youtube-dl - download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms
-# SYNOPSIS
-**youtube-dl** [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]
+- [INSTALLATION](#installation)
+- [DESCRIPTION](#description)
+- [OPTIONS](#options)
+- [CONFIGURATION](#configuration)
+- [OUTPUT TEMPLATE](#output-template)
+- [VIDEO SELECTION](#video-selection)
+- [FAQ](#faq)
+- [DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS](#developer-instructions)
+- [BUGS](#bugs)
+- [COPYRIGHT](#copyright)
# INSTALLATION
# DESCRIPTION
**youtube-dl** is a small command-line program to download videos from
YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version
-2.6, 2.7, or 3.3+, and it is not platform specific. It should work on
+2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+, and it is not platform specific. It should work on
your Unix box, on Windows or on Mac OS X. It is released to the public domain,
which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.
+ youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]
+
# OPTIONS
-h, --help print this help text and exit
--version print program version and exit
they would handle
--extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported
extractors
- --proxy URL Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS proxy. Pass in
- an empty string (--proxy "") for direct
- connection
- --socket-timeout None Time to wait before giving up, in seconds
--default-search PREFIX Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For
example "gvsearch2:" downloads two videos
from google videos for youtube-dl "large
this is not possible instead of searching.
--ignore-config Do not read configuration files. When given
in the global configuration file /etc
- /youtube-dl.conf: do not read the user
- configuration in ~/.config/youtube-dl.conf
- (%APPDATA%/youtube-dl/config.txt on
- Windows)
+ /youtube-dl.conf: Do not read the user
+ configuration in ~/.config/youtube-
+ dl/config (%APPDATA%/youtube-dl/config.txt
+ on Windows)
--flat-playlist Do not extract the videos of a playlist,
only list them.
+## Network Options:
+ --proxy URL Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS proxy. Pass in
+ an empty string (--proxy "") for direct
+ connection
+ --socket-timeout SECONDS Time to wait before giving up, in seconds
+ --source-address IP Client-side IP address to bind to
+ (experimental)
+ -4, --force-ipv4 Make all connections via IPv4
+ (experimental)
+ -6, --force-ipv6 Make all connections via IPv6
+ (experimental)
+
## Video Selection:
--playlist-start NUMBER playlist video to start at (default is 1)
--playlist-end NUMBER playlist video to end at (default is last)
COUNT views
--max-views COUNT Do not download any videos with more than
COUNT views
- --no-playlist download only the currently playing video
+ --no-playlist If the URL refers to a video and a
+ playlist, download only the video.
--age-limit YEARS download only videos suitable for the given
age
--download-archive FILE Download only videos not listed in the
size. By default, the buffer size is
automatically resized from an initial value
of SIZE.
+ --playlist-reverse Download playlist videos in reverse order
## Filesystem Options:
-a, --batch-file FILE file containing URLs to download ('-' for
stdin)
--id use only video ID in file name
- -A, --auto-number number downloaded files starting from 00000
-o, --output TEMPLATE output filename template. Use %(title)s to
get the title, %(uploader)s for the
uploader name, %(uploader_id)s for the
--restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII
characters, and avoid "&" and spaces in
filenames
+ -A, --auto-number [deprecated; use -o
+ "%(autonumber)s-%(title)s.%(ext)s" ] number
+ downloaded files starting from 00000
-t, --title [deprecated] use title in file name
(default)
-l, --literal [deprecated] alias of --title
for each command-line argument. If the URL
refers to a playlist, dump the whole
playlist information in a single line.
+ --print-json Be quiet and print the video information as
+ JSON (video is still being downloaded).
--newline output progress bar as new lines
--no-progress do not print progress bar
--console-title display progress in console titlebar
files in the current directory to debug
problems
--print-traffic Display sent and read HTTP traffic
+ -C, --call-home Contact the youtube-dl server for
+ debugging.
+ --no-call-home Do NOT contact the youtube-dl server for
+ debugging.
