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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, OS X, 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 OS X 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 experimental SOCKS proxy, specify
120 a proper 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 options is not present) is used for the
135 actual downloading.
136 --geo-bypass Bypass geographic restriction via faking
137 X-Forwarded-For HTTP header (experimental)
138 --no-geo-bypass Do not bypass geographic restriction via
139 faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
140 (experimental)
141 --geo-bypass-country CODE Force bypass geographic restriction with
142 explicitly provided two-letter ISO 3166-2
143 country code (experimental)
144
145
146 Video Selection:
147
148 --playlist-start NUMBER Playlist video to start at (default is 1)
149 --playlist-end NUMBER Playlist video to end at (default is last)
150 --playlist-items ITEM_SPEC Playlist video items to download. Specify
151 indices of the videos in the playlist
152 separated by commas like: "--playlist-items
153 1,2,5,8" if you want to download videos
154 indexed 1, 2, 5, 8 in the playlist. You can
155 specify range: "--playlist-items
156 1-3,7,10-13", it will download the videos
157 at index 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
158 --match-title REGEX Download only matching titles (regex or
159 caseless sub-string)
160 --reject-title REGEX Skip download for matching titles (regex or
161 caseless sub-string)
162 --max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files
163 --min-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos smaller than
164 SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
165 --max-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos larger than SIZE
166 (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
167 --date DATE Download only videos uploaded in this date
168 --datebefore DATE Download only videos uploaded on or before
169 this date (i.e. inclusive)
170 --dateafter DATE Download only videos uploaded on or after
171 this date (i.e. inclusive)
172 --min-views COUNT Do not download any videos with less than
173 COUNT views
174 --max-views COUNT Do not download any videos with more than
175 COUNT views
176 --match-filter FILTER Generic video filter. Specify any key (see
177 the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a list of
178 available keys) to match if the key is
179 present, !key to check if the key is not
180 present, key > NUMBER (like "comment_count
181 > 12", also works with >=, <, <=, !=, =) to
182 compare against a number, key = 'LITERAL'
183 (like "uploader = 'Mike Smith'", also works
184 with !=) to match against a string literal
185 and & to require multiple matches. Values
186 which are not known are excluded unless you
187 put a question mark (?) after the operator.
188 For example, to only match videos that have
189 been liked more than 100 times and disliked
190 less than 50 times (or the dislike
191 functionality is not available at the given
192 service), but who also have a description,
193 use --match-filter "like_count > 100 &
194 dislike_count <? 50 & description" .
195 --no-playlist Download only the video, if the URL refers
196 to a video and a playlist.
197 --yes-playlist Download the playlist, if the URL refers to
198 a video and a playlist.
199 --age-limit YEARS Download only videos suitable for the given
200 age
201 --download-archive FILE Download only videos not listed in the
202 archive file. Record the IDs of all
203 downloaded videos in it.
204 --include-ads Download advertisements as well
205 (experimental)
206
207
208 Download Options:
209
210 -r, --limit-rate RATE Maximum download rate in bytes per second
211 (e.g. 50K or 4.2M)
212 -R, --retries RETRIES Number of retries (default is 10), or
213 "infinite".
214 --fragment-retries RETRIES Number of retries for a fragment (default
215 is 10), or "infinite" (DASH, hlsnative and
216 ISM)
217 --skip-unavailable-fragments Skip unavailable fragments (DASH, hlsnative
218 and ISM)
219 --abort-on-unavailable-fragment Abort downloading when some fragment is not
220 available
221 --keep-fragments Keep downloaded fragments on disk after
222 downloading is finished; fragments are
223 erased by default
224 --buffer-size SIZE Size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16K)
225 (default is 1024)
226 --no-resize-buffer Do not automatically adjust the buffer
227 size. By default, the buffer size is
228 automatically resized from an initial value
229 of SIZE.
230 --playlist-reverse Download playlist videos in reverse order
231 --playlist-random Download playlist videos in random order
232 --xattr-set-filesize Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with
233 expected file size (experimental)
234 --hls-prefer-native Use the native HLS downloader instead of
235 ffmpeg
236 --hls-prefer-ffmpeg Use ffmpeg instead of the native HLS
237 downloader
238 --hls-use-mpegts Use the mpegts container for HLS videos,
239 allowing to play the video while
240 downloading (some players may not be able
241 to play it)
242 --external-downloader COMMAND Use the specified external downloader.
243 Currently supports
244 aria2c,avconv,axel,curl,ffmpeg,httpie,wget
245 --external-downloader-args ARGS Give these arguments to the external
246 downloader
247
248
249 Filesystem Options:
250
251 -a, --batch-file FILE File containing URLs to download ('-' for
252 stdin)
253 --id Use only video ID in file name
254 -o, --output TEMPLATE Output filename template, see the "OUTPUT
255 TEMPLATE" for all the info
256 --autonumber-start NUMBER Specify the start value for %(autonumber)s
257 (default is 1)
258 --restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII
259 characters, and avoid "&" and spaces in
260 filenames
261 -w, --no-overwrites Do not overwrite files
262 -c, --continue Force resume of partially downloaded files.
263 By default, youtube-dl will resume
264 downloads if possible.
265 --no-continue Do not resume partially downloaded files
266 (restart from beginning)
267 --no-part Do not use .part files - write directly
268 into output file
269 --no-mtime Do not use the Last-modified header to set
270 the file modification time
271 --write-description Write video description to a .description
272 file
273 --write-info-json Write video metadata to a .info.json file
274 --write-annotations Write video annotations to a
275 .annotations.xml file
276 --load-info-json FILE JSON file containing the video information
277 (created with the "--write-info-json"
278 option)
279 --cookies FILE File to read cookies from and dump cookie
280 jar in
281 --cache-dir DIR Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl
282 can store some downloaded information
283 permanently. By default
284 $XDG_CACHE_HOME/youtube-dl or
285 ~/.cache/youtube-dl . At the moment, only
286 YouTube player files (for videos with
287 obfuscated signatures) are cached, but that
288 may change.
289 --no-cache-dir Disable filesystem caching
290 --rm-cache-dir Delete all filesystem cache files
291
292
293 Thumbnail images:
294
295 --write-thumbnail Write thumbnail image to disk
296 --write-all-thumbnails Write all thumbnail image formats to disk
297 --list-thumbnails Simulate and list all available thumbnail
298 formats
299
300
301 Verbosity / Simulation Options:
302
303 -q, --quiet Activate quiet mode
304 --no-warnings Ignore warnings
305 -s, --simulate Do not download the video and do not write
306 anything to disk
307 --skip-download Do not download the video
308 -g, --get-url Simulate, quiet but print URL
309 -e, --get-title Simulate, quiet but print title
310 --get-id Simulate, quiet but print id
311 --get-thumbnail Simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
312 --get-description Simulate, quiet but print video description
313 --get-duration Simulate, quiet but print video length
314 --get-filename Simulate, quiet but print output filename
315 --get-format Simulate, quiet but print output format
316 -j, --dump-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information.
317 See the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a description
318 of available keys.
319 -J, --dump-single-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information
320 for each command-line argument. If the URL
321 refers to a playlist, dump the whole
322 playlist information in a single line.
