-NAME
-====
-
youtube-dl - download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms
-SYNOPSIS
-========
+- INSTALLATION
+- DESCRIPTION
+- OPTIONS
+- CONFIGURATION
+- OUTPUT TEMPLATE
+- FORMAT SELECTION
+- VIDEO SELECTION
+- FAQ
+- DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
+- EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
+- BUGS
+- COPYRIGHT
+
+
+
+INSTALLATION
+
+
+To install it right away for all UNIX users (Linux, OS X, etc.), type:
+
+ sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
+ sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
+
+If you do not have curl, you can alternatively use a recent wget:
+
+ sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
+ sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
+
+Windows users can download an .exe file and place it in any location on
+their PATH except for %SYSTEMROOT%\System32 (e.g. DO NOT put in
+C:\Windows\System32).
+
+You can also use pip:
+
+ sudo -H pip install --upgrade youtube-dl
+
+This command will update youtube-dl if you have already installed it.
+See the pypi page for more information.
+
+OS X users can install youtube-dl with Homebrew:
+
+ brew install youtube-dl
+
+Or with MacPorts:
+
+ sudo port install youtube-dl
+
+Alternatively, refer to the developer instructions for how to check out
+and work with the git repository. For further options, including PGP
+signatures, see the youtube-dl Download Page.
+
-youtube-dl OPTIONS URL [URL...]
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 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 is a 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 3.2+, 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
- -U, --update update this program to latest version. Make sure
- that you have sufficient permissions (run with
- sudo if needed)
- -i, --ignore-errors continue on download errors, for example to to
- skip unavailable videos in a playlist
- --abort-on-error Abort downloading of further videos (in the
- playlist or the command line) if an error occurs
- --dump-user-agent display the current browser identification
- --user-agent UA specify a custom user agent
- --referer REF specify a custom referer, use if the video access
- is restricted to one domain
- --list-extractors List all supported extractors and the URLs they
- would handle
- --extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported extractors
- --proxy URL Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS proxy
- --no-check-certificate Suppress HTTPS certificate validation.
- --cache-dir DIR Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl can
- store downloaded information permanently. By
- default $XDG_CACHE_HOME/youtube-dl or ~/.cache
- /youtube-dl .
- --no-cache-dir Disable filesystem caching
+
+
+ -h, --help Print this help text and exit
+ --version Print program version and exit
+ -U, --update Update this program to latest version. Make
+ sure that you have sufficient permissions
+ (run with sudo if needed)
+ -i, --ignore-errors Continue on download errors, for example to
+ skip unavailable videos in a playlist
+ --abort-on-error Abort downloading of further videos (in the
+ playlist or the command line) if an error
+ occurs
+ --dump-user-agent Display the current browser identification
+ --list-extractors List all supported extractors
+ --extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported
+ extractors
+ --force-generic-extractor Force extraction to use the generic
+ extractor
+ --default-search PREFIX Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For
+ example "gvsearch2:" downloads two videos
+ from google videos for youtube-dl "large
+ apple". Use the value "auto" to let
+ youtube-dl guess ("auto_warning" to emit a
+ warning when guessing). "error" just throws
+ an error. The default value "fixup_error"
+ repairs broken URLs, but emits an error if
+ 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/config (%APPDATA%/youtube-dl/config.txt
+ on Windows)
+ --config-location PATH Location of the configuration file; either
+ the path to the config or its containing
+ directory.
+ --flat-playlist Do not extract the videos of a playlist,
+ only list them.
+ --mark-watched Mark videos watched (YouTube only)
+ --no-mark-watched Do not mark videos watched (YouTube only)
+ --no-color Do not emit color codes in output
+
+
+Network Options:
+
+ --proxy URL Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS proxy.
+ To enable experimental SOCKS proxy, specify
+ a proper scheme. For example
+ socks5://127.0.0.1:1080/. 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
+ -4, --force-ipv4 Make all connections via IPv4
+ -6, --force-ipv6 Make all connections via IPv6
+
+
+Geo Restriction:
+
+ --geo-verification-proxy URL Use this proxy to verify the IP address for
+ some geo-restricted sites. The default
+ proxy specified by --proxy (or none, if the
+ options is not present) is used for the
+ actual downloading.
