before each
368 download (minimum possible number of
369 seconds to sleep) when used along with
370 --max-sleep-interval.
371 --max-sleep-interval SECONDS Upper bound of a range for randomized sleep
372 before each download (maximum possible
373 number of seconds to sleep). Must only be
374 used along with --min-sleep-interval.
375
376
377 Video Format Options:
378
379 -f, --format FORMAT Video format code, see the "FORMAT
380 SELECTION" for all the info
381 --all-formats Download all available video formats
382 --prefer-free-formats Prefer free video formats unless a specific
383 one is requested
384 -F, --list-formats List all available formats of requested
385 videos
386 --youtube-skip-dash-manifest Do not download the DASH manifests and
387 related data on YouTube videos
388 --merge-output-format FORMAT If a merge is required (e.g.
389 bestvideo+bestaudio), output to given
390 container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg,
391 webm, flv. Ignored if no merge is required
392
393
394 Subtitle Options:
395
396 --write-sub Write subtitle file
397 --write-auto-sub Write automatically generated subtitle file
398 (YouTube only)
399 --all-subs Download all the available subtitles of the
400 video
401 --list-subs List all available subtitles for the video
402 --sub-format FORMAT Subtitle format, accepts formats
403 preference, for example: "srt" or
404 "ass/srt/best"
405 --sub-lang LANGS Languages of the subtitles to download
406 (optional) separated by commas, use --list-
407 subs for available language tags
408
409
410 Authentication Options:
411
412 -u, --username USERNAME Login with this account ID
413 -p, --password PASSWORD Account password. If this option is left
414 out, youtube-dl will ask interactively.
415 -2, --twofactor TWOFACTOR Two-factor authentication code
416 -n, --netrc Use .netrc authentication data
417 --video-password PASSWORD Video password (vimeo, smotri, youku)
418
419
420 Adobe Pass Options:
421
422 --ap-mso MSO Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV
423 provider) identifier, use --ap-list-mso for
424 a list of available MSOs
425 --ap-username USERNAME Multiple-system operator account login
426 --ap-password PASSWORD Multiple-system operator account password.
427 If this option is left out, youtube-dl will
428 ask interactively.
429 --ap-list-mso List all supported multiple-system
430 operators
431
432
433 Post-processing Options:
434
435 -x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files
436 (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or
437 avprobe)
438 --audio-format FORMAT Specify audio format: "best", "aac",
439 "flac", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", "vorbis", or
440 "wav"; "best" by default; No effect without
441 -x
442 --audio-quality QUALITY Specify ffmpeg/avconv audio quality, insert
443 a value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse)
444 for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K
445 (default 5)
446 --recode-video FORMAT Encode the video to another format if
447 necessary (currently supported:
448 mp4|flv|ogg|webm|mkv|avi)
449 --postprocessor-args ARGS Give these arguments to the postprocessor
450 -k, --keep-video Keep the video file on disk after the post-
451 processing; the video is erased by default
452 --no-post-overwrites Do not overwrite post-processed files; the
453 post-processed files are overwritten by
454 default
455 --embed-subs Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4,
456 webm and mkv videos)
457 --embed-thumbnail Embed thumbnail in the audio as cover art
458 --add-metadata Write metadata to the video file
459 --metadata-from-title FORMAT Parse additional metadata like song title /
460 artist from the video title. The format
461 syntax is the same as --output. Regular
462 expression with named capture groups may
463 also be used. The parsed parameters replace
464 existing values. Example: --metadata-from-
465 title "%(artist)s - %(title)s" matches a
466 title like "Coldplay - Paradise". Example
467 (regex): --metadata-from-title
468 "(?P<artist>.+?) - (?P<title>.+)"
469 --xattrs Write metadata to the video file's xattrs
470 (using dublin core and xdg standards)
471 --fixup POLICY Automatically correct known faults of the
472 file. One of never (do nothing), warn (only
473 emit a warning), detect_or_warn (the
474 default; fix file if we can, warn
475 otherwise)
476 --prefer-avconv Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running the
477 postprocessors
478 --prefer-ffmpeg Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running the
479 postprocessors (default)
480 --ffmpeg-location PATH Location of the ffmpeg/avconv binary;
481 either the path to the binary or its
482 containing directory.
483 --exec CMD Execute a command on the file after
484 downloading, similar to find's -exec
485 syntax. Example: --exec 'adb push {}
486 /sdcard/Music/ && rm {}'
487 --convert-subs FORMAT Convert the subtitles to other format
488 (currently supported: srt|ass|vtt|lrc)
489
490
491
492 CONFIGURATION
493
494
495 You can configure youtube-dl by placing any supported command line
496 option to a configuration file. On Linux and macOS, the system wide
497 configuration file is located at /etc/youtube-dl.conf and the user wide
498 configuration file at ~/.config/youtube-dl/config. On Windows, the user
499 wide configuration file locations are %APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt or
500 C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf. Note that by default configuration
501 file may not exist so you may need to create it yourself.
502
503 For example, with the following configuration file youtube-dl will
504 always extract the audio, not copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all
505 videos under Movies directory in your home directory:
506
507 # Lines starting with # are comments
508
509 # Always extract audio
510 -x
511
512 # Do not copy the mtime
513 --no-mtime
514
515 # Use this proxy
516 --proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
517
518 # Save all videos under Movies directory in your home directory
519 -o ~/Movies/%(title)s.%(ext)s
520
521 Note that options in configuration file are just the same options aka
522 switches used in regular command line calls thus there MUST BE NO
523 WHITESPACE after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy.
524
525 You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable the configuration
526 file for a particular youtube-dl run.
527
528 You can also use --config-location if you want to use custom
529 configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.
530
531 Authentication with .netrc file
532
533 You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for
534 extractors that support authentication (by providing login and password
535 with --username and --password) in order not to pass credentials as
536 command line arguments on every youtube-dl execution and prevent
537 tracking plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can
538 achieve this using a .netrc file on a per extractor basis. For that you
539 will need to create a .netrc file in your $HOME and restrict permissions
540 to read/write by only you:
541
542 touch $HOME/.netrc
543 chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc
544
545 After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following
546 format, where _extractor_ is the name of the extractor in lowercase:
547
548 machine <extractor> login <login> password <password>
549
550 For example:
551
552 machine youtube login myaccount@gmail.com password my_youtube_password
553 machine twitch login my_twitch_account_name password my_twitch_password
554
555 To activate authentication with the .netrc file you should pass --netrc
556 to youtube-dl or place it in the configuration file.
557
558 On Windows you may also need to setup the %HOME% environment variable
559 manually. For example:
560
561 set HOME=%USERPROFILE%
562
563
564
565 OUTPUT TEMPLATE
566
567
568 The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file
569 names.
570
571 TL;DR: navigate me to examples.
572
573 The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a
574 single file, like in youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv "https://some/video".