323 --print-json Be quiet and print the video information as
324 JSON (video is still being downloaded).
325 --newline Output progress bar as new lines
326 --no-progress Do not print progress bar
327 --console-title Display progress in console titlebar
328 -v, --verbose Print various debugging information
329 --dump-pages Print downloaded pages encoded using base64
330 to debug problems (very verbose)
331 --write-pages Write downloaded intermediary pages to
332 files in the current directory to debug
333 problems
334 --print-traffic Display sent and read HTTP traffic
335 -C, --call-home Contact the youtube-dl server for debugging
336 --no-call-home Do NOT contact the youtube-dl server for
337 debugging
338
339
340 Workarounds:
341
342 --encoding ENCODING Force the specified encoding (experimental)
343 --no-check-certificate Suppress HTTPS certificate validation
344 --prefer-insecure Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve
345 information about the video. (Currently
346 supported only for YouTube)
347 --user-agent UA Specify a custom user agent
348 --referer URL Specify a custom referer, use if the video
349 access is restricted to one domain
350 --add-header FIELD:VALUE Specify a custom HTTP header and its value,
351 separated by a colon ':'. You can use this
352 option multiple times
353 --bidi-workaround Work around terminals that lack
354 bidirectional text support. Requires bidiv
355 or fribidi executable in PATH
356 --sleep-interval SECONDS Number of seconds to sleep before each
357 download when used alone or a lower bound
358 of a range for randomized sleep before each
359 download (minimum possible number of
360 seconds to sleep) when used along with
361 --max-sleep-interval.
362 --max-sleep-interval SECONDS Upper bound of a range for randomized sleep
363 before each download (maximum possible
364 number of seconds to sleep). Must only be
365 used along with --min-sleep-interval.
366
367
368 Video Format Options:
369
370 -f, --format FORMAT Video format code, see the "FORMAT
371 SELECTION" for all the info
372 --all-formats Download all available video formats
373 --prefer-free-formats Prefer free video formats unless a specific
374 one is requested
375 -F, --list-formats List all available formats of requested
376 videos
377 --youtube-skip-dash-manifest Do not download the DASH manifests and
378 related data on YouTube videos
379 --merge-output-format FORMAT If a merge is required (e.g.
380 bestvideo+bestaudio), output to given
381 container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg,
382 webm, flv. Ignored if no merge is required
383
384
385 Subtitle Options:
386
387 --write-sub Write subtitle file
388 --write-auto-sub Write automatically generated subtitle file
389 (YouTube only)
390 --all-subs Download all the available subtitles of the
391 video
392 --list-subs List all available subtitles for the video
393 --sub-format FORMAT Subtitle format, accepts formats
394 preference, for example: "srt" or
395 "ass/srt/best"
396 --sub-lang LANGS Languages of the subtitles to download
397 (optional) separated by commas, use --list-
398 subs for available language tags
399
400
401 Authentication Options:
402
403 -u, --username USERNAME Login with this account ID
404 -p, --password PASSWORD Account password. If this option is left
405 out, youtube-dl will ask interactively.
406 -2, --twofactor TWOFACTOR Two-factor authentication code
407 -n, --netrc Use .netrc authentication data
408 --video-password PASSWORD Video password (vimeo, smotri, youku)
409
410
411 Adobe Pass Options:
412
413 --ap-mso MSO Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV
414 provider) identifier, use --ap-list-mso for
415 a list of available MSOs
416 --ap-username USERNAME Multiple-system operator account login
417 --ap-password PASSWORD Multiple-system operator account password.
418 If this option is left out, youtube-dl will
419 ask interactively.
420 --ap-list-mso List all supported multiple-system
421 operators
422
423
424 Post-processing Options:
425
426 -x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files
427 (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or
428 avprobe)
429 --audio-format FORMAT Specify audio format: "best", "aac",
430 "flac", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", "vorbis", or
431 "wav"; "best" by default; No effect without
432 -x
433 --audio-quality QUALITY Specify ffmpeg/avconv audio quality, insert
434 a value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse)
435 for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K
436 (default 5)
437 --recode-video FORMAT Encode the video to another format if
438 necessary (currently supported:
439 mp4|flv|ogg|webm|mkv|avi)
440 --postprocessor-args ARGS Give these arguments to the postprocessor
441 -k, --keep-video Keep the video file on disk after the post-
442 processing; the video is erased by default
443 --no-post-overwrites Do not overwrite post-processed files; the
444 post-processed files are overwritten by
445 default
446 --embed-subs Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4,
447 webm and mkv videos)
448 --embed-thumbnail Embed thumbnail in the audio as cover art
449 --add-metadata Write metadata to the video file
450 --metadata-from-title FORMAT Parse additional metadata like song title /
451 artist from the video title. The format
452 syntax is the same as --output. Regular
453 expression with named capture groups may
454 also be used. The parsed parameters replace
455 existing values. Example: --metadata-from-
456 title "%(artist)s - %(title)s" matches a
457 title like "Coldplay - Paradise". Example
458 (regex): --metadata-from-title
459 "(?P<artist>.+?) - (?P<title>.+)"
460 --xattrs Write metadata to the video file's xattrs
461 (using dublin core and xdg standards)
462 --fixup POLICY Automatically correct known faults of the
463 file. One of never (do nothing), warn (only
464 emit a warning), detect_or_warn (the
465 default; fix file if we can, warn
466 otherwise)
467 --prefer-avconv Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running the
468 postprocessors (default)
469 --prefer-ffmpeg Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running the
470 postprocessors
471 --ffmpeg-location PATH Location of the ffmpeg/avconv binary;
472 either the path to the binary or its
473 containing directory.
474 --exec CMD Execute a command on the file after
475 downloading, similar to find's -exec
476 syntax. Example: --exec 'adb push {}
477 /sdcard/Music/ && rm {}'
478 --convert-subs FORMAT Convert the subtitles to other format
479 (currently supported: srt|ass|vtt|lrc)
480
481
482
483 CONFIGURATION
484
485
486 You can configure youtube-dl by placing any supported command line
487 option to a configuration file. On Linux and OS X, the system wide
488 configuration file is located at /etc/youtube-dl.conf and the user wide
489 configuration file at ~/.config/youtube-dl/config. On Windows, the user
490 wide configuration file locations are %APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt or
491 C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf. Note that by default configuration
492 file may not exist so you may need to create it yourself.
493
494 For example, with the following configuration file youtube-dl will
495 always extract the audio, not copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all
496 videos under Movies directory in your home directory:
497
498 # Lines starting with # are comments
499
500 # Always extract audio
501 -x
502
503 # Do not copy the mtime
504 --no-mtime
505
506 # Use this proxy
507 --proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
508
509 # Save all videos under Movies directory in your home directory
510 -o ~/Movies/%(title)s.%(ext)s
511
512 Note that options in configuration file are just the same options aka
513 switches used in regular command line calls thus there MUST BE NO
514 WHITESPACE after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy.
515
516 You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable the configuration
517 file for a particular youtube-dl run.
518
519 You can also use --config-location if you want to use custom
520 configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.