+ --geo-bypass Bypass geographic restriction via faking
+ X-Forwarded-For HTTP header (experimental)
+ --no-geo-bypass Do not bypass geographic restriction via
+ faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
+ (experimental)
+ --geo-bypass-country CODE Force bypass geographic restriction with
+ explicitly provided two-letter ISO 3166-2
+ country code (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)
- --match-title REGEX download only matching titles (regex or caseless
- sub-string)
- --reject-title REGEX skip download for matching titles (regex or
- caseless sub-string)
- --max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files
- --min-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos smaller than SIZE
- (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
- --max-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos larger than SIZE (e.g.
- 50k or 44.6m)
- --date DATE download only videos uploaded in this date
- --datebefore DATE download only videos uploaded before this date
- --dateafter DATE download only videos uploaded after this date
- --no-playlist download only the currently playing video
- --age-limit YEARS download only videos suitable for the given age
- --download-archive FILE Download only videos not present in the archive
- file. Record all downloaded videos in it.
+
+ --playlist-start NUMBER Playlist video to start at (default is 1)
+ --playlist-end NUMBER Playlist video to end at (default is last)
+ --playlist-items ITEM_SPEC Playlist video items to download. Specify
+ indices of the videos in the playlist
+ separated by commas like: "--playlist-items
+ 1,2,5,8" if you want to download videos
+ indexed 1, 2, 5, 8 in the playlist. You can
+ specify range: "--playlist-items
+ 1-3,7,10-13", it will download the videos
+ at index 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
+ --match-title REGEX Download only matching titles (regex or
+ caseless sub-string)
+ --reject-title REGEX Skip download for matching titles (regex or
+ caseless sub-string)
+ --max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files
+ --min-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos smaller than
+ SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
+ --max-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos larger than SIZE
+ (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
+ --date DATE Download only videos uploaded in this date
+ --datebefore DATE Download only videos uploaded on or before
+ this date (i.e. inclusive)
+ --dateafter DATE Download only videos uploaded on or after
+ this date (i.e. inclusive)
+ --min-views COUNT Do not download any videos with less than
+ COUNT views
+ --max-views COUNT Do not download any videos with more than
+ COUNT views
+ --match-filter FILTER Generic video filter. Specify any key (see
+ the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a list of
+ available keys) to match if the key is
+ present, !key to check if the key is not
+ present, key > NUMBER (like "comment_count
+ > 12", also works with >=, <, <=, !=, =) to
+ compare against a number, key = 'LITERAL'
+ (like "uploader = 'Mike Smith'", also works
+ with !=) to match against a string literal
+ and & to require multiple matches. Values
+ which are not known are excluded unless you
+ put a question mark (?) after the operator.
+ For example, to only match videos that have
+ been liked more than 100 times and disliked
+ less than 50 times (or the dislike
+ functionality is not available at the given
+ service), but who also have a description,
+ use --match-filter "like_count > 100 &
+ dislike_count <? 50 & description" .
+ --no-playlist Download only the video, if the URL refers
+ to a video and a playlist.
+ --yes-playlist Download the playlist, if the URL refers to
+ a video and a playlist.
+ --age-limit YEARS Download only videos suitable for the given
+ age
+ --download-archive FILE Download only videos not listed in the
+ archive file. Record the IDs of all
+ downloaded videos in it.
+ --include-ads Download advertisements as well
+ (experimental)
+
Download Options:
------------------
- -r, --rate-limit LIMIT maximum download rate in bytes per second (e.g.
- 50K or 4.2M)
- -R, --retries RETRIES number of retries (default is 10)
- --buffer-size SIZE size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16K)
- (default is 1024)
- --no-resize-buffer do not automatically adjust the buffer size. By
- default, the buffer size is automatically resized
- from an initial value of SIZE.
+ -r, --limit-rate RATE Maximum download rate in bytes per second
+ (e.g. 50K or 4.2M)
+ -R, --retries RETRIES Number of retries (default is 10), or
+ "infinite".
+ --fragment-retries RETRIES Number of retries for a fragment (default
+ is 10), or "infinite" (DASH, hlsnative and
+ ISM)
+ --skip-unavailable-fragments Skip unavailable fragments (DASH, hlsnative
+ and ISM)
+ --abort-on-unavailable-fragment Abort downloading when some fragment is not
+ available
+ --keep-fragments Keep downloaded fragments on disk after
+ downloading is finished; fragments are
+ erased by default
+ --buffer-size SIZE Size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16K)
+ (default is 1024)
+ --no-resize-buffer Do not automatically adjust the buffer
+ size. By default, the buffer size is
+ automatically resized from an initial value
+ of SIZE.
