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1 youtube-dl - download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms
2
3 - INSTALLATION
4 - DESCRIPTION
5 - OPTIONS
6 - CONFIGURATION
7 - OUTPUT TEMPLATE
8 - FORMAT SELECTION
9 - VIDEO SELECTION
10 - FAQ
11 - DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
12 - EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
13 - BUGS
14 - COPYRIGHT
15
16
17
18 INSTALLATION
19
20
21 To install it right away for all UNIX users (Linux, OS X, etc.), type:
22
23 sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
24 sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
25
26 If you do not have curl, you can alternatively use a recent wget:
27
28 sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
29 sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
30
31 Windows users can download an .exe file and place it in any location on
32 their PATH except for %SYSTEMROOT%\System32 (e.g. DO NOT put in
33 C:\Windows\System32).
34
35 You can also use pip:
36
37 sudo -H pip install --upgrade youtube-dl
38
39 This command will update youtube-dl if you have already installed it.
40 See the pypi page for more information.
41
42 OS X users can install youtube-dl with Homebrew:
43
44 brew install youtube-dl
45
46 Or with MacPorts:
47
48 sudo port install youtube-dl
49
50 Alternatively, refer to the developer instructions for how to check out
51 and work with the git repository. For further options, including PGP
52 signatures, see the youtube-dl Download Page.
53
54
55
56 DESCRIPTION
57
58
59 YOUTUBE-DL is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com
60 and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.6,
61 2.7, or 3.2+, and it is not platform specific. It should work on your
62 Unix box, on Windows or on Mac OS X. It is released to the public
63 domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however
64 you like.
65
66 youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]
67
68
69
70 OPTIONS
71
72
73 -h, --help Print this help text and exit
74 --version Print program version and exit
75 -U, --update Update this program to latest version. Make
76 sure that you have sufficient permissions
77 (run with sudo if needed)
78 -i, --ignore-errors Continue on download errors, for example to
79 skip unavailable videos in a playlist
80 --abort-on-error Abort downloading of further videos (in the
81 playlist or the command line) if an error
82 occurs
83 --dump-user-agent Display the current browser identification
84 --list-extractors List all supported extractors
85 --extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported
86 extractors
87 --force-generic-extractor Force extraction to use the generic
88 extractor
89 --default-search PREFIX Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For
90 example "gvsearch2:" downloads two videos
91 from google videos for youtube-dl "large
92 apple". Use the value "auto" to let
93 youtube-dl guess ("auto_warning" to emit a
94 warning when guessing). "error" just throws
95 an error. The default value "fixup_error"
96 repairs broken URLs, but emits an error if
97 this is not possible instead of searching.
98 --ignore-config Do not read configuration files. When given
99 in the global configuration file
100 /etc/youtube-dl.conf: Do not read the user
101 configuration in ~/.config/youtube-
102 dl/config (%APPDATA%/youtube-dl/config.txt
103 on Windows)
104 --config-location PATH Location of the configuration file; either
105 the path to the config or its containing
106 directory.
107 --flat-playlist Do not extract the videos of a playlist,
108 only list them.
109 --mark-watched Mark videos watched (YouTube only)
110 --no-mark-watched Do not mark videos watched (YouTube only)
111 --no-color Do not emit color codes in output
112
113
114 Network Options:
115
116 --proxy URL Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS proxy.
117 To enable experimental SOCKS proxy, specify
118 a proper scheme. For example
119 socks5://127.0.0.1:1080/. Pass in an empty
120 string (--proxy "") for direct connection
121 --socket-timeout SECONDS Time to wait before giving up, in seconds
122 --source-address IP Client-side IP address to bind to
123 -4, --force-ipv4 Make all connections via IPv4
124 -6, --force-ipv6 Make all connections via IPv6
125
126
127 Geo Restriction:
128
129 --geo-verification-proxy URL Use this proxy to verify the IP address for
130 some geo-restricted sites. The default
131 proxy specified by --proxy (or none, if the
132 options is not present) is used for the
133 actual downloading.
134 --geo-bypass Bypass geographic restriction via faking
135 X-Forwarded-For HTTP header (experimental)
136 --no-geo-bypass Do not bypass geographic restriction via
137 faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
138 (experimental)
139 --geo-bypass-country CODE Force bypass geographic restriction with
140 explicitly provided two-letter ISO 3166-2
141 country code (experimental)
142
143
144 Video Selection:
145
146 --playlist-start NUMBER Playlist video to start at (default is 1)
147 --playlist-end NUMBER Playlist video to end at (default is last)
148 --playlist-items ITEM_SPEC Playlist video items to download. Specify
149 indices of the videos in the playlist
150 separated by commas like: "--playlist-items
151 1,2,5,8" if you want to download videos
152 indexed 1, 2, 5, 8 in the playlist. You can
153 specify range: "--playlist-items
154 1-3,7,10-13", it will download the videos
155 at index 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
156 --match-title REGEX Download only matching titles (regex or
157 caseless sub-string)
158 --reject-title REGEX Skip download for matching titles (regex or
159 caseless sub-string)
160 --max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files
161 --min-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos smaller than
162 SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
163 --max-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos larger than SIZE
164 (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
165 --date DATE Download only videos uploaded in this date
166 --datebefore DATE Download only videos uploaded on or before
167 this date (i.e. inclusive)
168 --dateafter DATE Download only videos uploaded on or after
169 this date (i.e. inclusive)
170 --min-views COUNT Do not download any videos with less than
171 COUNT views
172 --max-views COUNT Do not download any videos with more than
173 COUNT views
174 --match-filter FILTER Generic video filter. Specify any key (see
175 the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a list of
176 available keys) to match if the key is
177 present, !key to check if the key is not
178 present, key > NUMBER (like "comment_count
179 > 12", also works with >=, <, <=, !=, =) to
180 compare against a number, key = 'LITERAL'
181 (like "uploader = 'Mike Smith'", also works
182 with !=) to match against a string literal
183 and & to require multiple matches. Values
184 which are not known are excluded unless you
185 put a question mark (?) after the operator.
186 For example, to only match videos that have
187 been liked more than 100 times and disliked
188 less than 50 times (or the dislike
189 functionality is not available at the given
190 service), but who also have a description,
191 use --match-filter "like_count > 100 &
192 dislike_count <? 50 & description" .
193 --no-playlist Download only the video, if the URL refers
194 to a video and a playlist.
195 --yes-playlist Download the playlist, if the URL refers to
196 a video and a playlist.
197 --age-limit YEARS Download only videos suitable for the given
198 age
199 --download-archive FILE Download only videos not listed in the
200 archive file. Record the IDs of all
201 downloaded videos in it.
202 --include-ads Download advertisements as well
203 (experimental)
204
205
206 Download Options:
207
208 -r, --limit-rate RATE Maximum download rate in bytes per second
209 (e.g. 50K or 4.2M)
210 -R, --retries RETRIES Number of retries (default is 10), or
211 "infinite".
212 --fragment-retries RETRIES Number of retries for a fragment (default
213 is 10), or "infinite" (DASH, hlsnative and
214 ISM)
215 --skip-unavailable-fragments Skip unavailable fragments (DASH, hlsnative
216 and ISM)
217 --abort-on-unavailable-fragment Abort downloading when some fragment is not
218 available
219 --keep-fragments Keep downloaded fragments on disk after
220 downloading is finished; fragments are
221 erased by default
222 --buffer-size SIZE Size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16K)
223 (default is 1024)
224 --no-resize-buffer Do not automatically adjust the buffer
225 size. By default, the buffer size is
226 automatically resized from an initial value
227 of SIZE.