521
522 Authentication with .netrc file
523
524 You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for
525 extractors that support authentication (by providing login and password
526 with --username and --password) in order not to pass credentials as
527 command line arguments on every youtube-dl execution and prevent
528 tracking plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can
529 achieve this using a .netrc file on a per extractor basis. For that you
530 will need to create a .netrc file in your $HOME and restrict permissions
531 to read/write by only you:
532
533 touch $HOME/.netrc
534 chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc
535
536 After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following
537 format, where _extractor_ is the name of the extractor in lowercase:
538
539 machine <extractor> login <login> password <password>
540
541 For example:
542
543 machine youtube login myaccount@gmail.com password my_youtube_password
544 machine twitch login my_twitch_account_name password my_twitch_password
545
546 To activate authentication with the .netrc file you should pass --netrc
547 to youtube-dl or place it in the configuration file.
548
549 On Windows you may also need to setup the %HOME% environment variable
550 manually. For example:
551
552 set HOME=%USERPROFILE%
553
554
555
556 OUTPUT TEMPLATE
557
558
559 The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file
560 names.
561
562 TL;DR: navigate me to examples.
563
564 The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a
565 single file, like in youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv "https://some/video".
566 However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced when
567 downloading each video. The special sequences may be formatted according
568 to python string formatting operations. For example, %(NAME)s or
569 %(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in
570 parentheses, followed by a formatting operations. Allowed names along
571 with sequence type are:
572
573 - id (string): Video identifier
574 - title (string): Video title
575 - url (string): Video URL
576 - ext (string): Video filename extension
577 - alt_title (string): A secondary title of the video
578 - display_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video
579 - uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader
580 - license (string): License name the video is licensed under
581 - creator (string): The creator of the video
582 - release_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was
583 released
584 - timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became
585 available
586 - upload_date (string): Video upload date (YYYYMMDD)
587 - uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader
588 - location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed
589 - duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds
590 - view_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the
591 platform
592 - like_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video
593 - dislike_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video
594 - repost_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video
595 - average_rating (numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale
596 used depends on the webpage
597 - comment_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video
598 - age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)
599 - is_live (boolean): Whether this video is a live stream or a
600 fixed-length video
601 - start_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should
602 start, as specified in the URL
603 - end_time (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should
604 end, as specified in the URL
605 - format (string): A human-readable description of the format
606 - format_id (string): Format code specified by --format
607 - format_note (string): Additional info about the format
608 - width (numeric): Width of the video
609 - height (numeric): Height of the video
610 - resolution (string): Textual description of width and height
611 - tbr (numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
612 - abr (numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
613 - acodec (string): Name of the audio codec in use
614 - asr (numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertz
615 - vbr (numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/s
616 - fps (numeric): Frame rate
617 - vcodec (string): Name of the video codec in use
618 - container (string): Name of the container format
619 - filesize (numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advance
620 - filesize_approx (numeric): An estimate for the number of bytes
621 - protocol (string): The protocol that will be used for the actual
622 download
623 - extractor (string): Name of the extractor
624 - extractor_key (string): Key name of the extractor
625 - epoch (numeric): Unix epoch when creating the file
626 - autonumber (numeric): Five-digit number that will be increased with
627 each download, starting at zero
628 - playlist (string): Name or id of the playlist that contains the
629 video
630 - playlist_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded
631 with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist
632 - playlist_id (string): Playlist identifier
633 - playlist_title (string): Playlist title
634 - playlist_uploader (string): Full name of the playlist uploader
635 - playlist_uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the playlist
636 uploader
637
638 Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:
639
640 - chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to
641 - chapter_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to
642 - chapter_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to
643
644 Available for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:
645
646 - series (string): Title of the series or programme the video episode
647 belongs to
648 - season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to
649 - season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode
650 belongs to
651 - season_id (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to
652 - episode (string): Title of the video episode
653 - episode_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a
654 season
655 - episode_id (string): Id of the video episode
656
657 Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:
658
659 - track (string): Title of the track
660 - track_number (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a
661 disc
662 - track_id (string): Id of the track
663 - artist (string): Artist(s) of the track
664 - genre (string): Genre(s) of the track
665 - album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to
666 - album_type (string): Type of the album
667 - album_artist (string): List of all artists appeared on the album
668 - disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium
669 the track belongs to
670 - release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released
671
672 Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will
673 be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. Note
674 that some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since they
675 depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such
676 sequences will be replaced with NA.
677
678 For example for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title
679 youtube-dl test video and id BaW_jenozKcj, this will result in a
680 youtube-dl test video-BaW_jenozKcj.mp4 file created in the current
681 directory.
682
683 For numeric sequences you can use numeric related formatting, for
684 example, %(view_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded
685 with zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042.
686
687 Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g.
688 -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' which will
689 result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this
690 path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for
691 you.
692
693 To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to
694 stdout use -o -.
695
696 The current default template is %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s.
697
698 In some cases, you don't want special characters such as äø­, spaces, or
699 &, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows system
700 or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the
701 --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title:
702
703 Output template and Windows batch files
704
705 If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then you
706 must escape plain percent characters (%) by doubling, so that
707 -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" should become
708 -o "%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s". However you should not touch %'s that
709 are not plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion
710 should stay intact: -o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s".
711
712 Output template examples
713
714 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of
715 single.
716
717 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc
718 youtube-dl test video ''_Ƥā†­š•.mp4 # All kinds of weird characters
719
720 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
721 youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4 # A simple file name
722
723 # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
724 $ youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re
725
726 # Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory:
727 $ youtube-dl -o '%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists
728
729 # Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home
730 $ 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/
731
732 # Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos
733 $ 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
734
735 # Stream the video being downloaded to stdout
736 $ youtube-dl -o - BaW_jenozKc
737
738
739
740 FORMAT SELECTION
741
742
743 By default youtube-dl tries to download the best available quality, i.e.
744 if you want the best quality you DON'T NEED to pass any special options,
745 youtube-dl will guess it for you by DEFAULT.
746
747 But sometimes you may want to download in a different format, for
748 example when you are on a slow or intermittent connection. The key
749 mechanism for achieving this is so-called _format selection_ based on
750 which you can explicitly specify desired format, select formats based on
751 some criterion or criteria, setup precedence and much more.
752
753 The general syntax for format selection is --format FORMAT or shorter
754 -f FORMAT where FORMAT is a _selector expression_, i.e. an expression
755 that describes format or formats you would like to download.
756
757 TL;DR: navigate me to examples.
758
759 The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example with
760 -f 22 you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can
761 get the list of available format codes for particular video using
762 --list-formats or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor
763 specific.
764
765 You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3,
766 mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format
767 of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm
768 will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as
769 a single file.
770
771 You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats: -
772 best: Select the best quality format represented by a single file with
773 video and audio. - worst: Select the worst quality format represented by
774 a single file with video and audio. - bestvideo: Select the best quality
775 video-only format (e.g. DASH video). May not be available. - worstvideo:
776 Select the worst quality video-only format. May not be available. -
777 bestaudio: Select the best quality audio only-format. May not be
778 available. - worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio only-format. May
779 not be available.
780
781 For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use
782 -f worstvideo.
783
784 If you want to download multiple videos and they don't have the same
785 formats available, you can specify the order of preference using
786 slashes. Note that slash is left-associative, i.e. formats on the left
787 hand side are preferred, for example -f 22/17/18 will download format 22
788 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's
789 available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available,
790 otherwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for
791 download.
792
793 If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as
794 a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three formats, of
795 course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined
796 with the precedence feature: -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.
797
798 You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in
799 brackets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]").