+ --playlist-reverse Download playlist videos in reverse order
+ --playlist-random Download playlist videos in random order
+ --xattr-set-filesize Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with
+ expected file size (experimental)
+ --hls-prefer-native Use the native HLS downloader instead of
+ ffmpeg
+ --hls-prefer-ffmpeg Use ffmpeg instead of the native HLS
+ downloader
+ --hls-use-mpegts Use the mpegts container for HLS videos,
+ allowing to play the video while
+ downloading (some players may not be able
+ to play it)
+ --external-downloader COMMAND Use the specified external downloader.
+ Currently supports
+ aria2c,avconv,axel,curl,ffmpeg,httpie,wget
+ --external-downloader-args ARGS Give these arguments to the external
+ downloader
+
Filesystem Options:
--------------------
-
- -t, --title use title in file name (default)
- --id use only video ID in file name
- -l, --literal [deprecated] alias of --title
- -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 uploader nickname if
- different, %(autonumber)s to get an automatically
- incremented number, %(ext)s for the filename
- extension, %(format)s for the format description
- (like "22 - 1280x720" or "HD")%(upload_date)s for
- the upload date (YYYYMMDD), %(extractor)s for the
- provider (youtube, metacafe, etc), %(id)s for the
- video id , %(playlist)s for the playlist the
- video is in, %(playlist_index)s for the position
- in the playlist and %% for a literal percent. Use
- - to output to stdout. Can also be used to
- download to a different directory, for example
- with -o '/my/downloads/%(uploader)s/%(title)s-%(i
- d)s.%(ext)s' .
- --autonumber-size NUMBER Specifies the number of digits in %(autonumber)s
- when it is present in output filename template or
- --autonumber option is given
- --restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII characters, and
- avoid "&" and spaces in filenames
- -a, --batch-file FILE file containing URLs to download ('-' for stdin)
- -w, --no-overwrites do not overwrite files
- -c, --continue resume partially downloaded files
- --no-continue do not resume partially downloaded files (restart
- from beginning)
- --cookies FILE file to read cookies from and dump cookie jar in
- --no-part do not use .part files
- --no-mtime do not use the Last-modified header to set the
- file modification time
- --write-description write video description to a .description file
- --write-info-json write video metadata to a .info.json file
- --write-annotations write video annotations to a .annotation file
- --write-thumbnail write thumbnail image to disk
+
+ -a, --batch-file FILE File containing URLs to download ('-' for
+ stdin)
+ --id Use only video ID in file name
+ -o, --output TEMPLATE Output filename template, see the "OUTPUT
+ TEMPLATE" for all the info
+ --autonumber-start NUMBER Specify the start value for %(autonumber)s
+ (default is 1)
+ --restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII
+ characters, and avoid "&" and spaces in
+ filenames
+ -w, --no-overwrites Do not overwrite files
+ -c, --continue Force resume of partially downloaded files.
+ By default, youtube-dl will resume
+ downloads if possible.
+ --no-continue Do not resume partially downloaded files
+ (restart from beginning)
+ --no-part Do not use .part files - write directly
+ into output file
+ --no-mtime Do not use the Last-modified header to set
+ the file modification time
+ --write-description Write video description to a .description
+ file
+ --write-info-json Write video metadata to a .info.json file
+ --write-annotations Write video annotations to a
+ .annotations.xml file
+ --load-info-json FILE JSON file containing the video information
+ (created with the "--write-info-json"
+ option)
+ --cookies FILE File to read cookies from and dump cookie
+ jar in
+ --cache-dir DIR Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl
+ can store some downloaded information
+ permanently. By default
+ $XDG_CACHE_HOME/youtube-dl or
+ ~/.cache/youtube-dl . At the moment, only
+ YouTube player files (for videos with
+ obfuscated signatures) are cached, but that
+ may change.