575 However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced when
576 downloading each video. The special sequences may be formatted according
577 to python string formatting operations. For example, %(NAME)s or
578 %(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in
579 parentheses, followed by formatting operations. Allowed names along with
580 sequence type are:
581
582 - id (string): Video identifier
583 - title (string): Video title
584 - url (string): Video URL
585 - ext (string): Video filename extension
586 - alt_title (string): A secondary title of the video
587 - display_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video
588 - uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader
589 - license (string): License name the video is licensed under
590 - creator (string): The creator of the video
591 - release_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was
592 released
593 - timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became
594 available
595 - upload_date (string): Video upload date (YYYYMMDD)
596 - uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader
597 - channel (string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded on
598 - channel_id (string): Id of the channel
599 - location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed
600 - duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds
601 - view_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the
602 platform
603 - like_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video
604 - dislike_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video
605 - repost_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video
606 - average_rating (numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale
607 used depends on the webpage
608 - comment_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video
609 - age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)
610 - is_live (boolean): Whether this video is a live stream or a
611 fixed-length video
612 - start_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should
613 start, as specified in the URL
614 - end_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should
615 end, as specified in the URL
616 - format (string): A human-readable description of the format
617 - format_id (string): Format code specified by --format
618 - format_note (string): Additional info about the format
619 - width (numeric): Width of the video
620 - height (numeric): Height of the video
621 - resolution (string): Textual description of width and height
622 - tbr (numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
623 - abr (numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
624 - acodec (string): Name of the audio codec in use
625 - asr (numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertz
626 - vbr (numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/s
627 - fps (numeric): Frame rate
628 - vcodec (string): Name of the video codec in use
629 - container (string): Name of the container format
630 - filesize (numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advance
631 - filesize_approx (numeric): An estimate for the number of bytes
632 - protocol (string): The protocol that will be used for the actual
633 download
634 - extractor (string): Name of the extractor
635 - extractor_key (string): Key name of the extractor
636 - epoch (numeric): Unix epoch when creating the file
637 - autonumber (numeric): Five-digit number that will be increased with
638 each download, starting at zero
639 - playlist (string): Name or id of the playlist that contains the
640 video
641 - playlist_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded
642 with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist
643 - playlist_id (string): Playlist identifier
644 - playlist_title (string): Playlist title
645 - playlist_uploader (string): Full name of the playlist uploader
646 - playlist_uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the playlist
647 uploader
648
649 Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:
650
651 - chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to
652 - chapter_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to
653 - chapter_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to
654
655 Available for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:
656
657 - series (string): Title of the series or programme the video episode
658 belongs to
659 - season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to
660 - season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode
661 belongs to
662 - season_id (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to
663 - episode (string): Title of the video episode
664 - episode_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a
665 season
666 - episode_id (string): Id of the video episode
667
668 Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:
669
670 - track (string): Title of the track
671 - track_number (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a
672 disc
673 - track_id (string): Id of the track
674 - artist (string): Artist(s) of the track
675 - genre (string): Genre(s) of the track
676 - album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to
677 - album_type (string): Type of the album
678 - album_artist (string): List of all artists appeared on the album
679 - disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium
680 the track belongs to
681 - release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released
682
683 Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will
684 be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. Note
685 that some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since they
686 depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such
687 sequences will be replaced with NA.
688
689 For example for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title
690 youtube-dl test video and id BaW_jenozKcj, this will result in a
691 youtube-dl test video-BaW_jenozKcj.mp4 file created in the current
692 directory.
693
694 For numeric sequences you can use numeric related formatting, for
695 example, %(view_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded
696 with zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042.
697
698 Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g.
699 -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' which will
700 result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this
701 path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for
702 you.
703
704 To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to
705 stdout use -o -.
706
707 The current default template is %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s.
708
709 In some cases, you don't want special characters such as äø­, spaces, or
710 &, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows system
711 or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the
712 --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title:
713
714 Output template and Windows batch files
715
716 If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then you
717 must escape plain percent characters (%) by doubling, so that
718 -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" should become
719 -o "%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s". However you should not touch %'s that
720 are not plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion
721 should stay intact: -o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s".
722
723 Output template examples
724
725 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of
726 single.
727
728 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc
729 youtube-dl test video ''_Ƥā†­š•.mp4 # All kinds of weird characters
730
731 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
732 youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4 # A simple file name
733
734 # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
735 $ youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re
736
737 # Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory:
738 $ youtube-dl -o '%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists
739
740 # Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home
741 $ 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/
742
743 # Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos
744 $ youtube-dl -o "C:/MyVideos/%(series)s/%(season_number)s - %(season)s/%(episode_number)s - %(episode)s.%(ext)s" https://videomore.ru/kino_v_detalayah/5_sezon/367617
745
746 # Stream the video being downloaded to stdout
747 $ youtube-dl -o - BaW_jenozKc
748
749
750
751 FORMAT SELECTION
752
753
754 By default youtube-dl tries to download the best available quality, i.e.
755 if you want the best quality you DON'T NEED to pass any special options,
756 youtube-dl will guess it for you by DEFAULT.
757
758 But sometimes you may want to download in a different format, for
759 example when you are on a slow or intermittent connection. The key
760 mechanism for achieving this is so-called _format selection_ based on
761 which you can explicitly specify desired format, select formats based on
762 some criterion or criteria, setup precedence and much more.
763
764 The general syntax for format selection is --format FORMAT or shorter
765 -f FORMAT where FORMAT is a _selector expression_, i.e. an expression
766 that describes format or formats you would like to download.
767
768 TL;DR: navigate me to examples.
769
770 The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example with
771 -f 22 you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can
772 get the list of available format codes for particular video using
773 --list-formats or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor
774 specific.
775
776 You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3,
777 mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format
778 of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm
779 will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as
780 a single file.
781
782 You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats:
783
784 - best: Select the best quality format represented by a single file
785 with video and audio.
786 - worst: Select the worst quality format represented by a single file
787 with video and audio.
788 - bestvideo: Select the best quality video-only format (e.g. DASH
789 video). May not be available.
790 - worstvideo: Select the worst quality video-only format. May not be
791 available.
792 - bestaudio: Select the best quality audio only-format. May not be
793 available.
794 - worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio only-format. May not be
795 available.
796
797 For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use
798 -f worstvideo.
799
800 If you want to download multiple videos and they don't have the same
801 formats available, you can specify the order of preference using
802 slashes. Note that slash is left-associative, i.e. formats on the left
803 hand side are preferred, for example -f 22/17/18 will download format 22
804 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's
805 available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available,
806 otherwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for
807 download.
808
809 If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as
810 a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three formats, of
811 course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined
812 with the precedence feature: -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.
813
814 You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in
815 brackets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]").