800
801 The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons <, <=, >,
802 >=, = (equals), != (not equals): - filesize: The number of bytes, if
803 known in advance - width: Width of the video, if known - height: Height
804 of the video, if known - tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in
805 KBit/s - abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s - vbr: Average video
806 bitrate in KBit/s - asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz - fps: Frame rate
807
808 Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), != (not equals), ^=
809 (begins with), $= (ends with), *= (contains) and following string meta
810 fields: - ext: File extension - acodec: Name of the audio codec in use -
811 vcodec: Name of the video codec in use - container: Name of the
812 container format - protocol: The protocol that will be used for the
813 actual download, lower-case (http, https, rtsp, rtmp, rtmpe, mms, f4m,
814 ism, http_dash_segments, m3u8, or m3u8_native) - format_id: A short
815 description of the format
816
817 Note that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be
818 present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particular
819 extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the video hoster.
820
821 Formats for which the value is not known are excluded unless you put a
822 question mark (?) after the operator. You can combine format filters, so
823 -f "[height <=? 720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos
824 where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s.
825
826 You can merge the video and audio of two formats into a single file
827 using -f <video-format>+<audio-format> (requires ffmpeg or avconv
828 installed), for example -f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best
829 video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with
830 ffmpeg/avconv.
831
832 Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if
833 you want to download the best mp4 and webm formats with a height lower
834 than 480 you can use -f '(mp4,webm)[height<480]'.
835
836 Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26, youtube-dl uses
837 -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best as the default format selection (see #5447,
838 #5456). If ffmpeg or avconv are installed this results in downloading
839 bestvideo and bestaudio separately and muxing them together into a
840 single file giving the best overall quality available. Otherwise it
841 falls back to best and results in downloading the best available quality
842 served as a single file. best is also needed for videos that don't come
843 from YouTube because they don't provide the audio and video in two
844 different files. If you want to only download some DASH formats (for
845 example if you are not interested in getting videos with a resolution
846 higher than 1080p), you can add
847 -f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best to your configuration file.
848 Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream to stdout (and most likely to
849 pipe it to your media player then), i.e. you explicitly specify output
850 template as -o -, youtube-dl still uses -f best format selection in
851 order to start content delivery immediately to your player and not to
852 wait until bestvideo and bestaudio are downloaded and muxed.
853
854 If you want to preserve the old format selection behavior (prior to
855 youtube-dl 2015.04.26), i.e. you want to download the best available
856 quality media served as a single file, you should explicitly specify
857 your choice with -f best. You may want to add it to the configuration
858 file in order not to type it every time you run youtube-dl.
859
860 Format selection examples
861
862 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of
863 single.
864
865 # Download best mp4 format available or any other best if no mp4 available
866 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best'
867
868 # Download best format available but not better that 480p
869 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]'
870
871 # Download best video only format but no bigger than 50 MB
872 $ youtube-dl -f 'best[filesize<50M]'
873
874 # Download best format available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol
875 $ youtube-dl -f '(bestvideo+bestaudio/best)[protocol^=http]'
876
877 # Download the best video format and the best audio format without merging them
878 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo,bestaudio' -o '%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s'
879
880 Note that in the last example, an output template is recommended as
881 bestvideo and bestaudio may have the same file name.
882
883
884
885 VIDEO SELECTION
886
887
888 Videos can be filtered by their upload date using the options --date,
889 --datebefore or --dateafter. They accept dates in two formats:
890
891 - Absolute dates: Dates in the format YYYYMMDD.
892 - Relative dates: Dates in the format
893 (now|today)[+-][0-9](day|week|month|year)(s)?
894
895 Examples:
896
897 # Download only the videos uploaded in the last 6 months
898 $ youtube-dl --dateafter now-6months
899
900 # Download only the videos uploaded on January 1, 1970
901 $ youtube-dl --date 19700101
902
903 $ # Download only the videos uploaded in the 200x decade
904 $ youtube-dl --dateafter 20000101 --datebefore 20091231
905
906
907
908 FAQ
909
910
911 How do I update youtube-dl?
912
913 If you've followed our manual installation instructions, you can simply
914 run youtube-dl -U (or, on Linux, sudo youtube-dl -U).
915
916 If you have used pip, a simple sudo pip install -U youtube-dl is
917 sufficient to update.
918
919 If you have installed youtube-dl using a package manager like _apt-get_
920 or _yum_, use the standard system update mechanism to update. Note that
921 distribution packages are often outdated. As a rule of thumb, youtube-dl
922 releases at least once a month, and often weekly or even daily. Simply
923 go to https://yt-dl.org to find out the current version. Unfortunately,
924 there is nothing we youtube-dl developers can do if your distribution
925 serves a really outdated version. You can (and should) complain to your
926 distribution in their bugtracker or support forum.
927
928 As a last resort, you can also uninstall the version installed by your
929 package manager and follow our manual installation instructions. For
930 that, remove the distribution's package, with a line like
931
932 sudo apt-get remove -y youtube-dl
933
934 Afterwards, simply follow our manual installation instructions:
935
936 sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
937 sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
938 hash -r
939
940 Again, from then on you'll be able to update with sudo youtube-dl -U.
941
942 youtube-dl is extremely slow to start on Windows
943
944 Add a file exclusion for youtube-dl.exe in Windows Defender settings.
945
946 I'm getting an error Unable to extract OpenGraph title on YouTube playlists
947
948 YouTube changed their playlist format in March 2014 and later on, so
949 you'll need at least youtube-dl 2014.07.25 to download all YouTube
950 videos.
951
952 If you have installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py
953 or a tarball, please use that to update. Note that Ubuntu packages do
954 not seem to get updated anymore. Since we are not affiliated with
955 Ubuntu, there is little we can do. Feel free to report bugs to the
956 Ubuntu packaging people - all they have to do is update the package to a
957 somewhat recent version. See above for a way to update.
958
959 I'm getting an error when trying to use output template: error: using output template conflicts with using title, video ID or auto number
960
961 Make sure you are not using -o with any of these options -t, --title,
962 --id, -A or --auto-number set in command line or in a configuration
963 file. Remove the latter if any.
964
965 Do I always have to pass -citw?
966
967 By default, youtube-dl intends to have the best options (incidentally,
968 if you have a convincing case that these should be different, please
969 file an issue where you explain that). Therefore, it is unnecessary and
970 sometimes harmful to copy long option strings from webpages. In
971 particular, the only option out of -citw that is regularly useful is -i.
972
973 Can you please put the -b option back?
974
975 Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now
976 defaults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by
977 YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer
978 need the -b option. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not
979 report them to be available in a specific high quality format you're
980 interested in. In that case, simply request it with the -f option and
981 youtube-dl will try to download it.
982
983 I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's this?
984
985 Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download
986 too much. We're considering to provide a way to let you solve the
987 CAPTCHA, but at the moment, your best course of action is pointing a web
988 browser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.
989
990 Do I need any other programs?
991
992 youtube-dl works fine on its own on most sites. However, if you want to
993 convert video/audio, you'll need avconv or ffmpeg. On some sites - most
994 notably YouTube - videos can be retrieved in a higher quality format
995 without sound. youtube-dl will detect whether avconv/ffmpeg is present
996 and automatically pick the best option.