+ --no-cache-dir Disable filesystem caching
+ --rm-cache-dir Delete all filesystem cache files
+
+
+Thumbnail images:
+
+ --write-thumbnail Write thumbnail image to disk
+ --write-all-thumbnails Write all thumbnail image formats to disk
+ --list-thumbnails Simulate and list all available thumbnail
+ formats
+
Verbosity / Simulation Options:
--------------------------------
-
- -q, --quiet activates quiet mode
- -s, --simulate do not download the video and do not write
- anything to disk
- --skip-download do not download the video
- -g, --get-url simulate, quiet but print URL
- -e, --get-title simulate, quiet but print title
- --get-id simulate, quiet but print id
- --get-thumbnail simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
- --get-description simulate, quiet but print video description
- --get-filename simulate, quiet but print output filename
- --get-format simulate, quiet but print output format
- --newline output progress bar as new lines
- --no-progress do not print progress bar
- --console-title display progress in console titlebar
- -v, --verbose print various debugging information
- --dump-intermediate-pages print downloaded pages to debug problems(very
- verbose)
+
+ -q, --quiet Activate quiet mode
+ --no-warnings Ignore warnings
+ -s, --simulate Do not download the video and do not write
+ anything to disk
+ --skip-download Do not download the video
+ -g, --get-url Simulate, quiet but print URL
+ -e, --get-title Simulate, quiet but print title
+ --get-id Simulate, quiet but print id
+ --get-thumbnail Simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
+ --get-description Simulate, quiet but print video description
+ --get-duration Simulate, quiet but print video length
+ --get-filename Simulate, quiet but print output filename
+ --get-format Simulate, quiet but print output format
+ -j, --dump-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information.
+ See the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a description
+ of available keys.
+ -J, --dump-single-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information
+ 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
+ -v, --verbose Print various debugging information
+ --dump-pages Print downloaded pages encoded using base64
+ to debug problems (very verbose)
+ --write-pages Write downloaded intermediary pages to
+ 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)
+ --no-check-certificate Suppress HTTPS certificate validation
+ --prefer-insecure Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve
+ information about the video. (Currently
+ supported only for YouTube)
+ --user-agent UA Specify a custom user agent
+ --referer URL Specify a custom referer, use if the video
+ access is restricted to one domain
+ --add-header FIELD:VALUE Specify a custom HTTP header and its value,
+ separated by a colon ':'. You can use this
+ option multiple times
+ --bidi-workaround Work around terminals that lack
+ bidirectional text support. Requires bidiv
+ or fribidi executable in PATH
+ --sleep-interval SECONDS Number of seconds to sleep before each
+ download when used alone or a lower bound
+ of a range for randomized sleep before each
+ download (minimum possible number of
+ seconds to sleep) when used along with
+ --max-sleep-interval.
+ --max-sleep-interval SECONDS Upper bound of a range for randomized sleep
+ before each download (maximum possible
+ number of seconds to sleep). Must only be
+ used along with --min-sleep-interval.
+
Video Format Options:
----------------------
-
- -f, --format FORMAT video format code, specifiy the order of
- preference using slashes: "-f 22/17/18". "-f mp4"
- and "-f flv" are also supported
- --all-formats download all available video formats
- --prefer-free-formats prefer free video formats unless a specific one
- is requested
- --max-quality FORMAT highest quality format to download
- -F, --list-formats list all available formats (currently youtube
- only)
+
+ -f, --format FORMAT Video format code, see the "FORMAT
+ SELECTION" for all the info
+ --all-formats Download all available video formats
+ --prefer-free-formats Prefer free video formats unless a specific
+ one is requested
+ -F, --list-formats List all available formats of requested
+ videos
+ --youtube-skip-dash-manifest Do not download the DASH manifests and
+ related data 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
- --write-auto-sub write automatic subtitle file (youtube only)
- --all-subs downloads all the available subtitles of the
- video
- --list-subs lists all available subtitles for the video
- --sub-format FORMAT subtitle format (default=srt) ([sbv/vtt] youtube
- only)
- --sub-lang LANGS languages of the subtitles to download (optional)
- separated by commas, use IETF language tags like
- 'en,pt'
+
+ --write-sub Write subtitle file
+ --write-auto-sub Write automatically generated subtitle file
+ (YouTube only)
+ --all-subs Download all the available subtitles of the
+ video
+ --list-subs List all available subtitles for the video
+ --sub-format FORMAT Subtitle format, accepts formats
+ preference, for example: "srt" or
+ "ass/srt/best"
+ --sub-lang LANGS Languages of the subtitles to download
+ (optional) separated by commas, use --list-
+ subs for available language tags
+
Authentication Options:
------------------------
- -u, --username USERNAME account username
- -p, --password PASSWORD account password
- -n, --netrc use .netrc authentication data
- --video-password PASSWORD video password (vimeo only)
+ -u, --username USERNAME Login with this account ID
+ -p, --password PASSWORD Account password. If this option is left
+ out, youtube-dl will ask interactively.