816
817 The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons <, <=, >,
818 >=, = (equals), != (not equals):
819
820 - filesize: The number of bytes, if known in advance
821 - width: Width of the video, if known
822 - height: Height of the video, if known
823 - tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
824 - abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
825 - vbr: Average video bitrate in KBit/s
826 - asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz
827 - fps: Frame rate
828
829 Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), ^= (starts with), $=
830 (ends with), *= (contains) and following string meta fields:
831
832 - ext: File extension
833 - acodec: Name of the audio codec in use
834 - vcodec: Name of the video codec in use
835 - container: Name of the container format
836 - protocol: The protocol that will be used for the actual download,
837 lower-case (http, https, rtsp, rtmp, rtmpe, mms, f4m, ism,
838 http_dash_segments, m3u8, or m3u8_native)
839 - format_id: A short description of the format
840
841 Any string comparison may be prefixed with negation ! in order to
842 produce an opposite comparison, e.g. !*= (does not contain).
843
844 Note that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be
845 present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particular
846 extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the video hoster.
847
848 Formats for which the value is not known are excluded unless you put a
849 question mark (?) after the operator. You can combine format filters, so
850 -f "[height <=? 720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos
851 where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s.
852
853 You can merge the video and audio of two formats into a single file
854 using -f <video-format>+<audio-format> (requires ffmpeg or avconv
855 installed), for example -f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best
856 video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with
857 ffmpeg/avconv.
858
859 Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if
860 you want to download the best mp4 and webm formats with a height lower
861 than 480 you can use -f '(mp4,webm)[height<480]'.
862
863 Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26, youtube-dl uses
864 -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best as the default format selection (see #5447,
865 #5456). If ffmpeg or avconv are installed this results in downloading
866 bestvideo and bestaudio separately and muxing them together into a
867 single file giving the best overall quality available. Otherwise it
868 falls back to best and results in downloading the best available quality
869 served as a single file. best is also needed for videos that don't come
870 from YouTube because they don't provide the audio and video in two
871 different files. If you want to only download some DASH formats (for
872 example if you are not interested in getting videos with a resolution
873 higher than 1080p), you can add
874 -f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best to your configuration file.
875 Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream to stdout (and most likely to
876 pipe it to your media player then), i.e. you explicitly specify output
877 template as -o -, youtube-dl still uses -f best format selection in
878 order to start content delivery immediately to your player and not to
879 wait until bestvideo and bestaudio are downloaded and muxed.
880
881 If you want to preserve the old format selection behavior (prior to
882 youtube-dl 2015.04.26), i.e. you want to download the best available
883 quality media served as a single file, you should explicitly specify
884 your choice with -f best. You may want to add it to the configuration
885 file in order not to type it every time you run youtube-dl.
886
887 Format selection examples
888
889 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of
890 single.
891
892 # Download best mp4 format available or any other best if no mp4 available
893 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best'
894
895 # Download best format available but no better than 480p
896 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]'
897
898 # Download best video only format but no bigger than 50 MB
899 $ youtube-dl -f 'best[filesize<50M]'
900
901 # Download best format available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol
902 $ youtube-dl -f '(bestvideo+bestaudio/best)[protocol^=http]'
903
904 # Download the best video format and the best audio format without merging them
905 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo,bestaudio' -o '%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s'
906
907 Note that in the last example, an output template is recommended as
908 bestvideo and bestaudio may have the same file name.
909
910
911
912 VIDEO SELECTION
913
914
915 Videos can be filtered by their upload date using the options --date,
916 --datebefore or --dateafter. They accept dates in two formats:
917
918 - Absolute dates: Dates in the format YYYYMMDD.
919 - Relative dates: Dates in the format
920 (now|today)[+-][0-9](day|week|month|year)(s)?
921
922 Examples:
923
924 # Download only the videos uploaded in the last 6 months
925 $ youtube-dl --dateafter now-6months
926
927 # Download only the videos uploaded on January 1, 1970
928 $ youtube-dl --date 19700101
929
930 $ # Download only the videos uploaded in the 200x decade
931 $ youtube-dl --dateafter 20000101 --datebefore 20091231
932
933
934
935 FAQ
936
937
938 How do I update youtube-dl?
939
940 If you've followed our manual installation instructions, you can simply
941 run youtube-dl -U (or, on Linux, sudo youtube-dl -U).
942
943 If you have used pip, a simple sudo pip install -U youtube-dl is
944 sufficient to update.
945
946 If you have installed youtube-dl using a package manager like _apt-get_
947 or _yum_, use the standard system update mechanism to update. Note that
948 distribution packages are often outdated. As a rule of thumb, youtube-dl
949 releases at least once a month, and often weekly or even daily. Simply
950 go to https://yt-dl.org to find out the current version. Unfortunately,
951 there is nothing we youtube-dl developers can do if your distribution
952 serves a really outdated version. You can (and should) complain to your
953 distribution in their bugtracker or support forum.
954
955 As a last resort, you can also uninstall the version installed by your
956 package manager and follow our manual installation instructions. For
957 that, remove the distribution's package, with a line like
958
959 sudo apt-get remove -y youtube-dl
960
961 Afterwards, simply follow our manual installation instructions:
962
963 sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
964 sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
965 hash -r
966
967 Again, from then on you'll be able to update with sudo youtube-dl -U.
968
969 youtube-dl is extremely slow to start on Windows
970
971 Add a file exclusion for youtube-dl.exe in Windows Defender settings.
972
973 I'm getting an error Unable to extract OpenGraph title on YouTube playlists
974
975 YouTube changed their playlist format in March 2014 and later on, so
976 you'll need at least youtube-dl 2014.07.25 to download all YouTube
977 videos.
978
979 If you have installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py
980 or a tarball, please use that to update. Note that Ubuntu packages do
981 not seem to get updated anymore. Since we are not affiliated with
982 Ubuntu, there is little we can do. Feel free to report bugs to the
983 Ubuntu packaging people - all they have to do is update the package to a
984 somewhat recent version. See above for a way to update.
985
986 I'm getting an error when trying to use output template: error: using output template conflicts with using title, video ID or auto number
987
988 Make sure you are not using -o with any of these options -t, --title,
989 --id, -A or --auto-number set in command line or in a configuration
990 file. Remove the latter if any.
991
992 Do I always have to pass -citw?
993
994 By default, youtube-dl intends to have the best options (incidentally,
995 if you have a convincing case that these should be different, please
996 file an issue where you explain that). Therefore, it is unnecessary and
997 sometimes harmful to copy long option strings from webpages. In
998 particular, the only option out of -citw that is regularly useful is -i.
999
1000 Can you please put the -b option back?
1001
1002 Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now
1003 defaults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by
1004 YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer
1005 need the -b option. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not
1006 report them to be available in a specific high quality format you're
1007 interested in. In that case, simply request it with the -f option and
1008 youtube-dl will try to download it.
1009
1010 I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's this?
1011
1012 Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download
1013 too much. We're considering to provide a way to let you solve the
1014 CAPTCHA, but at the moment, your best course of action is pointing a web
1015 browser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.