997
998 Videos or video formats streamed via RTMP protocol can only be
999 downloaded when rtmpdump is installed. Downloading MMS and RTSP videos
1000 requires either mplayer or mpv to be installed.
1001
1002 I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?
1003
1004 Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as mpv,
1005 vlc or mplayer.
1006
1007 I extracted a video URL with -g, but it does not play on another machine / in my web browser.
1008
1009 It depends a lot on the service. In many cases, requests for the video
1010 (to download/play it) must come from the same IP address and with the
1011 same cookies and/or HTTP headers. Use the --cookies option to write the
1012 required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies
1013 from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used,
1014 use --dump-user-agent to see the one in use by youtube-dl. You can also
1015 get necessary cookies and HTTP headers from JSON output obtained with
1016 --dump-json.
1017
1018 It may be beneficial to use IPv6; in some cases, the restrictions are
1019 only applied to IPv4. Some services (sometimes only for a subset of
1020 videos) do not restrict the video URL by IP address, cookie, or
1021 user-agent, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
1022
1023 Please bear in mind that some URL protocols are NOT supported by
1024 browsers out of the box, including RTMP. If you are using -g, your own
1025 downloader must support these as well.
1026
1027 If you want to play the video on a machine that is not running
1028 youtube-dl, you can relay the video content from the machine that runs
1029 youtube-dl. You can use -o - to let youtube-dl stream a video to stdout,
1030 or simply allow the player to download the files written by youtube-dl
1031 in turn.
1032
1033 ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info
1034
1035 YouTube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is
1036 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update
1037 youtube-dl.
1038
1039 ERROR: unable to download video
1040
1041 YouTube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is
1042 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update
1043 youtube-dl.
1044
1045 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
1046
1047 That's actually the output from your shell. Since ampersand is one of
1048 the special shell characters it's interpreted by the shell preventing
1049 you from passing the whole URL to youtube-dl. To disable your shell from
1050 interpreting the ampersands (or any other special characters) you have
1051 to either put the whole URL in quotes or escape them with a backslash
1052 (which approach will work depends on your shell).
1053
1054 For example if your URL is
1055 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc you should end up with
1056 following command:
1057
1058 youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc'
1059
1060 or
1061
1062 youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKc
1063
1064 For Windows you have to use the double quotes:
1065
1066 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc"
1067
1068 ExtractorError: Could not find JS function u'OF'
1069
1070 In February 2015, the new YouTube player contained a character sequence
1071 in a string that was misinterpreted by old versions of youtube-dl. See
1072 above for how to update youtube-dl.
1073
1074 HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests or 402: Payment Required
1075
1076 These two error codes indicate that the service is blocking your IP
1077 address because of overuse. Contact the service and ask them to unblock
1078 your IP address, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address
1079 already - use the --proxy or --source-address options to select another
1080 IP address.
1081
1082 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character
1083
1084 The error
1085
1086 File "youtube-dl", line 2
1087 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x93' ...
1088
1089 means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to
1090 Python 2.6 or 2.7.
1091
1092 What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?
1093
1094 Since June 2012 (#342) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile,
1095 simply unzip it (might need renaming to youtube-dl.zip first on some
1096 systems) or clone the git repository, as laid out above. If you modify
1097 the code, you can run it by executing the __main__.py file. To recompile
1098 the executable, run make youtube-dl.
1099
1100 The exe throws an error due to missing MSVCR100.dll
1101
1102 To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010
1103 Redistributable Package (x86).
1104
1105 On Windows, how should I set up ffmpeg and youtube-dl? Where should I put the exe files?
1106
1107 If you put youtube-dl and ffmpeg in the same directory that you're
1108 running the command from, it will work, but that's rather cumbersome.
1109
1110 To make a different directory work - either for ffmpeg, or for
1111 youtube-dl, or for both - simply create the directory (say, C:\bin, or
1112 C:\Users\<User name>\bin), put all the executables directly in there,
1113 and then set your PATH environment variable to include that directory.
1114
1115 From then on, after restarting your shell, you will be able to access
1116 both youtube-dl and ffmpeg (and youtube-dl will be able to find ffmpeg)
1117 by simply typing youtube-dl or ffmpeg, no matter what directory you're
1118 in.
1119
1120 How do I put downloads into a specific folder?
1121
1122 Use the -o to specify an output template, for example
1123 -o "/home/user/videos/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s". If you want this for
1124 all of your downloads, put the option into your configuration file.
1125
1126 How do I download a video starting with a -?
1127
1128 Either prepend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= or separate the ID from
1129 the options with --:
1130
1131 youtube-dl -- -wNyEUrxzFU
1132 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"
1133
1134 How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?
1135
1136 Use the --cookies option, for example
1137 --cookies /path/to/cookies/file.txt.
1138
1139 In order to extract cookies from browser use any conforming browser
1140 extension for exporting cookies. For example, cookies.txt (for Chrome)
1141 or Export Cookies (for Firefox).
1142
1143 Note that the cookies file must be in Mozilla/Netscape format and the
1144 first line of the cookies file must be either # HTTP Cookie File or
1145 # Netscape HTTP Cookie File. Make sure you have correct newline format
1146 in the cookies file and convert newlines if necessary to correspond with
1147 your OS, namely CRLF (\r\n) for Windows and LF (\n) for Unix and
1148 Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS, etc.). HTTP Error 400: Bad Request when
1149 using --cookies is a good sign of invalid newline format.
1150
1151 Passing cookies to youtube-dl is a good way to workaround login when a
1152 particular extractor does not implement it explicitly. Another use case
1153 is working around CAPTCHA some websites require you to solve in
1154 particular cases in order to get access (e.g. YouTube, CloudFlare).
1155
1156 How do I stream directly to media player?
1157
1158 You will first need to tell youtube-dl to stream media to stdout with
1159 -o -, and also tell your media player to read from stdin (it must be
1160 capable of this for streaming) and then pipe former to latter. For
1161 example, streaming to vlc can be achieved with:
1162
1163 youtube-dl -o - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj" | vlc -
1164
1165 How do I download only new videos from a playlist?
1166
1167 Use download-archive feature. With this feature you should initially
1168 download the complete playlist with
1169 --download-archive /path/to/download/archive/file.txt that will record
1170 identifiers of all the videos in a special file. Each subsequent run
1171 with the same --download-archive will download only new videos and skip
1172 all videos that have been downloaded before. Note that only successful
1173 downloads are recorded in the file.
1174
1175 For example, at first,
1176
1177 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1178
1179 will download the complete PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re playlist
1180 and create a file archive.txt. Each subsequent run will only download
1181 new videos if any:
1182
1183 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1184
1185 Should I add --hls-prefer-native into my config?
1186
1187 When youtube-dl detects an HLS video, it can download it either with the
1188 built-in downloader or ffmpeg. Since many HLS streams are slightly
1189 invalid and ffmpeg/youtube-dl each handle some invalid cases better than
1190 the other, there is an option to switch the downloader if needed.
1191
1192 When youtube-dl knows that one particular downloader works better for a
1193 given website, that downloader will be picked. Otherwise, youtube-dl
1194 will pick the best downloader for general compatibility, which at the
1195 moment happens to be ffmpeg. This choice may change in future versions
1196 of youtube-dl, with improvements of the built-in downloader and/or
1197 ffmpeg.
1198
1199 In particular, the generic extractor (used when your website is not in
1200 the list of supported sites by youtube-dl cannot mandate one specific
1201 downloader.