+ -2, --twofactor TWOFACTOR Two-factor authentication code
+ -n, --netrc Use .netrc authentication data
+ --video-password PASSWORD Video password (vimeo, smotri, youku)
+
+
+Adobe Pass Options:
+
+ --ap-mso MSO Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV
+ provider) identifier, use --ap-list-mso for
+ a list of available MSOs
+ --ap-username USERNAME Multiple-system operator account login
+ --ap-password PASSWORD Multiple-system operator account password.
+ If this option is left out, youtube-dl will
+ ask interactively.
+ --ap-list-mso List all supported multiple-system
+ operators
+
Post-processing Options:
-------------------------
-
- -x, --extract-audio convert video files to audio-only files (requires
- ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe)
- --audio-format FORMAT "best", "aac", "vorbis", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", or
- "wav"; best by default
- --audio-quality QUALITY ffmpeg/avconv audio quality specification, insert
- a value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse) for VBR
- or a specific bitrate like 128K (default 5)
- --recode-video FORMAT Encode the video to another format if necessary
- (currently supported: mp4|flv|ogg|webm)
- -k, --keep-video keeps the video file on disk after the post-
- processing; the video is erased by default
- --no-post-overwrites do not overwrite post-processed files; the post-
- processed files are overwritten by default
- --embed-subs embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4
- videos)
- --add-metadata add metadata to the files
+
+ -x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files
+ (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or
+ avprobe)
+ --audio-format FORMAT Specify audio format: "best", "aac",
+ "flac", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", "vorbis", or
+ "wav"; "best" by default; No effect without
+ -x
+ --audio-quality QUALITY Specify ffmpeg/avconv audio quality, insert
+ a value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse)
+ for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K
+ (default 5)
+ --recode-video FORMAT Encode the video to another format if
+ necessary (currently supported:
+ mp4|flv|ogg|webm|mkv|avi)
+ --postprocessor-args ARGS Give these arguments to the postprocessor
+ -k, --keep-video Keep the video file on disk after the post-
+ processing; the video is erased by default
+ --no-post-overwrites Do not overwrite post-processed files; the
+ post-processed files are overwritten by
+ default
+ --embed-subs Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4,
+ webm and mkv videos)
+ --embed-thumbnail Embed thumbnail in the audio as cover art
+ --add-metadata Write metadata to the video file
+ --metadata-from-title FORMAT Parse additional metadata like song title /
+ artist from the video title. The format
+ syntax is the same as --output. Regular
+ expression with named capture groups may
+ also be used. The parsed parameters replace
+ existing values. Example: --metadata-from-
+ title "%(artist)s - %(title)s" matches a
+ title like "Coldplay - Paradise". Example
+ (regex): --metadata-from-title
+ "(?P<artist>.+?) - (?P<title>.+)"
+ --xattrs Write metadata to the video file's xattrs
+ (using dublin core and xdg standards)
+ --fixup POLICY Automatically correct known faults of the
+ file. One of never (do nothing), warn (only
+ emit a warning), detect_or_warn (the
+ default; fix file if we can, warn
+ otherwise)
+ --prefer-avconv Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running the
+ postprocessors (default)
+ --prefer-ffmpeg Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running the
+ postprocessors
+ --ffmpeg-location PATH Location of the ffmpeg/avconv binary;
+ either the path to the binary or its
+ containing directory.
+ --exec CMD Execute a command on the file after
+ downloading, similar to find's -exec
+ syntax. Example: --exec 'adb push {}
+ /sdcard/Music/ && rm {}'
+ --convert-subs FORMAT Convert the subtitles to other format
+ (currently supported: srt|ass|vtt|lrc)
+
+
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.conf.
+
+You can configure youtube-dl by placing any supported command line
+option to a configuration file. On Linux and OS X, the system wide
+configuration file is located at /etc/youtube-dl.conf and the user wide
+configuration file at ~/.config/youtube-dl/config. On Windows, the user
+wide configuration file locations are %APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt or
+C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf. Note that by default configuration
+file may not exist so you may need to create it yourself.
+
+For example, with the following configuration file youtube-dl will
+always extract the audio, not copy the mtime, use a proxy and save all
+videos under Movies directory in your home directory:
+
+ # Lines starting with # are comments
+
+ # Always extract audio
+ -x
+
+ # Do not copy the mtime
+ --no-mtime
+
+ # Use this proxy
+ --proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
+
+ # Save all videos under Movies directory in your home directory
+ -o ~/Movies/%(title)s.%(ext)s
+
+Note that options in configuration file are just the same options aka
+switches used in regular command line calls thus there MUST BE NO
+WHITESPACE after - or --, e.g. -o or --proxy but not - o or -- proxy.