## Workarounds:
--encoding ENCODING Force the specified encoding (experimental)
## Video Format Options:
-f, --format FORMAT video format code, specify the order of
- preference using slashes: -f 22/17/18 . -f
- mp4 , -f m4a and -f flv are also
- supported. You can also use the special
- names "best", "bestvideo", "bestaudio",
- "worst", "worstvideo" and "worstaudio". By
- default, youtube-dl will pick the best
- quality. Use commas to download multiple
- audio formats, such as -f
+ preference using slashes, as in -f 22/17/18
+ . Instead of format codes, you can select
+ by extension for the extensions aac, m4a,
+ mp3, mp4, ogg, wav, webm. You can also use
+ the special names "best", "bestvideo",
+ "bestaudio", "worst". By default, youtube-
+ dl will pick the best quality. Use commas
+ to download multiple audio formats, such as
+ -f
136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.
You can merge the video and audio of two
formats into a single file using -f <video-
-F, --list-formats list all available formats
--youtube-skip-dash-manifest Do not download the DASH manifest on
YouTube videos
+ --merge-output-format FORMAT If a merge is required (e.g.
+ bestvideo+bestaudio), output to given
+ container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg,
+ webm, flv.Ignored if no merge is required
## Subtitle Options:
--write-sub write subtitle file
--add-metadata write metadata to the video file
--xattrs write metadata to the video file's xattrs
(using dublin core and xdg standards)
+ --fixup POLICY (experimental) Automatically correct known
+ faults of the file. One of never (do
+ nothing), warn (only emit a warning),
+ detect_or_warn(check whether we can do
+ anything about it, warn otherwise
--prefer-avconv Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running the
postprocessors (default)
--prefer-ffmpeg Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running the
# CONFIGURATION
-You can configure youtube-dl by placing default arguments (such as `--extract-audio --no-mtime` to always extract the audio and not copy the mtime) into `/etc/youtube-dl.conf` and/or `~/.config/youtube-dl/config`. On Windows, the configuration file locations are `%APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt` and `C:\Users\<Yourname>\youtube-dl.conf`.
+You can configure youtube-dl by placing default arguments (such as `--extract-audio --no-mtime` to always extract the audio and not copy the mtime) into `/etc/youtube-dl.conf` and/or `~/.config/youtube-dl/config`. On Windows, the configuration file locations are `%APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt` and `C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf`.
# OUTPUT TEMPLATE
Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as [vlc](http://www.videolan.org) or [mplayer](http://www.mplayerhq.hu/).
-### The links provided by youtube-dl -g are not working anymore
+### I extracted a video URL with -g, but it does not play on another machine / in my webbrowser.
+
+It depends a lot on the service. In many cases, requests for the video (to download/play it) must come from the same IP address and with the same cookies. Use the `--cookies` option to write the required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used, use `--dump-user-agent` to see the one in use by youtube-dl.
+
+It may be beneficial to use IPv6; in some cases, the restrictions are only applied to IPv4. Some services (sometimes only for a subset of videos) do not restrict the video URL by IP address, cookie, or user-agent, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
+
+Please bear in mind that some URL protocols are **not** supported by browsers out of the box, including RTMP. If you are using -g, your own downloader must support these as well.
-The URLs youtube-dl outputs require the downloader to have the correct cookies. Use the `--cookies` option to write the required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used, use `--dump-user-agent` to see the one in use by youtube-dl.
+If you want to play the video on a machine that is not running youtube-dl, you can relay the video content from the machine that runs youtube-dl. You can use `-o -` to let youtube-dl stream a video to stdout, or simply allow the player to download the files written by youtube-dl in turn.
### ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info
To run the exe you need to install first the [Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package](http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29).
+### On Windows, how should I set up ffmpeg and youtube-dl? Where should I put the exe files?
+
+If you put youtube-dl and ffmpeg in the same directory that you're running the command from, it will work, but that's rather cumbersome.