1016
1017 Do I need any other programs?
1018
1019 youtube-dl works fine on its own on most sites. However, if you want to
1020 convert video/audio, you'll need avconv or ffmpeg. On some sites - most
1021 notably YouTube - videos can be retrieved in a higher quality format
1022 without sound. youtube-dl will detect whether avconv/ffmpeg is present
1023 and automatically pick the best option.
1024
1025 Videos or video formats streamed via RTMP protocol can only be
1026 downloaded when rtmpdump is installed. Downloading MMS and RTSP videos
1027 requires either mplayer or mpv to be installed.
1028
1029 I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?
1030
1031 Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as mpv,
1032 vlc or mplayer.
1033
1034 I extracted a video URL with -g, but it does not play on another machine / in my web browser.
1035
1036 It depends a lot on the service. In many cases, requests for the video
1037 (to download/play it) must come from the same IP address and with the
1038 same cookies and/or HTTP headers. Use the --cookies option to write the
1039 required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies
1040 from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used,
1041 use --dump-user-agent to see the one in use by youtube-dl. You can also
1042 get necessary cookies and HTTP headers from JSON output obtained with
1043 --dump-json.
1044
1045 It may be beneficial to use IPv6; in some cases, the restrictions are
1046 only applied to IPv4. Some services (sometimes only for a subset of
1047 videos) do not restrict the video URL by IP address, cookie, or
1048 user-agent, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
1049
1050 Please bear in mind that some URL protocols are NOT supported by
1051 browsers out of the box, including RTMP. If you are using -g, your own
1052 downloader must support these as well.
1053
1054 If you want to play the video on a machine that is not running
1055 youtube-dl, you can relay the video content from the machine that runs
1056 youtube-dl. You can use -o - to let youtube-dl stream a video to stdout,
1057 or simply allow the player to download the files written by youtube-dl
1058 in turn.
1059
1060 ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info
1061
1062 YouTube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is
1063 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update
1064 youtube-dl.
1065
1066 ERROR: unable to download video
1067
1068 YouTube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is
1069 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update
1070 youtube-dl.
1071
1072 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
1073
1074 That's actually the output from your shell. Since ampersand is one of
1075 the special shell characters it's interpreted by the shell preventing
1076 you from passing the whole URL to youtube-dl. To disable your shell from
1077 interpreting the ampersands (or any other special characters) you have
1078 to either put the whole URL in quotes or escape them with a backslash
1079 (which approach will work depends on your shell).
1080
1081 For example if your URL is
1082 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc you should end up with
1083 following command:
1084
1085 youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc'
1086
1087 or
1088
1089 youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKc
1090
1091 For Windows you have to use the double quotes:
1092
1093 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc"
1094
1095 ExtractorError: Could not find JS function u'OF'
1096
1097 In February 2015, the new YouTube player contained a character sequence
1098 in a string that was misinterpreted by old versions of youtube-dl. See
1099 above for how to update youtube-dl.
1100
1101 HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests or 402: Payment Required
1102
1103 These two error codes indicate that the service is blocking your IP
1104 address because of overuse. Usually this is a soft block meaning that
1105 you can gain access again after solving CAPTCHA. Just open a browser and
1106 solve a CAPTCHA the service suggests you and after that pass cookies to
1107 youtube-dl. Note that if your machine has multiple external IPs then you
1108 should also pass exactly the same IP you've used for solving CAPTCHA
1109 with --source-address. Also you may need to pass a User-Agent HTTP
1110 header of your browser with --user-agent.
1111
1112 If this is not the case (no CAPTCHA suggested to solve by the service)
1113 then you can contact the service and ask them to unblock your IP
1114 address, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address already -
1115 use the --proxy or --source-address options to select another IP
1116 address.
1117
1118 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character
1119
1120 The error
1121
1122 File "youtube-dl", line 2
1123 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x93' ...
1124
1125 means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to
1126 Python 2.6 or 2.7.
1127
1128 What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?
1129
1130 Since June 2012 (#342) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile,
1131 simply unzip it (might need renaming to youtube-dl.zip first on some
1132 systems) or clone the git repository, as laid out above. If you modify
1133 the code, you can run it by executing the __main__.py file. To recompile
1134 the executable, run make youtube-dl.
1135
1136 The exe throws an error due to missing MSVCR100.dll
1137
1138 To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010
1139 Redistributable Package (x86).
1140
1141 On Windows, how should I set up ffmpeg and youtube-dl? Where should I put the exe files?
1142
1143 If you put youtube-dl and ffmpeg in the same directory that you're
1144 running the command from, it will work, but that's rather cumbersome.
1145
1146 To make a different directory work - either for ffmpeg, or for
1147 youtube-dl, or for both - simply create the directory (say, C:\bin, or
1148 C:\Users\<User name>\bin), put all the executables directly in there,
1149 and then set your PATH environment variable to include that directory.
1150
1151 From then on, after restarting your shell, you will be able to access
1152 both youtube-dl and ffmpeg (and youtube-dl will be able to find ffmpeg)
1153 by simply typing youtube-dl or ffmpeg, no matter what directory you're
1154 in.
1155
1156 How do I put downloads into a specific folder?
1157
1158 Use the -o to specify an output template, for example
1159 -o "/home/user/videos/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s". If you want this for
1160 all of your downloads, put the option into your configuration file.
1161
1162 How do I download a video starting with a -?
1163
1164 Either prepend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= or separate the ID from
1165 the options with --:
1166
1167 youtube-dl -- -wNyEUrxzFU
1168 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"
1169
1170 How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?
1171
1172 Use the --cookies option, for example
1173 --cookies /path/to/cookies/file.txt.
1174
1175 In order to extract cookies from browser use any conforming browser
1176 extension for exporting cookies. For example, cookies.txt (for Chrome)
1177 or cookies.txt (for Firefox).
1178
1179 Note that the cookies file must be in Mozilla/Netscape format and the
1180 first line of the cookies file must be either # HTTP Cookie File or
1181 # Netscape HTTP Cookie File. Make sure you have correct newline format
1182 in the cookies file and convert newlines if necessary to correspond with
1183 your OS, namely CRLF (\r\n) for Windows and LF (\n) for Unix and
1184 Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS, etc.). HTTP Error 400: Bad Request when
1185 using --cookies is a good sign of invalid newline format.
1186
1187 Passing cookies to youtube-dl is a good way to workaround login when a
1188 particular extractor does not implement it explicitly. Another use case
1189 is working around CAPTCHA some websites require you to solve in
1190 particular cases in order to get access (e.g. YouTube, CloudFlare).