228 --playlist-reverse Download playlist videos in reverse order
229 --playlist-random Download playlist videos in random order
230 --xattr-set-filesize Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with
231 expected file size (experimental)
232 --hls-prefer-native Use the native HLS downloader instead of
233 ffmpeg
234 --hls-prefer-ffmpeg Use ffmpeg instead of the native HLS
235 downloader
236 --hls-use-mpegts Use the mpegts container for HLS videos,
237 allowing to play the video while
238 downloading (some players may not be able
239 to play it)
240 --external-downloader COMMAND Use the specified external downloader.
241 Currently supports
242 aria2c,avconv,axel,curl,ffmpeg,httpie,wget
243 --external-downloader-args ARGS Give these arguments to the external
244 downloader
245
246
247 Filesystem Options:
248
249 -a, --batch-file FILE File containing URLs to download ('-' for
250 stdin)
251 --id Use only video ID in file name
252 -o, --output TEMPLATE Output filename template, see the "OUTPUT
253 TEMPLATE" for all the info
254 --autonumber-start NUMBER Specify the start value for %(autonumber)s
255 (default is 1)
256 --restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII
257 characters, and avoid "&" and spaces in
258 filenames
259 -w, --no-overwrites Do not overwrite files
260 -c, --continue Force resume of partially downloaded files.
261 By default, youtube-dl will resume
262 downloads if possible.
263 --no-continue Do not resume partially downloaded files
264 (restart from beginning)
265 --no-part Do not use .part files - write directly
266 into output file
267 --no-mtime Do not use the Last-modified header to set
268 the file modification time
269 --write-description Write video description to a .description
270 file
271 --write-info-json Write video metadata to a .info.json file
272 --write-annotations Write video annotations to a
273 .annotations.xml file
274 --load-info-json FILE JSON file containing the video information
275 (created with the "--write-info-json"
276 option)
277 --cookies FILE File to read cookies from and dump cookie
278 jar in
279 --cache-dir DIR Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl
280 can store some downloaded information
281 permanently. By default
282 $XDG_CACHE_HOME/youtube-dl or
283 ~/.cache/youtube-dl . At the moment, only
284 YouTube player files (for videos with
285 obfuscated signatures) are cached, but that
286 may change.
287 --no-cache-dir Disable filesystem caching
288 --rm-cache-dir Delete all filesystem cache files
289
290
291 Thumbnail images:
292
293 --write-thumbnail Write thumbnail image to disk
294 --write-all-thumbnails Write all thumbnail image formats to disk
295 --list-thumbnails Simulate and list all available thumbnail
296 formats
297
298
299 Verbosity / Simulation Options:
300
301 -q, --quiet Activate quiet mode
302 --no-warnings Ignore warnings
303 -s, --simulate Do not download the video and do not write
304 anything to disk
305 --skip-download Do not download the video
306 -g, --get-url Simulate, quiet but print URL
307 -e, --get-title Simulate, quiet but print title
308 --get-id Simulate, quiet but print id
309 --get-thumbnail Simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
310 --get-description Simulate, quiet but print video description
311 --get-duration Simulate, quiet but print video length
312 --get-filename Simulate, quiet but print output filename
313 --get-format Simulate, quiet but print output format
314 -j, --dump-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information.
315 See the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a description
316 of available keys.
317 -J, --dump-single-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information
318 for each command-line argument. If the URL
319 refers to a playlist, dump the whole
320 playlist information in a single line.
321 --print-json Be quiet and print the video information as
322 JSON (video is still being downloaded).
323 --newline Output progress bar as new lines
324 --no-progress Do not print progress bar
325 --console-title Display progress in console titlebar
326 -v, --verbose Print various debugging information
327 --dump-pages Print downloaded pages encoded using base64
328 to debug problems (very verbose)
329 --write-pages Write downloaded intermediary pages to
330 files in the current directory to debug
331 problems
332 --print-traffic Display sent and read HTTP traffic
333 -C, --call-home Contact the youtube-dl server for debugging
334 --no-call-home Do NOT contact the youtube-dl server for
335 debugging
336
337
338 Workarounds:
339
340 --encoding ENCODING Force the specified encoding (experimental)
341 --no-check-certificate Suppress HTTPS certificate validation
342 --prefer-insecure Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve
343 information about the video. (Currently
344 supported only for YouTube)
345 --user-agent UA Specify a custom user agent
346 --referer URL Specify a custom referer, use if the video
347 access is restricted to one domain
348 --add-header FIELD:VALUE Specify a custom HTTP header and its value,
349 separated by a colon ':'. You can use this
350 option multiple times
351 --bidi-workaround Work around terminals that lack
352 bidirectional text support. Requires bidiv
353 or fribidi executable in PATH
354 --sleep-interval SECONDS Number of seconds to sleep before each
355 download when used alone or a lower bound
356 of a range for randomized sleep before each
357 download (minimum possible number of
358 seconds to sleep) when used along with
359 --max-sleep-interval.
360 --max-sleep-interval SECONDS Upper bound of a range for randomized sleep
361 before each download (maximum possible
362 number of seconds to sleep). Must only be
363 used along with --min-sleep-interval.
364
365
366 Video Format Options:
367
368 -f, --format FORMAT Video format code, see the "FORMAT
369 SELECTION" for all the info
370 --all-formats Download all available video formats
371 --prefer-free-formats Prefer free video formats unless a specific
372 one is requested
373 -F, --list-formats List all available formats of requested
374 videos
375 --youtube-skip-dash-manifest Do not download the DASH manifests and
376 related data on YouTube videos
377 --merge-output-format FORMAT If a merge is required (e.g.
378 bestvideo+bestaudio), output to given
379 container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg,
380 webm, flv. Ignored if no merge is required
381
382
383 Subtitle Options:
384
385 --write-sub Write subtitle file
386 --write-auto-sub Write automatically generated subtitle file
387 (YouTube only)
388 --all-subs Download all the available subtitles of the
389 video
390 --list-subs List all available subtitles for the video
391 --sub-format FORMAT Subtitle format, accepts formats
392 preference, for example: "srt" or
393 "ass/srt/best"
394 --sub-lang LANGS Languages of the subtitles to download
395 (optional) separated by commas, use --list-
396 subs for available language tags
397
398
399 Authentication Options:
400
401 -u, --username USERNAME Login with this account ID
402 -p, --password PASSWORD Account password. If this option is left
403 out, youtube-dl will ask interactively.
404 -2, --twofactor TWOFACTOR Two-factor authentication code
405 -n, --netrc Use .netrc authentication data
406 --video-password PASSWORD Video password (vimeo, smotri, youku)
407
408
409 Adobe Pass Options:
410
411 --ap-mso MSO Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV
412 provider) identifier, use --ap-list-mso for
413 a list of available MSOs
414 --ap-username USERNAME Multiple-system operator account login
415 --ap-password PASSWORD Multiple-system operator account password.
416 If this option is left out, youtube-dl will
417 ask interactively.