1202
1203 If you put either --hls-prefer-native or --hls-prefer-ffmpeg into your
1204 configuration, a different subset of videos will fail to download
1205 correctly. Instead, it is much better to file an issue or a pull request
1206 which details why the native or the ffmpeg HLS downloader is a better
1207 choice for your use case.
1208
1209 Can you add support for this anime video site, or site which shows current movies for free?
1210
1211 As a matter of policy (as well as legality), youtube-dl does not include
1212 support for services that specialize in infringing copyright. As a rule
1213 of thumb, if you cannot easily find a video that the service is quite
1214 obviously allowed to distribute (i.e. that has been uploaded by the
1215 creator, the creator's distributor, or is published under a free
1216 license), the service is probably unfit for inclusion to youtube-dl.
1217
1218 A note on the service that they don't host the infringing content, but
1219 just link to those who do, is evidence that the service should NOT be
1220 included into youtube-dl. The same goes for any DMCA note when the whole
1221 front page of the service is filled with videos they are not allowed to
1222 distribute. A "fair use" note is equally unconvincing if the service
1223 shows copyright-protected videos in full without authorization.
1224
1225 Support requests for services that DO purchase the rights to distribute
1226 their content are perfectly fine though. If in doubt, you can simply
1227 include a source that mentions the legitimate purchase of content.
1228
1229 How can I speed up work on my issue?
1230
1231 (Also known as: Help, my important issue not being solved!) The
1232 youtube-dl core developer team is quite small. While we do our best to
1233 solve as many issues as possible, sometimes that can take quite a while.
1234 To speed up your issue, here's what you can do:
1235
1236 First of all, please do report the issue at our issue tracker. That
1237 allows us to coordinate all efforts by users and developers, and serves
1238 as a unified point. Unfortunately, the youtube-dl project has grown too
1239 large to use personal email as an effective communication channel.
1240
1241 Please read the bug reporting instructions below. A lot of bugs lack all
1242 the necessary information. If you can, offer proxy, VPN, or shell access
1243 to the youtube-dl developers. If you are able to, test the issue from
1244 multiple computers in multiple countries to exclude local censorship or
1245 misconfiguration issues.
1246
1247 If nobody is interested in solving your issue, you are welcome to take
1248 matters into your own hands and submit a pull request (or coerce/pay
1249 somebody else to do so).
1250
1251 Feel free to bump the issue from time to time by writing a small comment
1252 ("Issue is still present in youtube-dl version ...from France, but fixed
1253 from Belgium"), but please not more than once a month. Please do not
1254 declare your issue as important or urgent.
1255
1256 How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
1257
1258 For one, have a look at the list of supported sites. Note that it can
1259 sometimes happen that the site changes its URL scheme (say, from
1260 https://example.com/video/1234567 to https://example.com/v/1234567 ) and
1261 youtube-dl reports an URL of a service in that list as unsupported. In
1262 that case, simply report a bug.
1263
1264 It is _not_ possible to detect whether a URL is supported or not. That's
1265 because youtube-dl contains a generic extractor which matches ALL URLs.
1266 You may be tempted to disable, exclude, or remove the generic extractor,
1267 but the generic extractor not only allows users to extract videos from
1268 lots of websites that embed a video from another service, but may also
1269 be used to extract video from a service that it's hosting itself.
1270 Therefore, we neither recommend nor support disabling, excluding, or
1271 removing the generic extractor.
1272
1273 If you want to find out whether a given URL is supported, simply call
1274 youtube-dl with it. If you get no videos back, chances are the URL is
1275 either not referring to a video or unsupported. You can find out which
1276 by examining the output (if you run youtube-dl on the console) or
1277 catching an UnsupportedError exception if you run it from a Python
1278 program.
1279
1280
1281
1282 WHY DO I NEED TO GO THROUGH THAT MUCH RED TAPE WHEN FILING BUGS?
1283
1284
1285 Before we had the issue template, despite our extensive bug reporting
1286 instructions, about 80% of the issue reports we got were useless, for
1287 instance because people used ancient versions hundreds of releases old,
1288 because of simple syntactic errors (not in youtube-dl but in general
1289 shell usage), because the problem was already reported multiple times
1290 before, because people did not actually read an error message, even if
1291 it said "please install ffmpeg", because people did not mention the URL
1292 they were trying to download and many more simple, easy-to-avoid
1293 problems, many of whom were totally unrelated to youtube-dl.
1294
1295 youtube-dl is an open-source project manned by too few volunteers, so
1296 we'd rather spend time fixing bugs where we are certain none of those
1297 simple problems apply, and where we can be reasonably confident to be
1298 able to reproduce the issue without asking the reporter repeatedly. As
1299 such, the output of youtube-dl -v YOUR_URL_HERE is really all that's
1300 required to file an issue. The issue template also guides you through
1301 some basic steps you can do, such as checking that your version of
1302 youtube-dl is current.
1303
1304
1305
1306 DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
1307
1308
1309 Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can download the builds
1310 or get them from their distribution.
1311
1312 To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything
1313 either. Simply execute
1314
1315 python -m youtube_dl
1316
1317 To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a
1318 test file directly; any of the following work:
1319
1320 python -m unittest discover
1321 python test/test_download.py
1322 nosetests
1323
1324 See item 6 of new extractor tutorial for how to run extractor specific
1325 test cases.
1326
1327 If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need
1328
1329 - python
1330 - make (only GNU make is supported)
1331 - pandoc
1332 - zip
1333 - nosetests
1334
1335 Adding support for a new site
1336
1337 If you want to add support for a new site, first of all MAKE SURE this
1338 site is NOT DEDICATED TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. youtube-dl does NOT
1339 SUPPORT such sites thus pull requests adding support for them WILL BE
1340 REJECTED.
1341
1342 After you have ensured this site is distributing its content legally,
1343 you can follow this quick list (assuming your service is called
1344 yourextractor):
1345
1346 1. Fork this repository
1347 2. Check out the source code with:
1348
1349 git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
1350
1351 3. Start a new git branch with
1352
1353 cd youtube-dl
1354 git checkout -b yourextractor
1355
1356 4. Start with this simple template and save it to
1357 youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py:
1358
1359 # coding: utf-8
1360 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1361
1362 from .common import InfoExtractor
1363
1364
1365 class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
1366 _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
1367 _TEST = {
1368 'url': 'https://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
1369 'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
1370 'info_dict': {
1371 'id': '42',
1372 'ext': 'mp4',
1373 'title': 'Video title goes here',
1374 'thumbnail': r're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
1375 # TODO more properties, either as:
1376 # * A value
1377 # * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
1378 # * A regular expression; start the string with re:
1379 # * Any Python type (for example int or float)
1380 }
1381 }
1382
1383 def _real_extract(self, url):
1384 video_id = self._match_id(url)
1385 webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
1386
1387 # TODO more code goes here, for example ...
1388 title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
1389
1390 return {
1391 'id': video_id,
1392 'title': title,
1393 'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
1394 'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
1395 # TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
1396 }
1397
1398 5. Add an import in youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py.
1399 6. Run python test/test_download.py TestDownload.test_YourExtractor.