1191
1192 How do I stream directly to media player?
1193
1194 You will first need to tell youtube-dl to stream media to stdout with
1195 -o -, and also tell your media player to read from stdin (it must be
1196 capable of this for streaming) and then pipe former to latter. For
1197 example, streaming to vlc can be achieved with:
1198
1199 youtube-dl -o - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj" | vlc -
1200
1201 How do I download only new videos from a playlist?
1202
1203 Use download-archive feature. With this feature you should initially
1204 download the complete playlist with
1205 --download-archive /path/to/download/archive/file.txt that will record
1206 identifiers of all the videos in a special file. Each subsequent run
1207 with the same --download-archive will download only new videos and skip
1208 all videos that have been downloaded before. Note that only successful
1209 downloads are recorded in the file.
1210
1211 For example, at first,
1212
1213 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1214
1215 will download the complete PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re playlist
1216 and create a file archive.txt. Each subsequent run will only download
1217 new videos if any:
1218
1219 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1220
1221 Should I add --hls-prefer-native into my config?
1222
1223 When youtube-dl detects an HLS video, it can download it either with the
1224 built-in downloader or ffmpeg. Since many HLS streams are slightly
1225 invalid and ffmpeg/youtube-dl each handle some invalid cases better than
1226 the other, there is an option to switch the downloader if needed.
1227
1228 When youtube-dl knows that one particular downloader works better for a
1229 given website, that downloader will be picked. Otherwise, youtube-dl
1230 will pick the best downloader for general compatibility, which at the
1231 moment happens to be ffmpeg. This choice may change in future versions
1232 of youtube-dl, with improvements of the built-in downloader and/or
1233 ffmpeg.
1234
1235 In particular, the generic extractor (used when your website is not in
1236 the list of supported sites by youtube-dl cannot mandate one specific
1237 downloader.
1238
1239 If you put either --hls-prefer-native or --hls-prefer-ffmpeg into your
1240 configuration, a different subset of videos will fail to download
1241 correctly. Instead, it is much better to file an issue or a pull request
1242 which details why the native or the ffmpeg HLS downloader is a better
1243 choice for your use case.
1244
1245 Can you add support for this anime video site, or site which shows current movies for free?
1246
1247 As a matter of policy (as well as legality), youtube-dl does not include
1248 support for services that specialize in infringing copyright. As a rule
1249 of thumb, if you cannot easily find a video that the service is quite
1250 obviously allowed to distribute (i.e. that has been uploaded by the
1251 creator, the creator's distributor, or is published under a free
1252 license), the service is probably unfit for inclusion to youtube-dl.
1253
1254 A note on the service that they don't host the infringing content, but
1255 just link to those who do, is evidence that the service should NOT be
1256 included into youtube-dl. The same goes for any DMCA note when the whole
1257 front page of the service is filled with videos they are not allowed to
1258 distribute. A "fair use" note is equally unconvincing if the service
1259 shows copyright-protected videos in full without authorization.
1260
1261 Support requests for services that DO purchase the rights to distribute
1262 their content are perfectly fine though. If in doubt, you can simply
1263 include a source that mentions the legitimate purchase of content.
1264
1265 How can I speed up work on my issue?
1266
1267 (Also known as: Help, my important issue not being solved!) The
1268 youtube-dl core developer team is quite small. While we do our best to
1269 solve as many issues as possible, sometimes that can take quite a while.
1270 To speed up your issue, here's what you can do:
1271
1272 First of all, please do report the issue at our issue tracker. That
1273 allows us to coordinate all efforts by users and developers, and serves
1274 as a unified point. Unfortunately, the youtube-dl project has grown too
1275 large to use personal email as an effective communication channel.
1276
1277 Please read the bug reporting instructions below. A lot of bugs lack all
1278 the necessary information. If you can, offer proxy, VPN, or shell access
1279 to the youtube-dl developers. If you are able to, test the issue from
1280 multiple computers in multiple countries to exclude local censorship or
1281 misconfiguration issues.
1282
1283 If nobody is interested in solving your issue, you are welcome to take
1284 matters into your own hands and submit a pull request (or coerce/pay
1285 somebody else to do so).
1286
1287 Feel free to bump the issue from time to time by writing a small comment
1288 ("Issue is still present in youtube-dl version ...from France, but fixed
1289 from Belgium"), but please not more than once a month. Please do not
1290 declare your issue as important or urgent.
1291
1292 How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
1293
1294 For one, have a look at the list of supported sites. Note that it can
1295 sometimes happen that the site changes its URL scheme (say, from
1296 https://example.com/video/1234567 to https://example.com/v/1234567 ) and
1297 youtube-dl reports an URL of a service in that list as unsupported. In
1298 that case, simply report a bug.
1299
1300 It is _not_ possible to detect whether a URL is supported or not. That's
1301 because youtube-dl contains a generic extractor which matches ALL URLs.
1302 You may be tempted to disable, exclude, or remove the generic extractor,
1303 but the generic extractor not only allows users to extract videos from
1304 lots of websites that embed a video from another service, but may also
1305 be used to extract video from a service that it's hosting itself.
1306 Therefore, we neither recommend nor support disabling, excluding, or
1307 removing the generic extractor.
1308
1309 If you want to find out whether a given URL is supported, simply call
1310 youtube-dl with it. If you get no videos back, chances are the URL is
1311 either not referring to a video or unsupported. You can find out which
1312 by examining the output (if you run youtube-dl on the console) or
1313 catching an UnsupportedError exception if you run it from a Python
1314 program.
1315
1316
1317
1318 WHY DO I NEED TO GO THROUGH THAT MUCH RED TAPE WHEN FILING BUGS?
1319
1320
1321 Before we had the issue template, despite our extensive bug reporting
1322 instructions, about 80% of the issue reports we got were useless, for
1323 instance because people used ancient versions hundreds of releases old,
1324 because of simple syntactic errors (not in youtube-dl but in general
1325 shell usage), because the problem was already reported multiple times
1326 before, because people did not actually read an error message, even if
1327 it said "please install ffmpeg", because people did not mention the URL
1328 they were trying to download and many more simple, easy-to-avoid
1329 problems, many of whom were totally unrelated to youtube-dl.
1330
1331 youtube-dl is an open-source project manned by too few volunteers, so
1332 we'd rather spend time fixing bugs where we are certain none of those
1333 simple problems apply, and where we can be reasonably confident to be
1334 able to reproduce the issue without asking the reporter repeatedly. As
1335 such, the output of youtube-dl -v YOUR_URL_HERE is really all that's
1336 required to file an issue. The issue template also guides you through
1337 some basic steps you can do, such as checking that your version of
1338 youtube-dl is current.
1339
1340
1341
1342 DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
1343
1344
1345 Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can download the builds
1346 or get them from their distribution.
1347
1348 To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything
1349 either. Simply execute
1350
1351 python -m youtube_dl
1352
1353 To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a
1354 test file directly; any of the following work:
1355
1356 python -m unittest discover
1357 python test/test_download.py
1358 nosetests
1359
1360 See item 6 of new extractor tutorial for how to run extractor specific
1361 test cases.