418 --ap-list-mso List all supported multiple-system
419 operators
420
421
422 Post-processing Options:
423
424 -x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files
425 (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or
426 avprobe)
427 --audio-format FORMAT Specify audio format: "best", "aac",
428 "flac", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", "vorbis", or
429 "wav"; "best" by default; No effect without
430 -x
431 --audio-quality QUALITY Specify ffmpeg/avconv audio quality, insert
432 a value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse)
433 for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K
434 (default 5)
435 --recode-video FORMAT Encode the video to another format if
436 necessary (currently supported:
437 mp4|flv|ogg|webm|mkv|avi)
438 --postprocessor-args ARGS Give these arguments to the postprocessor
439 -k, --keep-video Keep the video file on disk after the post-
440 processing; the video is erased by default
441 --no-post-overwrites Do not overwrite post-processed files; the
442 post-processed files are overwritten by
443 default
444 --embed-subs Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4,
445 webm and mkv videos)
446 --embed-thumbnail Embed thumbnail in the audio as cover art
447 --add-metadata Write metadata to the video file
448 --metadata-from-title FORMAT Parse additional metadata like song title /
449 artist from the video title. The format
450 syntax is the same as --output. Regular
451 expression with named capture groups may
452 also be used. The parsed parameters replace
453 existing values. Example: --metadata-from-
454 title "%(artist)s - %(title)s" matches a
455 title like "Coldplay - Paradise". Example
456 (regex): --metadata-from-title
457 "(?P<artist>.+?) - (?P<title>.+)"
458 --xattrs Write metadata to the video file's xattrs
459 (using dublin core and xdg standards)
460 --fixup POLICY Automatically correct known faults of the
461 file. One of never (do nothing), warn (only
462 emit a warning), detect_or_warn (the
463 default; fix file if we can, warn
464 otherwise)
465 --prefer-avconv Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running the
466 postprocessors (default)
467 --prefer-ffmpeg Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running the
468 postprocessors
469 --ffmpeg-location PATH Location of the ffmpeg/avconv binary;
470 either the path to the binary or its
471 containing directory.
472 --exec CMD Execute a command on the file after
473 downloading, similar to find's -exec
474 syntax. Example: --exec 'adb push {}
475 /sdcard/Music/ && rm {}'
476 --convert-subs FORMAT Convert the subtitles to other format
477 (currently supported: srt|ass|vtt|lrc)
478
479
480
481 CONFIGURATION
482
483
484 You can configure youtube-dl by placing any supported command line
485 option to a configuration file. On Linux and OS X, the system wide
486 configuration file is located at /etc/youtube-dl.conf and the user wide
487 configuration file at ~/.config/youtube-dl/config. On Windows, the user
488 wide configuration file locations are %APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt or
489 C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf. Note that by default configuration
490 file may not exist so you may need to create it yourself.
491
492 For example, with the following configuration file youtube-dl will
493 always extract the audio, not copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all
494 videos under Movies directory in your home directory:
495
496 # Lines starting with # are comments
497
498 # Always extract audio
499 -x
500
501 # Do not copy the mtime
502 --no-mtime
503
504 # Use this proxy
505 --proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
506
507 # Save all videos under Movies directory in your home directory
508 -o ~/Movies/%(title)s.%(ext)s
509
510 Note that options in configuration file are just the same options aka
511 switches used in regular command line calls thus there MUST BE NO
512 WHITESPACE after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy.
513
514 You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable the configuration
515 file for a particular youtube-dl run.
516
517 You can also use --config-location if you want to use custom
518 configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.
519
520 Authentication with .netrc file
521
522 You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for
523 extractors that support authentication (by providing login and password
524 with --username and --password) in order not to pass credentials as
525 command line arguments on every youtube-dl execution and prevent
526 tracking plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can
527 achieve this using a .netrc file on a per extractor basis. For that you
528 will need to create a .netrc file in your $HOME and restrict permissions
529 to read/write by only you:
530
531 touch $HOME/.netrc
532 chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc
533
534 After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following
535 format, where _extractor_ is the name of the extractor in lowercase:
536
537 machine <extractor> login <login> password <password>
538
539 For example:
540
541 machine youtube login myaccount@gmail.com password my_youtube_password
542 machine twitch login my_twitch_account_name password my_twitch_password
543
544 To activate authentication with the .netrc file you should pass --netrc
545 to youtube-dl or place it in the configuration file.
546
547 On Windows you may also need to setup the %HOME% environment variable
548 manually. For example:
549
550 set HOME=%USERPROFILE%
551
552
553
554 OUTPUT TEMPLATE
555
556
557 The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file
558 names.
559
560 TL;DR: navigate me to examples.
561
562 The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a
563 single file, like in youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv "https://some/video".
564 However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced when
565 downloading each video. The special sequences may be formatted according
566 to python string formatting operations. For example, %(NAME)s or
567 %(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in
568 parentheses, followed by a formatting operations. Allowed names along
569 with sequence type are:
570
571 - id (string): Video identifier
572 - title (string): Video title
573 - url (string): Video URL
574 - ext (string): Video filename extension
575 - alt_title (string): A secondary title of the video
576 - display_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video
577 - uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader
578 - license (string): License name the video is licensed under
579 - creator (string): The creator of the video
580 - release_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was
581 released
582 - timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became
583 available
584 - upload_date (string): Video upload date (YYYYMMDD)
585 - uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader
586 - location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed
587 - duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds
588 - view_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the
589 platform
590 - like_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video
591 - dislike_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video
592 - repost_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video
593 - average_rating (numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale
594 used depends on the webpage
595 - comment_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video
596 - age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)
597 - format (string): A human-readable description of the format
598 - format_id (string): Format code specified by --format
599 - format_note (string): Additional info about the format
600 - width (numeric): Width of the video
601 - height (numeric): Height of the video
602 - resolution (string): Textual description of width and height
603 - tbr (numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
604 - abr (numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
605 - acodec (string): Name of the audio codec in use
606 - asr (numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertz
607 - vbr (numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/s
608 - fps (numeric): Frame rate
609 - vcodec (string): Name of the video codec in use
610 - container (string): Name of the container format
611 - filesize (numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advance
612 - filesize_approx (numeric): An estimate for the number of bytes
613 - protocol (string): The protocol that will be used for the actual
614 download
615 - extractor (string): Name of the extractor
616 - extractor_key (string): Key name of the extractor
617 - epoch (numeric): Unix epoch when creating the file
618 - autonumber (numeric): Five-digit number that will be increased with
619 each download, starting at zero
620 - playlist (string): Name or id of the playlist that contains the
621 video
622 - playlist_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded
623 with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist
624 - playlist_id (string): Playlist identifier
625 - playlist_title (string): Playlist title
626
627 Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:
628
629 - chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to
630 - chapter_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to
631 - chapter_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to
632
633 Available for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:
634
635 - series (string): Title of the series or programme the video episode
636 belongs to
637 - season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to
638 - season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode
639 belongs to
640 - season_id (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to
641 - episode (string): Title of the video episode
642 - episode_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a
643 season
644 - episode_id (string): Id of the video episode
645
646 Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:
647
648 - track (string): Title of the track
649 - track_number (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a
650 disc
651 - track_id (string): Id of the track
652 - artist (string): Artist(s) of the track
653 - genre (string): Genre(s) of the track
654 - album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to
655 - album_type (string): Type of the album
656 - album_artist (string): List of all artists appeared on the album
657 - disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium
658 the track belongs to
659 - release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released
660
661 Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will
662 be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. Note
663 that some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since they
664 depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such
665 sequences will be replaced with NA.
666
667 For example for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title
668 youtube-dl test video and id BaW_jenozKcj, this will result in a
669 youtube-dl test video-BaW_jenozKcj.mp4 file created in the current
670 directory.
671
672 For numeric sequences you can use numeric related formatting, for
673 example, %(view_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded
674 with zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042.
675
676 Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g.
677 -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' which will
678 result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this
679 path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for
680 you.
681
682 To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to
683 stdout use -o -.
684
685 The current default template is %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s.
686
687 In some cases, you don't want special characters such as äø­, spaces, or
688 &, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows system
689 or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the
690 --restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title:
691
692 Output template and Windows batch files
693
694 If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then you
695 must escape plain percent characters (%) by doubling, so that
696 -o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" should become
697 -o "%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s". However you should not touch %'s that
698 are not plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion
699 should stay intact: -o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s".
700
701 Output template examples
702
703 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of
704 single.