1400 This _should fail_ at first, but you can continually re-run it until
1401 you're done. If you decide to add more than one test, then rename
1402 _TEST to _TESTS and make it into a list of dictionaries. The tests
1403 will then be named TestDownload.test_YourExtractor,
1404 TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_1,
1405 TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_2, etc. Note that tests with
1406 only_matching key in test's dict are not counted in.
1407 7. Have a look at youtube_dl/extractor/common.py for possible helper
1408 methods and a detailed description of what your extractor should and
1409 may return. Add tests and code for as many as you want.
1410 8. Make sure your code follows youtube-dl coding conventions and check
1411 the code with flake8. Also make sure your code works under all
1412 Python versions claimed supported by youtube-dl, namely 2.6, 2.7,
1413 and 3.2+.
1414 9. When the tests pass, add the new files and commit them and push the
1415 result, like this:
1416
1417 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
1418 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
1419 $ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
1420 $ git push origin yourextractor
1421
1422 10. Finally, create a pull request. We'll then review and merge it.
1423
1424 In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!
1425
1426
1427 youtube-dl coding conventions
1428
1429 This section introduces a guide lines for writing idiomatic, robust and
1430 future-proof extractor code.
1431
1432 Extractors are very fragile by nature since they depend on the layout of
1433 the source data provided by 3rd party media hosters out of your control
1434 and this layout tends to change. As an extractor implementer your task
1435 is not only to write code that will extract media links and metadata
1436 correctly but also to minimize dependency on the source's layout and
1437 even to make the code foresee potential future changes and be ready for
1438 that. This is important because it will allow the extractor not to break
1439 on minor layout changes thus keeping old youtube-dl versions working.
1440 Even though this breakage issue is easily fixed by emitting a new
1441 version of youtube-dl with a fix incorporated, all the previous versions
1442 become broken in all repositories and distros' packages that may not be
1443 so prompt in fetching the update from us. Needless to say, some non
1444 rolling release distros may never receive an update at all.
1445
1446 Mandatory and optional metafields
1447
1448 For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor
1449 extracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by an information
1450 dictionary or simply _info dict_. Only the following meta fields in the
1451 _info dict_ are considered mandatory for a successful extraction process
1452 by youtube-dl:
1453
1454 - id (media identifier)
1455 - title (media title)
1456 - url (media download URL) or formats
1457
1458 In fact only the last option is technically mandatory (i.e. if you can't
1459 figure out the download location of the media the extraction does not
1460 make any sense). But by convention youtube-dl also treats id and title
1461 as mandatory. Thus the aforementioned metafields are the critical data
1462 that the extraction does not make any sense without and if any of them
1463 fail to be extracted then the extractor is considered completely broken.
1464
1465 Any field apart from the aforementioned ones are considered OPTIONAL.
1466 That means that extraction should be TOLERANT to situations when sources
1467 for these fields can potentially be unavailable (even if they are always
1468 available at the moment) and FUTURE-PROOF in order not to break the
1469 extraction of general purpose mandatory fields.
1470
1471 Example
1472
1473 Say you have some source dictionary meta that you've fetched as JSON
1474 with HTTP request and it has a key summary:
1475
1476 meta = self._download_json(url, video_id)
1477
1478 Assume at this point meta's layout is:
1479
1480 {
1481 ...
1482 "summary": "some fancy summary text",
1483 ...
1484 }
1485
1486 Assume you want to extract summary and put it into the resulting info
1487 dict as description. Since description is an optional meta field you
1488 should be ready that this key may be missing from the meta dict, so that
1489 you should extract it like:
1490
1491 description = meta.get('summary') # correct
1492
1493 and not like:
1494
1495 description = meta['summary'] # incorrect
1496
1497 The latter will break extraction process with KeyError if summary
1498 disappears from meta at some later time but with the former approach
1499 extraction will just go ahead with description set to None which is
1500 perfectly fine (remember None is equivalent to the absence of data).
1501
1502 Similarly, you should pass fatal=False when extracting optional data
1503 from a webpage with _search_regex, _html_search_regex or similar
1504 methods, for instance:
1505
1506 description = self._search_regex(
1507 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1508 webpage, 'description', fatal=False)
1509
1510 With fatal set to False if _search_regex fails to extract description it
1511 will emit a warning and continue extraction.
1512
1513 You can also pass default=<some fallback value>, for example:
1514
1515 description = self._search_regex(
1516 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1517 webpage, 'description', default=None)
1518
1519 On failure this code will silently continue the extraction with
1520 description set to None. That is useful for metafields that may or may
1521 not be present.
1522
1523 Provide fallbacks
1524
1525 When extracting metadata try to do so from multiple sources. For example
1526 if title is present in several places, try extracting from at least some
1527 of them. This makes it more future-proof in case some of the sources
1528 become unavailable.
1529
1530 Example
1531
1532 Say meta from the previous example has a title and you are about to
1533 extract it. Since title is a mandatory meta field you should end up with
1534 something like:
1535
1536 title = meta['title']
1537
1538 If title disappears from meta in future due to some changes on the
1539 hoster's side the extraction would fail since title is mandatory. That's
1540 expected.
1541
1542 Assume that you have some another source you can extract title from, for
1543 example og:title HTML meta of a webpage. In this case you can provide a
1544 fallback scenario:
1545
1546 title = meta.get('title') or self._og_search_title(webpage)
1547
1548 This code will try to extract from meta first and if it fails it will
1549 try extracting og:title from a webpage.
1550
1551 Make regular expressions flexible
1552
1553 When using regular expressions try to write them fuzzy and flexible.
1554
1555 Example
1556
1557 Say you need to extract title from the following HTML code:
1558
1559 <span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">some fancy title</span>
1560
1561 The code for that task should look similar to:
1562
1563 title = self._search_regex(
1564 r'<span[^>]+class="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)', webpage, 'title')
1565
1566 Or even better:
1567
1568 title = self._search_regex(
1569 r'<span[^>]+class=(["\'])title\1[^>]*>(?P<title>[^<]+)',
1570 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1571
1572 Note how you tolerate potential changes in the style attribute's value
1573 or switch from using double quotes to single for class attribute:
1574
1575 The code definitely should not look like:
1576
1577 title = self._search_regex(
1578 r'<span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">(.*?)</span>',
1579 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1580
1581 Use safe conversion functions
1582
1583 Wrap all extracted numeric data into safe functions from utils:
1584 int_or_none, float_or_none. Use them for string to number conversions as
1585 well.
1586
1587
1588
1589 EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
1590
1591
1592 youtube-dl makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and
1593 thus should be callable from any programming language. If you encounter
1594 any problems parsing its output, feel free to create a report.
1595
1596 From a Python program, you can embed youtube-dl in a more powerful
1597 fashion, like this:
1598
1599 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1600 import youtube_dl
1601
1602 ydl_opts = {}
1603 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1604 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1605
1606 Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options
1607 available, have a look at youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py. For a start, if you
1608 want to intercept youtube-dl's output, set a logger object.
1609
1610 Here's a more complete example of a program that outputs only errors
1611 (and a short message after the download is finished), and
1612 downloads/converts the video to an mp3 file:
1613
1614 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1615 import youtube_dl
1616
1617
1618 class MyLogger(object):
1619 def debug(self, msg):
1620 pass
1621
1622 def warning(self, msg):
1623 pass
1624
1625 def error(self, msg):
1626 print(msg)
1627
1628
1629 def my_hook(d):
1630 if d['status'] == 'finished':
1631 print('Done downloading, now converting ...')