1362
1363 If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need
1364
1365 - python
1366 - make (only GNU make is supported)
1367 - pandoc
1368 - zip
1369 - nosetests
1370
1371 Adding support for a new site
1372
1373 If you want to add support for a new site, first of all MAKE SURE this
1374 site is NOT DEDICATED TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. youtube-dl does NOT
1375 SUPPORT such sites thus pull requests adding support for them WILL BE
1376 REJECTED.
1377
1378 After you have ensured this site is distributing its content legally,
1379 you can follow this quick list (assuming your service is called
1380 yourextractor):
1381
1382 1. Fork this repository
1383 2. Check out the source code with:
1384
1385 git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
1386
1387 3. Start a new git branch with
1388
1389 cd youtube-dl
1390 git checkout -b yourextractor
1391
1392 4. Start with this simple template and save it to
1393 youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py:
1394
1395 # coding: utf-8
1396 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1397
1398 from .common import InfoExtractor
1399
1400
1401 class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
1402 _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
1403 _TEST = {
1404 'url': 'https://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
1405 'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
1406 'info_dict': {
1407 'id': '42',
1408 'ext': 'mp4',
1409 'title': 'Video title goes here',
1410 'thumbnail': r're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
1411 # TODO more properties, either as:
1412 # * A value
1413 # * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
1414 # * A regular expression; start the string with re:
1415 # * Any Python type (for example int or float)
1416 }
1417 }
1418
1419 def _real_extract(self, url):
1420 video_id = self._match_id(url)
1421 webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
1422
1423 # TODO more code goes here, for example ...
1424 title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
1425
1426 return {
1427 'id': video_id,
1428 'title': title,
1429 'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
1430 'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
1431 # TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
1432 }
1433
1434 5. Add an import in youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py.
1435 6. Run python test/test_download.py TestDownload.test_YourExtractor.
1436 This _should fail_ at first, but you can continually re-run it until
1437 you're done. If you decide to add more than one test, then rename
1438 _TEST to _TESTS and make it into a list of dictionaries. The tests
1439 will then be named TestDownload.test_YourExtractor,
1440 TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_1,
1441 TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_2, etc. Note that tests with
1442 only_matching key in test's dict are not counted in.
1443 7. Have a look at youtube_dl/extractor/common.py for possible helper
1444 methods and a detailed description of what your extractor should and
1445 may return. Add tests and code for as many as you want.
1446 8. Make sure your code follows youtube-dl coding conventions and check
1447 the code with flake8:
1448
1449 $ flake8 youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
1450
1451 9. Make sure your code works under all Python versions claimed
1452 supported by youtube-dl, namely 2.6, 2.7, and 3.2+.
1453 10. When the tests pass, add the new files and commit them and push the
1454 result, like this:
1455
1456 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
1457 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
1458 $ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
1459 $ git push origin yourextractor
1460
1461 11. Finally, create a pull request. We'll then review and merge it.
1462
1463 In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!
1464
1465
1466 youtube-dl coding conventions
1467
1468 This section introduces a guide lines for writing idiomatic, robust and
1469 future-proof extractor code.
1470
1471 Extractors are very fragile by nature since they depend on the layout of
1472 the source data provided by 3rd party media hosters out of your control
1473 and this layout tends to change. As an extractor implementer your task
1474 is not only to write code that will extract media links and metadata
1475 correctly but also to minimize dependency on the source's layout and
1476 even to make the code foresee potential future changes and be ready for
1477 that. This is important because it will allow the extractor not to break
1478 on minor layout changes thus keeping old youtube-dl versions working.
1479 Even though this breakage issue is easily fixed by emitting a new
1480 version of youtube-dl with a fix incorporated, all the previous versions
1481 become broken in all repositories and distros' packages that may not be
1482 so prompt in fetching the update from us. Needless to say, some non
1483 rolling release distros may never receive an update at all.
1484
1485 Mandatory and optional metafields
1486
1487 For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor
1488 extracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by an information
1489 dictionary or simply _info dict_. Only the following meta fields in the
1490 _info dict_ are considered mandatory for a successful extraction process
1491 by youtube-dl:
1492
1493 - id (media identifier)
1494 - title (media title)
1495 - url (media download URL) or formats
1496
1497 In fact only the last option is technically mandatory (i.e. if you can't
1498 figure out the download location of the media the extraction does not
1499 make any sense). But by convention youtube-dl also treats id and title
1500 as mandatory. Thus the aforementioned metafields are the critical data
1501 that the extraction does not make any sense without and if any of them
1502 fail to be extracted then the extractor is considered completely broken.
1503
1504 Any field apart from the aforementioned ones are considered OPTIONAL.
1505 That means that extraction should be TOLERANT to situations when sources
1506 for these fields can potentially be unavailable (even if they are always
1507 available at the moment) and FUTURE-PROOF in order not to break the
1508 extraction of general purpose mandatory fields.
1509
1510 Example
1511
1512 Say you have some source dictionary meta that you've fetched as JSON
1513 with HTTP request and it has a key summary:
1514
1515 meta = self._download_json(url, video_id)
1516
1517 Assume at this point meta's layout is:
1518
1519 {
1520 ...
1521 "summary": "some fancy summary text",
1522 ...
1523 }
1524
1525 Assume you want to extract summary and put it into the resulting info
1526 dict as description. Since description is an optional meta field you
1527 should be ready that this key may be missing from the meta dict, so that
1528 you should extract it like:
1529
1530 description = meta.get('summary') # correct
1531
1532 and not like:
1533
1534 description = meta['summary'] # incorrect
1535
1536 The latter will break extraction process with KeyError if summary
1537 disappears from meta at some later time but with the former approach
1538 extraction will just go ahead with description set to None which is
1539 perfectly fine (remember None is equivalent to the absence of data).
1540
1541 Similarly, you should pass fatal=False when extracting optional data
1542 from a webpage with _search_regex, _html_search_regex or similar
1543 methods, for instance:
1544
1545 description = self._search_regex(
1546 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1547 webpage, 'description', fatal=False)
1548
1549 With fatal set to False if _search_regex fails to extract description it
1550 will emit a warning and continue extraction.
1551
1552 You can also pass default=<some fallback value>, for example:
1553
1554 description = self._search_regex(
1555 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1556 webpage, 'description', default=None)
1557
1558 On failure this code will silently continue the extraction with
1559 description set to None. That is useful for metafields that may or may
1560 not be present.
1561
1562 Provide fallbacks
1563
1564 When extracting metadata try to do so from multiple sources. For example
1565 if title is present in several places, try extracting from at least some
1566 of them. This makes it more future-proof in case some of the sources
1567 become unavailable.
1568
1569 Example
1570
1571 Say meta from the previous example has a title and you are about to
1572 extract it. Since title is a mandatory meta field you should end up with
1573 something like:
1574
1575 title = meta['title']
1576
1577 If title disappears from meta in future due to some changes on the
1578 hoster's side the extraction would fail since title is mandatory. That's
1579 expected.