705
706 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc
707 youtube-dl test video ''_Ƥā†­š•.mp4 # All kinds of weird characters
708
709 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
710 youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4 # A simple file name
711
712 # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
713 $ youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re
714
715 # Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory:
716 $ youtube-dl -o '%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists
717
718 # Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home
719 $ 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/
720
721 # Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos
722 $ 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
723
724 # Stream the video being downloaded to stdout
725 $ youtube-dl -o - BaW_jenozKc
726
727
728
729 FORMAT SELECTION
730
731
732 By default youtube-dl tries to download the best available quality, i.e.
733 if you want the best quality you DON'T NEED to pass any special options,
734 youtube-dl will guess it for you by DEFAULT.
735
736 But sometimes you may want to download in a different format, for
737 example when you are on a slow or intermittent connection. The key
738 mechanism for achieving this is so-called _format selection_ based on
739 which you can explicitly specify desired format, select formats based on
740 some criterion or criteria, setup precedence and much more.
741
742 The general syntax for format selection is --format FORMAT or shorter
743 -f FORMAT where FORMAT is a _selector expression_, i.e. an expression
744 that describes format or formats you would like to download.
745
746 TL;DR: navigate me to examples.
747
748 The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example with
749 -f 22 you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can
750 get the list of available format codes for particular video using
751 --list-formats or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor
752 specific.
753
754 You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3,
755 mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format
756 of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm
757 will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as
758 a single file.
759
760 You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats: -
761 best: Select the best quality format represented by a single file with
762 video and audio. - worst: Select the worst quality format represented by
763 a single file with video and audio. - bestvideo: Select the best quality
764 video-only format (e.g. DASH video). May not be available. - worstvideo:
765 Select the worst quality video-only format. May not be available. -
766 bestaudio: Select the best quality audio only-format. May not be
767 available. - worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio only-format. May
768 not be available.
769
770 For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use
771 -f worstvideo.
772
773 If you want to download multiple videos and they don't have the same
774 formats available, you can specify the order of preference using
775 slashes. Note that slash is left-associative, i.e. formats on the left
776 hand side are preferred, for example -f 22/17/18 will download format 22
777 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's
778 available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available,
779 otherwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for
780 download.
781
782 If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as
783 a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three formats, of
784 course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined
785 with the precedence feature: -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.
786
787 You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in
788 brackets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]").
789
790 The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons <, <=, >,
791 >=, = (equals), != (not equals): - filesize: The number of bytes, if
792 known in advance - width: Width of the video, if known - height: Height
793 of the video, if known - tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in
794 KBit/s - abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s - vbr: Average video
795 bitrate in KBit/s - asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz - fps: Frame rate
796
797 Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), != (not equals), ^=
798 (begins with), $= (ends with), *= (contains) and following string meta
799 fields: - ext: File extension - acodec: Name of the audio codec in use -
800 vcodec: Name of the video codec in use - container: Name of the
801 container format - protocol: The protocol that will be used for the
802 actual download, lower-case (http, https, rtsp, rtmp, rtmpe, mms, f4m,
803 ism, http_dash_segments, m3u8, or m3u8_native) - format_id: A short
804 description of the format
805
806 Note that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be
807 present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particular
808 extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the video hoster.
809
810 Formats for which the value is not known are excluded unless you put a
811 question mark (?) after the operator. You can combine format filters, so
812 -f "[height <=? 720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos
813 where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s.
814
815 You can merge the video and audio of two formats into a single file
816 using -f <video-format>+<audio-format> (requires ffmpeg or avconv
817 installed), for example -f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best
818 video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with
819 ffmpeg/avconv.
820
821 Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if
822 you want to download the best mp4 and webm formats with a height lower
823 than 480 you can use -f '(mp4,webm)[height<480]'.
824
825 Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26, youtube-dl uses
826 -f bestvideo+bestaudio/best as the default format selection (see #5447,
827 #5456). If ffmpeg or avconv are installed this results in downloading
828 bestvideo and bestaudio separately and muxing them together into a
829 single file giving the best overall quality available. Otherwise it
830 falls back to best and results in downloading the best available quality
831 served as a single file. best is also needed for videos that don't come
832 from YouTube because they don't provide the audio and video in two
833 different files. If you want to only download some DASH formats (for
834 example if you are not interested in getting videos with a resolution
835 higher than 1080p), you can add
836 -f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best to your configuration file.
837 Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream to stdout (and most likely to
838 pipe it to your media player then), i.e. you explicitly specify output
839 template as -o -, youtube-dl still uses -f best format selection in
840 order to start content delivery immediately to your player and not to
841 wait until bestvideo and bestaudio are downloaded and muxed.
842
843 If you want to preserve the old format selection behavior (prior to
844 youtube-dl 2015.04.26), i.e. you want to download the best available
845 quality media served as a single file, you should explicitly specify
846 your choice with -f best. You may want to add it to the configuration
847 file in order not to type it every time you run youtube-dl.
848
849 Format selection examples
850
851 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of
852 single.
853
854 # Download best mp4 format available or any other best if no mp4 available
855 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best'
856
857 # Download best format available but not better that 480p
858 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]'
859
860 # Download best video only format but no bigger than 50 MB
861 $ youtube-dl -f 'best[filesize<50M]'
862
863 # Download best format available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol
864 $ youtube-dl -f '(bestvideo+bestaudio/best)[protocol^=http]'
865
866 # Download the best video format and the best audio format without merging them
867 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo,bestaudio' -o '%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s'
868
869 Note that in the last example, an output template is recommended as
870 bestvideo and bestaudio may have the same file name.
871
872
873
874 VIDEO SELECTION
875
876
877 Videos can be filtered by their upload date using the options --date,
878 --datebefore or --dateafter. They accept dates in two formats:
879
880 - Absolute dates: Dates in the format YYYYMMDD.
881 - Relative dates: Dates in the format
882 (now|today)[+-][0-9](day|week|month|year)(s)?
883
884 Examples:
885
886 # Download only the videos uploaded in the last 6 months
887 $ youtube-dl --dateafter now-6months
888
889 # Download only the videos uploaded on January 1, 1970
890 $ youtube-dl --date 19700101
891
892 $ # Download only the videos uploaded in the 200x decade
893 $ youtube-dl --dateafter 20000101 --datebefore 20091231
894
895
896
897 FAQ
898
899
900 How do I update youtube-dl?
901
902 If you've followed our manual installation instructions, you can simply
903 run youtube-dl -U (or, on Linux, sudo youtube-dl -U).
904
905 If you have used pip, a simple sudo pip install -U youtube-dl is
906 sufficient to update.
907
908 If you have installed youtube-dl using a package manager like _apt-get_
909 or _yum_, use the standard system update mechanism to update. Note that
910 distribution packages are often outdated. As a rule of thumb, youtube-dl
911 releases at least once a month, and often weekly or even daily. Simply
912 go to https://yt-dl.org to find out the current version. Unfortunately,
913 there is nothing we youtube-dl developers can do if your distribution
914 serves a really outdated version. You can (and should) complain to your
915 distribution in their bugtracker or support forum.
916
917 As a last resort, you can also uninstall the version installed by your
918 package manager and follow our manual installation instructions. For
919 that, remove the distribution's package, with a line like
920
921 sudo apt-get remove -y youtube-dl
922
923 Afterwards, simply follow our manual installation instructions:
924
925 sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
926 sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
927 hash -r
928
929 Again, from then on you'll be able to update with sudo youtube-dl -U.
930
931 youtube-dl is extremely slow to start on Windows
932
933 Add a file exclusion for youtube-dl.exe in Windows Defender settings.
934
935 I'm getting an error Unable to extract OpenGraph title on YouTube playlists
936
937 YouTube changed their playlist format in March 2014 and later on, so
938 you'll need at least youtube-dl 2014.07.25 to download all YouTube
939 videos.