1632
1633
1634 ydl_opts = {
1635 'format': 'bestaudio/best',
1636 'postprocessors': [{
1637 'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
1638 'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
1639 'preferredquality': '192',
1640 }],
1641 'logger': MyLogger(),
1642 'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
1643 }
1644 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1645 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1646
1647
1648
1649 BUGS
1650
1651
1652 Bugs and suggestions should be reported at:
1653 https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues. Unless you were prompted to or
1654 there is another pertinent reason (e.g. GitHub fails to accept the bug
1655 report), please do not send bug reports via personal email. For
1656 discussions, join us in the IRC channel #youtube-dl on freenode
1657 (webchat).
1658
1659 PLEASE INCLUDE THE FULL OUTPUT OF YOUTUBE-DL WHEN RUN WITH -v, i.e. ADD
1660 -v flag to YOUR COMMAND LINE, copy the WHOLE output and post it in the
1661 issue body wrapped in ``` for better formatting. It should look similar
1662 to this:
1663
1664 $ youtube-dl -v <your command line>
1665 [debug] System config: []
1666 [debug] User config: []
1667 [debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
1668 [debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
1669 [debug] youtube-dl version 2015.12.06
1670 [debug] Git HEAD: 135392e
1671 [debug] Python version 2.6.6 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
1672 [debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
1673 [debug] Proxy map: {}
1674 ...
1675
1676 DO NOT POST SCREENSHOTS OF VERBOSE LOGS; ONLY PLAIN TEXT IS ACCEPTABLE.
1677
1678 The output (including the first lines) contains important debugging
1679 information. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible
1680 and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
1681
1682 Please re-read your issue once again to avoid a couple of common
1683 mistakes (you can and should use this as a checklist):
1684
1685 Is the description of the issue itself sufficient?
1686
1687 We often get issue reports that we cannot really decipher. While in most
1688 cases we eventually get the required information after asking back
1689 multiple times, this poses an unnecessary drain on our resources. Many
1690 contributors, including myself, are also not native speakers, so we may
1691 misread some parts.
1692
1693 So please elaborate on what feature you are requesting, or what bug you
1694 want to be fixed. Make sure that it's obvious
1695
1696 - What the problem is
1697 - How it could be fixed
1698 - How your proposed solution would look like
1699
1700 If your report is shorter than two lines, it is almost certainly missing
1701 some of these, which makes it hard for us to respond to it. We're often
1702 too polite to close the issue outright, but the missing info makes
1703 misinterpretation likely. As a committer myself, I often get frustrated
1704 by these issues, since the only possible way for me to move forward on
1705 them is to ask for clarification over and over.
1706
1707 For bug reports, this means that your report should contain the
1708 _complete_ output of youtube-dl when called with the -v flag. The error
1709 message you get for (most) bugs even says so, but you would not believe
1710 how many of our bug reports do not contain this information.
1711
1712 If your server has multiple IPs or you suspect censorship, adding
1713 --call-home may be a good idea to get more diagnostics. If the error is
1714 ERROR: Unable to extract ... and you cannot reproduce it from multiple
1715 countries, add --dump-pages (warning: this will yield a rather large
1716 output, redirect it to the file log.txt by adding >log.txt 2>&1 to your
1717 command-line) or upload the .dump files you get when you add
1718 --write-pages somewhere.
1719
1720 SITE SUPPORT REQUESTS MUST CONTAIN AN EXAMPLE URL. An example URL is a
1721 URL you might want to download, like
1722 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc. There should be an obvious
1723 video present. Except under very special circumstances, the main page of
1724 a video service (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/) is _not_ an example URL.
1725
1726 Are you using the latest version?
1727
1728 Before reporting any issue, type youtube-dl -U. This should report that
1729 you're up-to-date. About 20% of the reports we receive are already
1730 fixed, but people are using outdated versions. This goes for feature
1731 requests as well.
1732
1733 Is the issue already documented?
1734
1735 Make sure that someone has not already opened the issue you're trying to
1736 open. Search at the top of the window or browse the GitHub Issues of
1737 this repository. If there is an issue, feel free to write something
1738 along the lines of "This affects me as well, with version 2015.01.01.
1739 Here is some more information on the issue: ...". While some issues may
1740 be old, a new post into them often spurs rapid activity.
1741
1742 Why are existing options not enough?
1743
1744 Before requesting a new feature, please have a quick peek at the list of
1745 supported options. Many feature requests are for features that actually
1746 exist already! Please, absolutely do show off your work in the issue
1747 report and detail how the existing similar options do _not_ solve your
1748 problem.
1749
1750 Is there enough context in your bug report?
1751
1752 People want to solve problems, and often think they do us a favor by
1753 breaking down their larger problems (e.g. wanting to skip already
1754 downloaded files) to a specific request (e.g. requesting us to look
1755 whether the file exists before downloading the info page). However, what
1756 often happens is that they break down the problem into two steps: One
1757 simple, and one impossible (or extremely complicated one).
1758
1759 We are then presented with a very complicated request when the original
1760 problem could be solved far easier, e.g. by recording the downloaded
1761 video IDs in a separate file. To avoid this, you must include the
1762 greater context where it is non-obvious. In particular, every feature
1763 request that does not consist of adding support for a new site should
1764 contain a use case scenario that explains in what situation the missing
1765 feature would be useful.
1766
1767 Does the issue involve one problem, and one problem only?
1768
1769 Some of our users seem to think there is a limit of issues they can or
1770 should open. There is no limit of issues they can or should open. While
1771 it may seem appealing to be able to dump all your issues into one
1772 ticket, that means that someone who solves one of your issues cannot
1773 mark the issue as closed. Typically, reporting a bunch of issues leads
1774 to the ticket lingering since nobody wants to attack that behemoth,
1775 until someone mercifully splits the issue into multiple ones.
1776
1777 In particular, every site support request issue should only pertain to
1778 services at one site (generally under a common domain, but always using
1779 the same backend technology). Do not request support for vimeo user
1780 videos, White house podcasts, and Google Plus pages in the same issue.
1781 Also, make sure that you don't post bug reports alongside feature
1782 requests. As a rule of thumb, a feature request does not include outputs
1783 of youtube-dl that are not immediately related to the feature at hand.
1784 Do not post reports of a network error alongside the request for a new
1785 video service.
1786
1787 Is anyone going to need the feature?
1788
1789 Only post features that you (or an incapacitated friend you can
1790 personally talk to) require. Do not post features because they seem like
1791 a good idea. If they are really useful, they will be requested by
1792 someone who requires them.
1793
1794 Is your question about youtube-dl?
1795
1796 It may sound strange, but some bug reports we receive are completely
1797 unrelated to youtube-dl and relate to a different, or even the
1798 reporter's own, application. Please make sure that you are actually
1799 using youtube-dl. If you are using a UI for youtube-dl, report the bug
1800 to the maintainer of the actual application providing the UI. On the
1801 other hand, if your UI for youtube-dl fails in some way you believe is
1802 related to youtube-dl, by all means, go ahead and report the bug.
1803
1804
1805
1806 COPYRIGHT
1807
1808
1809 youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
1810
1811 This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton and is likewise
1812 released into the public domain.