1580
1581 Assume that you have some another source you can extract title from, for
1582 example og:title HTML meta of a webpage. In this case you can provide a
1583 fallback scenario:
1584
1585 title = meta.get('title') or self._og_search_title(webpage)
1586
1587 This code will try to extract from meta first and if it fails it will
1588 try extracting og:title from a webpage.
1589
1590 Regular expressions
1591
1592 Don't capture groups you don't use
1593
1594 Capturing group must be an indication that it's used somewhere in the
1595 code. Any group that is not used must be non capturing.
1596
1597 Example
1598
1599 Don't capture id attribute name here since you can't use it for anything
1600 anyway.
1601
1602 Correct:
1603
1604 r'(?:id|ID)=(?P<id>\d+)'
1605
1606 Incorrect:
1607
1608 r'(id|ID)=(?P<id>\d+)'
1609
1610 Make regular expressions relaxed and flexible
1611
1612 When using regular expressions try to write them fuzzy, relaxed and
1613 flexible, skipping insignificant parts that are more likely to change,
1614 allowing both single and double quotes for quoted values and so on.
1615
1616 Example
1617
1618 Say you need to extract title from the following HTML code:
1619
1620 <span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">some fancy title</span>
1621
1622 The code for that task should look similar to:
1623
1624 title = self._search_regex(
1625 r'<span[^>]+class="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)', webpage, 'title')
1626
1627 Or even better:
1628
1629 title = self._search_regex(
1630 r'<span[^>]+class=(["\'])title\1[^>]*>(?P<title>[^<]+)',
1631 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1632
1633 Note how you tolerate potential changes in the style attribute's value
1634 or switch from using double quotes to single for class attribute:
1635
1636 The code definitely should not look like:
1637
1638 title = self._search_regex(
1639 r'<span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">(.*?)</span>',
1640 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1641
1642 Long lines policy
1643
1644 There is a soft limit to keep lines of code under 80 characters long.
1645 This means it should be respected if possible and if it does not make
1646 readability and code maintenance worse.
1647
1648 For example, you should NEVER split long string literals like URLs or
1649 some other often copied entities over multiple lines to fit this limit:
1650
1651 Correct:
1652
1653 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZTN594JQw&list=PLMYEtVRpaqY00V9W81Cwmzp6N6vZqfUKD4'
1654
1655 Incorrect:
1656
1657 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZTN594JQw&list='
1658 'PLMYEtVRpaqY00V9W81Cwmzp6N6vZqfUKD4'
1659
1660 Inline values
1661
1662 Extracting variables is acceptable for reducing code duplication and
1663 improving readability of complex expressions. However, you should avoid
1664 extracting variables used only once and moving them to opposite parts of
1665 the extractor file, which makes reading the linear flow difficult.
1666
1667 Example
1668
1669 Correct:
1670
1671 title = self._html_search_regex(r'<title>([^<]+)</title>', webpage, 'title')
1672
1673 Incorrect:
1674
1675 TITLE_RE = r'<title>([^<]+)</title>'
1676 # ...some lines of code...
1677 title = self._html_search_regex(TITLE_RE, webpage, 'title')
1678
1679 Collapse fallbacks
1680
1681 Multiple fallback values can quickly become unwieldy. Collapse multiple
1682 fallback values into a single expression via a list of patterns.
1683
1684 Example
1685
1686 Good:
1687
1688 description = self._html_search_meta(
1689 ['og:description', 'description', 'twitter:description'],
1690 webpage, 'description', default=None)
1691
1692 Unwieldy:
1693
1694 description = (
1695 self._og_search_description(webpage, default=None)
1696 or self._html_search_meta('description', webpage, default=None)
1697 or self._html_search_meta('twitter:description', webpage, default=None))
1698
1699 Methods supporting list of patterns are: _search_regex,
1700 _html_search_regex, _og_search_property, _html_search_meta.
1701
1702 Trailing parentheses
1703
1704 Always move trailing parentheses after the last argument.
1705
1706 Example
1707
1708 Correct:
1709
1710 lambda x: x['ResultSet']['Result'][0]['VideoUrlSet']['VideoUrl'],
1711 list)
1712
1713 Incorrect:
1714
1715 lambda x: x['ResultSet']['Result'][0]['VideoUrlSet']['VideoUrl'],
1716 list,
1717 )
1718
1719 Use convenience conversion and parsing functions
1720
1721 Wrap all extracted numeric data into safe functions from
1722 youtube_dl/utils.py: int_or_none, float_or_none. Use them for string to
1723 number conversions as well.
1724
1725 Use url_or_none for safe URL processing.
1726
1727 Use try_get for safe metadata extraction from parsed JSON.
1728
1729 Use unified_strdate for uniform upload_date or any YYYYMMDD meta field
1730 extraction, unified_timestamp for uniform timestamp extraction,
1731 parse_filesize for filesize extraction, parse_count for count meta
1732 fields extraction, parse_resolution, parse_duration for duration
1733 extraction, parse_age_limit for age_limit extraction.
1734
1735 Explore youtube_dl/utils.py for more useful convenience functions.
1736
1737 More examples
1738
1739 Safely extract optional description from parsed JSON
1740
1741 description = try_get(response, lambda x: x['result']['video'][0]['summary'], compat_str)
1742
1743 Safely extract more optional metadata
1744
1745 video = try_get(response, lambda x: x['result']['video'][0], dict) or {}
1746 description = video.get('summary')
1747 duration = float_or_none(video.get('durationMs'), scale=1000)
1748 view_count = int_or_none(video.get('views'))
1749
1750
1751
1752 EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
1753
1754
1755 youtube-dl makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and
1756 thus should be callable from any programming language. If you encounter
1757 any problems parsing its output, feel free to create a report.
1758
1759 From a Python program, you can embed youtube-dl in a more powerful
1760 fashion, like this:
1761
1762 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1763 import youtube_dl
1764
1765 ydl_opts = {}
1766 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1767 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1768
1769 Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options
1770 available, have a look at youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py. For a start, if you
1771 want to intercept youtube-dl's output, set a logger object.
1772
1773 Here's a more complete example of a program that outputs only errors
1774 (and a short message after the download is finished), and
1775 downloads/converts the video to an mp3 file:
1776
1777 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1778 import youtube_dl
1779
1780
1781 class MyLogger(object):
1782 def debug(self, msg):
1783 pass
1784
1785 def warning(self, msg):
1786 pass
1787
1788 def error(self, msg):
1789 print(msg)
1790
1791
1792 def my_hook(d):
1793 if d['status'] == 'finished':
1794 print('Done downloading, now converting ...')