940
941 If you have installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py
942 or a tarball, please use that to update. Note that Ubuntu packages do
943 not seem to get updated anymore. Since we are not affiliated with
944 Ubuntu, there is little we can do. Feel free to report bugs to the
945 Ubuntu packaging people - all they have to do is update the package to a
946 somewhat recent version. See above for a way to update.
947
948 I'm getting an error when trying to use output template: error: using output template conflicts with using title, video ID or auto number
949
950 Make sure you are not using -o with any of these options -t, --title,
951 --id, -A or --auto-number set in command line or in a configuration
952 file. Remove the latter if any.
953
954 Do I always have to pass -citw?
955
956 By default, youtube-dl intends to have the best options (incidentally,
957 if you have a convincing case that these should be different, please
958 file an issue where you explain that). Therefore, it is unnecessary and
959 sometimes harmful to copy long option strings from webpages. In
960 particular, the only option out of -citw that is regularly useful is -i.
961
962 Can you please put the -b option back?
963
964 Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now
965 defaults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by
966 YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer
967 need the -b option. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not
968 report them to be available in a specific high quality format you're
969 interested in. In that case, simply request it with the -f option and
970 youtube-dl will try to download it.
971
972 I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's this?
973
974 Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download
975 too much. We're considering to provide a way to let you solve the
976 CAPTCHA, but at the moment, your best course of action is pointing a web
977 browser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.
978
979 Do I need any other programs?
980
981 youtube-dl works fine on its own on most sites. However, if you want to
982 convert video/audio, you'll need avconv or ffmpeg. On some sites - most
983 notably YouTube - videos can be retrieved in a higher quality format
984 without sound. youtube-dl will detect whether avconv/ffmpeg is present
985 and automatically pick the best option.
986
987 Videos or video formats streamed via RTMP protocol can only be
988 downloaded when rtmpdump is installed. Downloading MMS and RTSP videos
989 requires either mplayer or mpv to be installed.
990
991 I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?
992
993 Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as mpv,
994 vlc or mplayer.
995
996 I extracted a video URL with -g, but it does not play on another machine / in my web browser.
997
998 It depends a lot on the service. In many cases, requests for the video
999 (to download/play it) must come from the same IP address and with the
1000 same cookies and/or HTTP headers. Use the --cookies option to write the
1001 required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies
1002 from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used,
1003 use --dump-user-agent to see the one in use by youtube-dl. You can also
1004 get necessary cookies and HTTP headers from JSON output obtained with
1005 --dump-json.
1006
1007 It may be beneficial to use IPv6; in some cases, the restrictions are
1008 only applied to IPv4. Some services (sometimes only for a subset of
1009 videos) do not restrict the video URL by IP address, cookie, or
1010 user-agent, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
1011
1012 Please bear in mind that some URL protocols are NOT supported by
1013 browsers out of the box, including RTMP. If you are using -g, your own
1014 downloader must support these as well.
1015
1016 If you want to play the video on a machine that is not running
1017 youtube-dl, you can relay the video content from the machine that runs
1018 youtube-dl. You can use -o - to let youtube-dl stream a video to stdout,
1019 or simply allow the player to download the files written by youtube-dl
1020 in turn.
1021
1022 ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info
1023
1024 YouTube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is
1025 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update
1026 youtube-dl.
1027
1028 ERROR: unable to download video
1029
1030 YouTube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is
1031 not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update
1032 youtube-dl.
1033
1034 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
1035
1036 That's actually the output from your shell. Since ampersand is one of
1037 the special shell characters it's interpreted by the shell preventing
1038 you from passing the whole URL to youtube-dl. To disable your shell from
1039 interpreting the ampersands (or any other special characters) you have
1040 to either put the whole URL in quotes or escape them with a backslash
1041 (which approach will work depends on your shell).
1042
1043 For example if your URL is
1044 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc you should end up with
1045 following command:
1046
1047 youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc'
1048
1049 or
1050
1051 youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKc
1052
1053 For Windows you have to use the double quotes:
1054
1055 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc"
1056
1057 ExtractorError: Could not find JS function u'OF'
1058
1059 In February 2015, the new YouTube player contained a character sequence
1060 in a string that was misinterpreted by old versions of youtube-dl. See
1061 above for how to update youtube-dl.
1062
1063 HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests or 402: Payment Required
1064
1065 These two error codes indicate that the service is blocking your IP
1066 address because of overuse. Contact the service and ask them to unblock
1067 your IP address, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address
1068 already - use the --proxy or --source-address options to select another
1069 IP address.
1070
1071 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character
1072
1073 The error
1074
1075 File "youtube-dl", line 2
1076 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x93' ...
1077
1078 means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to
1079 Python 2.6 or 2.7.
1080
1081 What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?
1082
1083 Since June 2012 (#342) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile,
1084 simply unzip it (might need renaming to youtube-dl.zip first on some
1085 systems) or clone the git repository, as laid out above. If you modify
1086 the code, you can run it by executing the __main__.py file. To recompile
1087 the executable, run make youtube-dl.
1088
1089 The exe throws an error due to missing MSVCR100.dll
1090
1091 To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010
1092 Redistributable Package (x86).
1093
1094 On Windows, how should I set up ffmpeg and youtube-dl? Where should I put the exe files?
1095
1096 If you put youtube-dl and ffmpeg in the same directory that you're
1097 running the command from, it will work, but that's rather cumbersome.
1098
1099 To make a different directory work - either for ffmpeg, or for
1100 youtube-dl, or for both - simply create the directory (say, C:\bin, or
1101 C:\Users\<User name>\bin), put all the executables directly in there,
1102 and then set your PATH environment variable to include that directory.
1103
1104 From then on, after restarting your shell, you will be able to access
1105 both youtube-dl and ffmpeg (and youtube-dl will be able to find ffmpeg)
1106 by simply typing youtube-dl or ffmpeg, no matter what directory you're
1107 in.
1108
1109 How do I put downloads into a specific folder?
1110
1111 Use the -o to specify an output template, for example
1112 -o "/home/user/videos/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s". If you want this for
1113 all of your downloads, put the option into your configuration file.
1114
1115 How do I download a video starting with a -?
1116
1117 Either prepend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= or separate the ID from
1118 the options with --:
1119
1120 youtube-dl -- -wNyEUrxzFU
1121 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"
1122
1123 How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?
1124
1125 Use the --cookies option, for example
1126 --cookies /path/to/cookies/file.txt.
1127
1128 In order to extract cookies from browser use any conforming browser
1129 extension for exporting cookies. For example, cookies.txt (for Chrome)
1130 or Export Cookies (for Firefox).
1131
1132 Note that the cookies file must be in Mozilla/Netscape format and the
1133 first line of the cookies file must be either # HTTP Cookie File or
1134 # Netscape HTTP Cookie File. Make sure you have correct newline format
1135 in the cookies file and convert newlines if necessary to correspond with
1136 your OS, namely CRLF (\r\n) for Windows and LF (\n) for Unix and
1137 Unix-like systems (Linux, Mac OS, etc.). HTTP Error 400: Bad Request
1138 when using --cookies is a good sign of invalid newline format.
1139
1140 Passing cookies to youtube-dl is a good way to workaround login when a
1141 particular extractor does not implement it explicitly. Another use case
1142 is working around CAPTCHA some websites require you to solve in
1143 particular cases in order to get access (e.g. YouTube, CloudFlare).
1144
1145 How do I stream directly to media player?
1146
1147 You will first need to tell youtube-dl to stream media to stdout with
1148 -o -, and also tell your media player to read from stdin (it must be
1149 capable of this for streaming) and then pipe former to latter. For
1150 example, streaming to vlc can be achieved with:
1151
1152 youtube-dl -o - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj" | vlc -
1153
1154 How do I download only new videos from a playlist?
1155
1156 Use download-archive feature. With this feature you should initially
1157 download the complete playlist with
1158 --download-archive /path/to/download/archive/file.txt that will record
1159 identifiers of all the videos in a special file. Each subsequent run
1160 with the same --download-archive will download only new videos and skip
1161 all videos that have been downloaded before. Note that only successful
1162 downloads are recorded in the file.
