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