1795
1796
1797 ydl_opts = {
1798 'format': 'bestaudio/best',
1799 'postprocessors': [{
1800 'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
1801 'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
1802 'preferredquality': '192',
1803 }],
1804 'logger': MyLogger(),
1805 'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
1806 }
1807 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1808 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1809
1810
1811
1812 BUGS
1813
1814
1815 Bugs and suggestions should be reported at:
1816 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues. Unless you were prompted
1817 to or there is another pertinent reason (e.g. GitHub fails to accept the
1818 bug report), please do not send bug reports via personal email. For
1819 discussions, join us in the IRC channel #youtube-dl on freenode
1820 (webchat).
1821
1822 PLEASE INCLUDE THE FULL OUTPUT OF YOUTUBE-DL WHEN RUN WITH -v, i.e. ADD
1823 -v flag to YOUR COMMAND LINE, copy the WHOLE output and post it in the
1824 issue body wrapped in ``` for better formatting. It should look similar
1825 to this:
1826
1827 $ youtube-dl -v <your command line>
1828 [debug] System config: []
1829 [debug] User config: []
1830 [debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
1831 [debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
1832 [debug] youtube-dl version 2015.12.06
1833 [debug] Git HEAD: 135392e
1834 [debug] Python version 2.6.6 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
1835 [debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
1836 [debug] Proxy map: {}
1837 ...
1838
1839 DO NOT POST SCREENSHOTS OF VERBOSE LOGS; ONLY PLAIN TEXT IS ACCEPTABLE.
1840
1841 The output (including the first lines) contains important debugging
1842 information. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible
1843 and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
1844
1845 Please re-read your issue once again to avoid a couple of common
1846 mistakes (you can and should use this as a checklist):
1847
1848 Is the description of the issue itself sufficient?
1849
1850 We often get issue reports that we cannot really decipher. While in most
1851 cases we eventually get the required information after asking back
1852 multiple times, this poses an unnecessary drain on our resources. Many
1853 contributors, including myself, are also not native speakers, so we may
1854 misread some parts.
1855
1856 So please elaborate on what feature you are requesting, or what bug you
1857 want to be fixed. Make sure that it's obvious
1858
1859 - What the problem is
1860 - How it could be fixed
1861 - How your proposed solution would look like
1862
1863 If your report is shorter than two lines, it is almost certainly missing
1864 some of these, which makes it hard for us to respond to it. We're often
1865 too polite to close the issue outright, but the missing info makes
1866 misinterpretation likely. As a committer myself, I often get frustrated
1867 by these issues, since the only possible way for me to move forward on
1868 them is to ask for clarification over and over.
1869
1870 For bug reports, this means that your report should contain the
1871 _complete_ output of youtube-dl when called with the -v flag. The error
1872 message you get for (most) bugs even says so, but you would not believe
1873 how many of our bug reports do not contain this information.
1874
1875 If your server has multiple IPs or you suspect censorship, adding
1876 --call-home may be a good idea to get more diagnostics. If the error is
1877 ERROR: Unable to extract ... and you cannot reproduce it from multiple
1878 countries, add --dump-pages (warning: this will yield a rather large
1879 output, redirect it to the file log.txt by adding >log.txt 2>&1 to your
1880 command-line) or upload the .dump files you get when you add
1881 --write-pages somewhere.
1882
1883 SITE SUPPORT REQUESTS MUST CONTAIN AN EXAMPLE URL. An example URL is a
1884 URL you might want to download, like
1885 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc. There should be an obvious
1886 video present. Except under very special circumstances, the main page of
1887 a video service (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/) is _not_ an example URL.
1888
1889 Are you using the latest version?
1890
1891 Before reporting any issue, type youtube-dl -U. This should report that
1892 you're up-to-date. About 20% of the reports we receive are already
1893 fixed, but people are using outdated versions. This goes for feature
1894 requests as well.
1895
1896 Is the issue already documented?
1897
1898 Make sure that someone has not already opened the issue you're trying to
1899 open. Search at the top of the window or browse the GitHub Issues of
1900 this repository. If there is an issue, feel free to write something
1901 along the lines of "This affects me as well, with version 2015.01.01.
1902 Here is some more information on the issue: ...". While some issues may
1903 be old, a new post into them often spurs rapid activity.
1904
1905 Why are existing options not enough?
1906
1907 Before requesting a new feature, please have a quick peek at the list of
1908 supported options. Many feature requests are for features that actually
1909 exist already! Please, absolutely do show off your work in the issue
1910 report and detail how the existing similar options do _not_ solve your
1911 problem.
1912
1913 Is there enough context in your bug report?
1914
1915 People want to solve problems, and often think they do us a favor by
1916 breaking down their larger problems (e.g. wanting to skip already
1917 downloaded files) to a specific request (e.g. requesting us to look
1918 whether the file exists before downloading the info page). However, what
1919 often happens is that they break down the problem into two steps: One
1920 simple, and one impossible (or extremely complicated one).
1921
1922 We are then presented with a very complicated request when the original
1923 problem could be solved far easier, e.g. by recording the downloaded
1924 video IDs in a separate file. To avoid this, you must include the
1925 greater context where it is non-obvious. In particular, every feature
1926 request that does not consist of adding support for a new site should
1927 contain a use case scenario that explains in what situation the missing
1928 feature would be useful.
1929
1930 Does the issue involve one problem, and one problem only?
1931
1932 Some of our users seem to think there is a limit of issues they can or
1933 should open. There is no limit of issues they can or should open. While
1934 it may seem appealing to be able to dump all your issues into one
1935 ticket, that means that someone who solves one of your issues cannot
1936 mark the issue as closed. Typically, reporting a bunch of issues leads
1937 to the ticket lingering since nobody wants to attack that behemoth,
1938 until someone mercifully splits the issue into multiple ones.
1939
1940 In particular, every site support request issue should only pertain to
1941 services at one site (generally under a common domain, but always using
1942 the same backend technology). Do not request support for vimeo user
1943 videos, White house podcasts, and Google Plus pages in the same issue.
1944 Also, make sure that you don't post bug reports alongside feature
1945 requests. As a rule of thumb, a feature request does not include outputs
1946 of youtube-dl that are not immediately related to the feature at hand.
1947 Do not post reports of a network error alongside the request for a new
1948 video service.
1949
1950 Is anyone going to need the feature?
1951
1952 Only post features that you (or an incapacitated friend you can
1953 personally talk to) require. Do not post features because they seem like
1954 a good idea. If they are really useful, they will be requested by
1955 someone who requires them.
1956
1957 Is your question about youtube-dl?
1958
1959 It may sound strange, but some bug reports we receive are completely
1960 unrelated to youtube-dl and relate to a different, or even the
1961 reporter's own, application. Please make sure that you are actually
1962 using youtube-dl. If you are using a UI for youtube-dl, report the bug
1963 to the maintainer of the actual application providing the UI. On the
1964 other hand, if your UI for youtube-dl fails in some way you believe is
1965 related to youtube-dl, by all means, go ahead and report the bug.
1966
1967
1968
1969 COPYRIGHT
1970
1971
1972 youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
1973
1974 This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton and is likewise
1975 released into the public domain.