1163
1164 For example, at first,
1165
1166 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1167
1168 will download the complete PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re playlist
1169 and create a file archive.txt. Each subsequent run will only download
1170 new videos if any:
1171
1172 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
1173
1174 Should I add --hls-prefer-native into my config?
1175
1176 When youtube-dl detects an HLS video, it can download it either with the
1177 built-in downloader or ffmpeg. Since many HLS streams are slightly
1178 invalid and ffmpeg/youtube-dl each handle some invalid cases better than
1179 the other, there is an option to switch the downloader if needed.
1180
1181 When youtube-dl knows that one particular downloader works better for a
1182 given website, that downloader will be picked. Otherwise, youtube-dl
1183 will pick the best downloader for general compatibility, which at the
1184 moment happens to be ffmpeg. This choice may change in future versions
1185 of youtube-dl, with improvements of the built-in downloader and/or
1186 ffmpeg.
1187
1188 In particular, the generic extractor (used when your website is not in
1189 the list of supported sites by youtube-dl cannot mandate one specific
1190 downloader.
1191
1192 If you put either --hls-prefer-native or --hls-prefer-ffmpeg into your
1193 configuration, a different subset of videos will fail to download
1194 correctly. Instead, it is much better to file an issue or a pull request
1195 which details why the native or the ffmpeg HLS downloader is a better
1196 choice for your use case.
1197
1198 Can you add support for this anime video site, or site which shows current movies for free?
1199
1200 As a matter of policy (as well as legality), youtube-dl does not include
1201 support for services that specialize in infringing copyright. As a rule
1202 of thumb, if you cannot easily find a video that the service is quite
1203 obviously allowed to distribute (i.e. that has been uploaded by the
1204 creator, the creator's distributor, or is published under a free
1205 license), the service is probably unfit for inclusion to youtube-dl.
1206
1207 A note on the service that they don't host the infringing content, but
1208 just link to those who do, is evidence that the service should NOT be
1209 included into youtube-dl. The same goes for any DMCA note when the whole
1210 front page of the service is filled with videos they are not allowed to
1211 distribute. A "fair use" note is equally unconvincing if the service
1212 shows copyright-protected videos in full without authorization.
1213
1214 Support requests for services that DO purchase the rights to distribute
1215 their content are perfectly fine though. If in doubt, you can simply
1216 include a source that mentions the legitimate purchase of content.
1217
1218 How can I speed up work on my issue?
1219
1220 (Also known as: Help, my important issue not being solved!) The
1221 youtube-dl core developer team is quite small. While we do our best to
1222 solve as many issues as possible, sometimes that can take quite a while.
1223 To speed up your issue, here's what you can do:
1224
1225 First of all, please do report the issue at our issue tracker. That
1226 allows us to coordinate all efforts by users and developers, and serves
1227 as a unified point. Unfortunately, the youtube-dl project has grown too
1228 large to use personal email as an effective communication channel.
1229
1230 Please read the bug reporting instructions below. A lot of bugs lack all
1231 the necessary information. If you can, offer proxy, VPN, or shell access
1232 to the youtube-dl developers. If you are able to, test the issue from
1233 multiple computers in multiple countries to exclude local censorship or
1234 misconfiguration issues.
1235
1236 If nobody is interested in solving your issue, you are welcome to take
1237 matters into your own hands and submit a pull request (or coerce/pay
1238 somebody else to do so).
1239
1240 Feel free to bump the issue from time to time by writing a small comment
1241 ("Issue is still present in youtube-dl version ...from France, but fixed
1242 from Belgium"), but please not more than once a month. Please do not
1243 declare your issue as important or urgent.
1244
1245 How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
1246
1247 For one, have a look at the list of supported sites. Note that it can
1248 sometimes happen that the site changes its URL scheme (say, from
1249 https://example.com/video/1234567 to https://example.com/v/1234567 ) and
1250 youtube-dl reports an URL of a service in that list as unsupported. In
1251 that case, simply report a bug.
1252
1253 It is _not_ possible to detect whether a URL is supported or not. That's
1254 because youtube-dl contains a generic extractor which matches ALL URLs.
1255 You may be tempted to disable, exclude, or remove the generic extractor,
1256 but the generic extractor not only allows users to extract videos from
1257 lots of websites that embed a video from another service, but may also
1258 be used to extract video from a service that it's hosting itself.
1259 Therefore, we neither recommend nor support disabling, excluding, or
1260 removing the generic extractor.
1261
1262 If you want to find out whether a given URL is supported, simply call
1263 youtube-dl with it. If you get no videos back, chances are the URL is
1264 either not referring to a video or unsupported. You can find out which
1265 by examining the output (if you run youtube-dl on the console) or
1266 catching an UnsupportedError exception if you run it from a Python
1267 program.
1268
1269
1270
1271 WHY DO I NEED TO GO THROUGH THAT MUCH RED TAPE WHEN FILING BUGS?
1272
1273
1274 Before we had the issue template, despite our extensive bug reporting
1275 instructions, about 80% of the issue reports we got were useless, for
1276 instance because people used ancient versions hundreds of releases old,
1277 because of simple syntactic errors (not in youtube-dl but in general
1278 shell usage), because the problem was already reported multiple times
1279 before, because people did not actually read an error message, even if
1280 it said "please install ffmpeg", because people did not mention the URL
1281 they were trying to download and many more simple, easy-to-avoid
1282 problems, many of whom were totally unrelated to youtube-dl.
1283
1284 youtube-dl is an open-source project manned by too few volunteers, so
1285 we'd rather spend time fixing bugs where we are certain none of those
1286 simple problems apply, and where we can be reasonably confident to be
1287 able to reproduce the issue without asking the reporter repeatedly. As
1288 such, the output of youtube-dl -v YOUR_URL_HERE is really all that's
1289 required to file an issue. The issue template also guides you through
1290 some basic steps you can do, such as checking that your version of
1291 youtube-dl is current.
1292
1293
1294
1295 DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
1296
1297
1298 Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can download the builds
1299 or get them from their distribution.
1300
1301 To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything
1302 either. Simply execute
1303
1304 python -m youtube_dl
1305
1306 To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a
1307 test file directly; any of the following work:
1308
1309 python -m unittest discover
1310 python test/test_download.py
1311 nosetests
1312
1313 See item 6 of new extractor tutorial for how to run extractor specific
1314 test cases.
1315
1316 If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need
1317
1318 - python
1319 - make (only GNU make is supported)
1320 - pandoc
1321 - zip
1322 - nosetests
1323
1324 Adding support for a new site
1325
1326 If you want to add support for a new site, first of all MAKE SURE this
1327 site is NOT DEDICATED TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. youtube-dl does NOT
1328 SUPPORT such sites thus pull requests adding support for them WILL BE
1329 REJECTED.
1330
1331 After you have ensured this site is distributing its content legally,
1332 you can follow this quick list (assuming your service is called
1333 yourextractor):
1334
1335 1. Fork this repository
1336 2. Check out the source code with:
1337
1338 git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
1339
1340 3. Start a new git branch with
1341
1342 cd youtube-dl
1343 git checkout -b yourextractor
1344
1345 4. Start with this simple template and save it to
1346 youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py:
1347
1348 # coding: utf-8
1349 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1350
1351 from .common import InfoExtractor
1352
1353
1354 class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
1355 _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
1356 _TEST = {
1357 'url': 'https://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
1358 'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
1359 'info_dict': {
1360 'id': '42',
1361 'ext': 'mp4',
1362 'title': 'Video title goes here',
1363 'thumbnail': r're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
1364 # TODO more properties, either as:
1365 # * A value
1366 # * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
1367 # * A regular expression; start the string with re:
1368 # * Any Python type (for example int or float)
1369 }
1370 }
1371
1372 def _real_extract(self, url):
1373 video_id = self._match_id(url)
1374 webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
1375
1376 # TODO more code goes here, for example ...