+
+To make a different directory work - either for ffmpeg, or for youtube-dl, or for both - simply create the directory (say, `C:\bin`, or `C:\Users\<User name>\bin`), put all the executables directly in there, and then [set your PATH environment variable](https://www.java.com/en/download/help/path.xml) to include that directory.
+
+From then on, after restarting your shell, you will be able to access both youtube-dl and ffmpeg (and youtube-dl will be able to find ffmpeg) by simply typing `youtube-dl` or `ffmpeg`, no matter what directory you're in.
+
+### How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
+
+For one, have a look at the [list of supported sites](docs/supportedsites). Note that it can sometimes happen that the site changes its URL scheme (say, from http://example.com/v/1234567 to http://example.com/v/1234567 ) and youtube-dl reports an URL of a service in that list as unsupported. In that case, simply report a bug.
+
+It is *not* possible to detect whether a URL is supported or not. That's because youtube-dl contains a generic extractor which matches **all** URLs. You may be tempted to disable, exclude, or remove the generic extractor, but the generic extractor not only allows users to extract videos from lots of websites that embed a video from another service, but may also be used to extract video from a service that it's hosting itself. Therefore, we neither recommend nor support disabling, excluding, or removing the generic extractor.
+
+If you want to find out whether a given URL is supported, simply call youtube-dl with it. If you get no videos back, chances are the URL is either not referring to a video or unsupported. You can find out which by examining the output (if you run youtube-dl on the console) or catching an `UnsupportedError` exception if you run it from a Python program.
+
# DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can [download the builds](http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html) or get them from their distribution.
def _real_extract(self, url):
video_id = self._match_id(url)
+ webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
# TODO more code goes here, for example ...
- webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.*?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
return {
'id': video_id,
'title': title,
+ 'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
# TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
}
```
From a Python program, you can embed youtube-dl in a more powerful fashion, like this:
- import youtube_dl
+```python
+import youtube_dl
- ydl_opts = {}
- with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
- ydl.download(['http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
+ydl_opts = {}
+with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
+ ydl.download(['http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
+```
Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of what can be done, have a look at [youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py#L69). For a start, if you want to intercept youtube-dl's output, set a `logger` object.
+Here's a more complete example of a program that outputs only errors (and a short message after the download is finished), and downloads/converts the video to an mp3 file:
+
+```python
+import youtube_dl
+
+
+class MyLogger(object):
+ def debug(self, msg):
+ pass
+
+ def warning(self, msg):
+ pass
+
+ def error(self, msg):
+ print(msg)
+
+
+def my_hook(d):
+ if d['status'] == 'finished':
+ print('Done downloading, now converting ...')
+
+
+ydl_opts = {
+ 'format': 'bestaudio/best',
+ 'postprocessors': [{
+ 'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
+ 'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
+ 'preferredquality': '192',
+ }],
+ 'logger': MyLogger(),
+ 'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
+}
+with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
+ ydl.download(['http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
+```
+
# BUGS
-Bugs and suggestions should be reported at: <https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues> . Unless you were prompted so or there is another pertinent reason (e.g. GitHub fails to accept the bug report), please do not send bug reports via personal email.
+Bugs and suggestions should be reported at: <https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues> . Unless you were prompted so or there is another pertinent reason (e.g. GitHub fails to accept the bug report), please do not send bug reports via personal email. For discussions, join us in the irc channel #youtube-dl on freenode.
-Please include the full output of the command when run with `--verbose`. The output (including the first lines) contain important debugging information. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
+**Please include the full output of youtube-dl when run with `-v`**.
-For discussions, join us in the irc channel #youtube-dl on freenode.
+The output (including the first lines) contain important debugging information. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
-When you submit a request, please re-read it once to avoid a couple of mistakes (you can and should use this as a checklist):
+Please re-read your issue once again to avoid a couple of common mistakes (you can and should use this as a checklist):
### Is the description of the issue itself sufficient?
Rapsys Git / youtubedl / blobdiff