1377 title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
1378
1379 return {
1380 'id': video_id,
1381 'title': title,
1382 'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
1383 'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
1384 # TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
1385 }
1386
1387 5. Add an import in youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py.
1388 6. Run python test/test_download.py TestDownload.test_YourExtractor.
1389 This _should fail_ at first, but you can continually re-run it until
1390 you're done. If you decide to add more than one test, then rename
1391 _TEST to _TESTS and make it into a list of dictionaries. The tests
1392 will then be named TestDownload.test_YourExtractor,
1393 TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_1,
1394 TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_2, etc. Note that tests with
1395 only_matching key in test's dict are not counted in.
1396 7. Have a look at youtube_dl/extractor/common.py for possible helper
1397 methods and a detailed description of what your extractor should and
1398 may return. Add tests and code for as many as you want.
1399 8. Make sure your code follows youtube-dl coding conventions and check
1400 the code with flake8. Also make sure your code works under all
1401 Python versions claimed supported by youtube-dl, namely 2.6, 2.7,
1402 and 3.2+.
1403 9. When the tests pass, add the new files and commit them and push the
1404 result, like this:
1405
1406 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
1407 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
1408 $ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
1409 $ git push origin yourextractor
1410
1411 10. Finally, create a pull request. We'll then review and merge it.
1412
1413 In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!
1414
1415
1416 youtube-dl coding conventions
1417
1418 This section introduces a guide lines for writing idiomatic, robust and
1419 future-proof extractor code.
1420
1421 Extractors are very fragile by nature since they depend on the layout of
1422 the source data provided by 3rd party media hosters out of your control
1423 and this layout tends to change. As an extractor implementer your task
1424 is not only to write code that will extract media links and metadata
1425 correctly but also to minimize dependency on the source's layout and
1426 even to make the code foresee potential future changes and be ready for
1427 that. This is important because it will allow the extractor not to break
1428 on minor layout changes thus keeping old youtube-dl versions working.
1429 Even though this breakage issue is easily fixed by emitting a new
1430 version of youtube-dl with a fix incorporated, all the previous versions
1431 become broken in all repositories and distros' packages that may not be
1432 so prompt in fetching the update from us. Needless to say, some non
1433 rolling release distros may never receive an update at all.
1434
1435 Mandatory and optional metafields
1436
1437 For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor
1438 extracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by an information
1439 dictionary or simply _info dict_. Only the following meta fields in the
1440 _info dict_ are considered mandatory for a successful extraction process
1441 by youtube-dl:
1442
1443 - id (media identifier)
1444 - title (media title)
1445 - url (media download URL) or formats
1446
1447 In fact only the last option is technically mandatory (i.e. if you can't
1448 figure out the download location of the media the extraction does not
1449 make any sense). But by convention youtube-dl also treats id and title
1450 as mandatory. Thus the aforementioned metafields are the critical data
1451 that the extraction does not make any sense without and if any of them
1452 fail to be extracted then the extractor is considered completely broken.
1453
1454 Any field apart from the aforementioned ones are considered OPTIONAL.
1455 That means that extraction should be TOLERANT to situations when sources
1456 for these fields can potentially be unavailable (even if they are always
1457 available at the moment) and FUTURE-PROOF in order not to break the
1458 extraction of general purpose mandatory fields.
1459
1460 Example
1461
1462 Say you have some source dictionary meta that you've fetched as JSON
1463 with HTTP request and it has a key summary:
1464
1465 meta = self._download_json(url, video_id)
1466
1467 Assume at this point meta's layout is:
1468
1469 {
1470 ...
1471 "summary": "some fancy summary text",
1472 ...
1473 }
1474
1475 Assume you want to extract summary and put it into the resulting info
1476 dict as description. Since description is an optional meta field you
1477 should be ready that this key may be missing from the meta dict, so that
1478 you should extract it like:
1479
1480 description = meta.get('summary') # correct
1481
1482 and not like:
1483
1484 description = meta['summary'] # incorrect
1485
1486 The latter will break extraction process with KeyError if summary
1487 disappears from meta at some later time but with the former approach
1488 extraction will just go ahead with description set to None which is
1489 perfectly fine (remember None is equivalent to the absence of data).
1490
1491 Similarly, you should pass fatal=False when extracting optional data
1492 from a webpage with _search_regex, _html_search_regex or similar
1493 methods, for instance:
1494
1495 description = self._search_regex(
1496 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1497 webpage, 'description', fatal=False)
1498
1499 With fatal set to False if _search_regex fails to extract description it
1500 will emit a warning and continue extraction.
1501
1502 You can also pass default=<some fallback value>, for example:
1503
1504 description = self._search_regex(
1505 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1506 webpage, 'description', default=None)
1507
1508 On failure this code will silently continue the extraction with
1509 description set to None. That is useful for metafields that may or may
1510 not be present.
1511
1512 Provide fallbacks
1513
1514 When extracting metadata try to do so from multiple sources. For example
1515 if title is present in several places, try extracting from at least some
1516 of them. This makes it more future-proof in case some of the sources
1517 become unavailable.
1518
1519 Example
1520
1521 Say meta from the previous example has a title and you are about to
1522 extract it. Since title is a mandatory meta field you should end up with
1523 something like:
1524
1525 title = meta['title']
1526
1527 If title disappears from meta in future due to some changes on the
1528 hoster's side the extraction would fail since title is mandatory. That's
1529 expected.
1530
1531 Assume that you have some another source you can extract title from, for
1532 example og:title HTML meta of a webpage. In this case you can provide a
1533 fallback scenario:
1534
1535 title = meta.get('title') or self._og_search_title(webpage)
1536
1537 This code will try to extract from meta first and if it fails it will
1538 try extracting og:title from a webpage.
1539
1540 Make regular expressions flexible
1541
1542 When using regular expressions try to write them fuzzy and flexible.
1543
1544 Example
1545
1546 Say you need to extract title from the following HTML code:
1547
1548 <span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">some fancy title</span>
1549
1550 The code for that task should look similar to:
1551
1552 title = self._search_regex(
1553 r'<span[^>]+class="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)', webpage, 'title')
1554
1555 Or even better:
1556
1557 title = self._search_regex(
1558 r'<span[^>]+class=(["\'])title\1[^>]*>(?P<title>[^<]+)',
1559 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1560
1561 Note how you tolerate potential changes in the style attribute's value
1562 or switch from using double quotes to single for class attribute:
1563
1564 The code definitely should not look like:
1565
1566 title = self._search_regex(
1567 r'<span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">(.*?)</span>',
1568 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1569
1570 Use safe conversion functions
1571
1572 Wrap all extracted numeric data into safe functions from utils:
1573 int_or_none, float_or_none. Use them for string to number conversions as
1574 well.
1575
1576
1577
1578 EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
1579
1580
1581 youtube-dl makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and
1582 thus should be callable from any programming language. If you encounter
1583 any problems parsing its output, feel free to create a report.
1584
1585 From a Python program, you can embed youtube-dl in a more powerful
1586 fashion, like this:
1587
1588 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1589 import youtube_dl
1590
1591 ydl_opts = {}
1592 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1593 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1594
1595 Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options
1596 available, have a look at youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py. For a start, if you
1597 want to intercept youtube-dl's output, set a logger object.
1598
1599 Here's a more complete example of a program that outputs only errors
1600 (and a short message after the download is finished), and
1601 downloads/converts the video to an mp3 file:
1602
1603 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1604 import youtube_dl
1605
1606
1607 class MyLogger(object):
1608 def debug(self, msg):
1609 pass
1610
1611 def warning(self, msg):
1612 pass
1613
1614 def error(self, msg):
1615 print(msg)
1616
1617
1618 def my_hook(d):
1619 if d['status'] == 'finished':
1620 print('Done downloading, now converting ...')
1621
1622
1623 ydl_opts = {
1624 'format': 'bestaudio/best',
1625 'postprocessors': [{
1626 'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
1627 'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
1628 'preferredquality': '192',
1629 }],
1630 'logger': MyLogger(),
1631 'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
1632 }
1633 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1634 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1635
1636
1637
1638 BUGS
1639
1640
1641 Bugs and suggestions should be reported at:
1642 https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues. Unless you were prompted to or
1643 there is another pertinent reason (e.g. GitHub fails to accept the bug
1644 report), please do not send bug reports via personal email. For
1645 discussions, join us in the IRC channel #youtube-dl on freenode
1646 (webchat).
1647
1648 PLEASE INCLUDE THE FULL OUTPUT OF YOUTUBE-DL WHEN RUN WITH -v, i.e. ADD
1649 -v flag to YOUR COMMAND LINE, copy the WHOLE output and post it in the
1650 issue body wrapped in ``` for better formatting. It should look similar
1651 to this:
1652
1653 $ youtube-dl -v <your command line>
1654 [debug] System config: []
1655 [debug] User config: []
1656 [debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
1657 [debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
1658 [debug] youtube-dl version 2015.12.06
1659 [debug] Git HEAD: 135392e
1660 [debug] Python version 2.6.6 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
1661 [debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
1662 [debug] Proxy map: {}
1663 ...
1664
1665 DO NOT POST SCREENSHOTS OF VERBOSE LOGS; ONLY PLAIN TEXT IS ACCEPTABLE.
1666
1667 The output (including the first lines) contains important debugging
1668 information. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible
1669 and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
1670
1671 Please re-read your issue once again to avoid a couple of common
1672 mistakes (you can and should use this as a checklist):
1673
1674 Is the description of the issue itself sufficient?
1675
1676 We often get issue reports that we cannot really decipher. While in most
1677 cases we eventually get the required information after asking back
1678 multiple times, this poses an unnecessary drain on our resources. Many
1679 contributors, including myself, are also not native speakers, so we may
1680 misread some parts.
1681
1682 So please elaborate on what feature you are requesting, or what bug you
1683 want to be fixed. Make sure that it's obvious
1684
1685 - What the problem is
1686 - How it could be fixed
1687 - How your proposed solution would look like
1688
1689 If your report is shorter than two lines, it is almost certainly missing
1690 some of these, which makes it hard for us to respond to it. We're often
1691 too polite to close the issue outright, but the missing info makes
1692 misinterpretation likely. As a committer myself, I often get frustrated
1693 by these issues, since the only possible way for me to move forward on
1694 them is to ask for clarification over and over.
1695
1696 For bug reports, this means that your report should contain the
1697 _complete_ output of youtube-dl when called with the -v flag. The error
1698 message you get for (most) bugs even says so, but you would not believe
1699 how many of our bug reports do not contain this information.
1700
1701 If your server has multiple IPs or you suspect censorship, adding
1702 --call-home may be a good idea to get more diagnostics. If the error is
1703 ERROR: Unable to extract ... and you cannot reproduce it from multiple
1704 countries, add --dump-pages (warning: this will yield a rather large
1705 output, redirect it to the file log.txt by adding >log.txt 2>&1 to your
1706 command-line) or upload the .dump files you get when you add
1707 --write-pages somewhere.
1708
1709 SITE SUPPORT REQUESTS MUST CONTAIN AN EXAMPLE URL. An example URL is a
1710 URL you might want to download, like
1711 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc. There should be an obvious
1712 video present. Except under very special circumstances, the main page of
1713 a video service (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/) is _not_ an example URL.
1714
1715 Are you using the latest version?
1716
1717 Before reporting any issue, type youtube-dl -U. This should report that
1718 you're up-to-date. About 20% of the reports we receive are already
1719 fixed, but people are using outdated versions. This goes for feature
1720 requests as well.
1721
1722 Is the issue already documented?
1723
1724 Make sure that someone has not already opened the issue you're trying to
1725 open. Search at the top of the window or browse the GitHub Issues of
1726 this repository. If there is an issue, feel free to write something
1727 along the lines of "This affects me as well, with version 2015.01.01.
1728 Here is some more information on the issue: ...". While some issues may
1729 be old, a new post into them often spurs rapid activity.
1730
1731 Why are existing options not enough?
1732
1733 Before requesting a new feature, please have a quick peek at the list of
1734 supported options. Many feature requests are for features that actually
1735 exist already! Please, absolutely do show off your work in the issue
1736 report and detail how the existing similar options do _not_ solve your
1737 problem.
1738
1739 Is there enough context in your bug report?
1740
1741 People want to solve problems, and often think they do us a favor by
1742 breaking down their larger problems (e.g. wanting to skip already
1743 downloaded files) to a specific request (e.g. requesting us to look
1744 whether the file exists before downloading the info page). However, what
1745 often happens is that they break down the problem into two steps: One
1746 simple, and one impossible (or extremely complicated one).
1747
1748 We are then presented with a very complicated request when the original
1749 problem could be solved far easier, e.g. by recording the downloaded
1750 video IDs in a separate file. To avoid this, you must include the
1751 greater context where it is non-obvious. In particular, every feature
1752 request that does not consist of adding support for a new site should
1753 contain a use case scenario that explains in what situation the missing
1754 feature would be useful.
1755
1756 Does the issue involve one problem, and one problem only?
1757
1758 Some of our users seem to think there is a limit of issues they can or
1759 should open. There is no limit of issues they can or should open. While
1760 it may seem appealing to be able to dump all your issues into one
1761 ticket, that means that someone who solves one of your issues cannot
1762 mark the issue as closed. Typically, reporting a bunch of issues leads
1763 to the ticket lingering since nobody wants to attack that behemoth,
1764 until someone mercifully splits the issue into multiple ones.
1765
1766 In particular, every site support request issue should only pertain to
1767 services at one site (generally under a common domain, but always using
1768 the same backend technology). Do not request support for vimeo user
1769 videos, White house podcasts, and Google Plus pages in the same issue.
1770 Also, make sure that you don't post bug reports alongside feature
1771 requests. As a rule of thumb, a feature request does not include outputs
1772 of youtube-dl that are not immediately related to the feature at hand.
1773 Do not post reports of a network error alongside the request for a new
1774 video service.
1775
1776 Is anyone going to need the feature?
1777
1778 Only post features that you (or an incapacitated friend you can
1779 personally talk to) require. Do not post features because they seem like
1780 a good idea. If they are really useful, they will be requested by
1781 someone who requires them.
1782
1783 Is your question about youtube-dl?
1784
1785 It may sound strange, but some bug reports we receive are completely
1786 unrelated to youtube-dl and relate to a different, or even the
1787 reporter's own, application. Please make sure that you are actually
1788 using youtube-dl. If you are using a UI for youtube-dl, report the bug
1789 to the maintainer of the actual application providing the UI. On the
1790 other hand, if your UI for youtube-dl fails in some way you believe is
1791 related to youtube-dl, by all means, go ahead and report the bug.
1792
1793
1794
1795 COPYRIGHT
1796
1797
1798 youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
1799
1800 This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton and is likewise
1801 released into the public domain.