+
+You can use --ignore-config if you want to disable the configuration
+file for a particular youtube-dl run.
+
+You can also use --config-location if you want to use custom
+configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.
+
+Authentication with .netrc file
+
+You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for
+extractors that support authentication (by providing login and password
+with --username and --password) in order not to pass credentials as
+command line arguments on every youtube-dl execution and prevent
+tracking plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can
+achieve this using a .netrc file on a per extractor basis. For that you
+will need to create a .netrc file in your $HOME and restrict permissions
+to read/write by only you:
+
+ touch $HOME/.netrc
+ chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc
+
+After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following
+format, where _extractor_ is the name of the extractor in lowercase:
+
+ machine <extractor> login <login> password <password>
+
+For example:
+
+ machine youtube login myaccount@gmail.com password my_youtube_password
+ machine twitch login my_twitch_account_name password my_twitch_password
+
+To activate authentication with the .netrc file you should pass --netrc
+to youtube-dl or place it in the configuration file.
+
+On Windows you may also need to setup the %HOME% environment variable
+manually. For example:
+
+ set HOME=%USERPROFILE%
+
+
OUTPUT TEMPLATE
-===============
+
The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file
-names. The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when
-downloading a single file, like in
-youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv "http://some/video". However, it may
-contain special sequences that will be replaced when downloading each
-video. The special sequences have the format %(NAME)s. To clarify, that
-is a percent symbol followed by a name in parenthesis, followed by a
-lowercase S. Allowed names are:
-
-- id: The sequence will be replaced by the video identifier.
-- url: The sequence will be replaced by the video URL.
-- uploader: The sequence will be replaced by the nickname of the
- person who uploaded the video.
-- upload_date: The sequence will be replaced by the upload date in
- YYYYMMDD format.
-- title: The sequence will be replaced by the video title.
-- ext: The sequence will be replaced by the appropriate extension
- (like flv or mp4).
-- epoch: The sequence will be replaced by the Unix epoch when creating
- the file.
-- autonumber: The sequence will be replaced by a five-digit number
- that will be increased with each download, starting at zero.
-- playlist: The name or the id of the playlist that contains the
- video.
-- playlist_index: The index of the video in the playlist, a five-digit
- number.
+names.
+
+TL;DR: navigate me to examples.
+
+The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a
+single file, like in youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv "https://some/video".
+However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced when
+downloading each video. The special sequences may be formatted according
+to python string formatting operations. For example, %(NAME)s or
+%(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in
+parentheses, followed by a formatting operations. Allowed names along
+with sequence type are:
+
+- id (string): Video identifier
+- title (string): Video title
+- url (string): Video URL
+- ext (string): Video filename extension
+- alt_title (string): A secondary title of the video
+- display_id (string): An alternative identifier for the video
+- uploader (string): Full name of the video uploader
+- license (string): License name the video is licensed under
+- creator (string): The creator of the video
+- release_date (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was
+ released
+- timestamp (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became
+ available
+- upload_date (string): Video upload date (YYYYMMDD)
+- uploader_id (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader
+- location (string): Physical location where the video was filmed
+- duration (numeric): Length of the video in seconds
+- view_count (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the
+ platform
+- like_count (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video
+- dislike_count (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video
+- repost_count (numeric): Number of reposts of the video
+- average_rating (numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale
+ used depends on the webpage
+- comment_count (numeric): Number of comments on the video
+- age_limit (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)
+- format (string): A human-readable description of the format
+- format_id (string): Format code specified by --format
+- format_note (string): Additional info about the format
+- width (numeric): Width of the video
+- height (numeric): Height of the video
+- resolution (string): Textual description of width and height
+- tbr (numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
+- abr (numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
+- acodec (string): Name of the audio codec in use
+- asr (numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertz
+- vbr (numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/s
+- fps (numeric): Frame rate
+- vcodec (string): Name of the video codec in use
+- container (string): Name of the container format
+- filesize (numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advance
+- filesize_approx (numeric): An estimate for the number of bytes
+- protocol (string): The protocol that will be used for the actual
+ download
+- extractor (string): Name of the extractor
+- extractor_key (string): Key name of the extractor
+- epoch (numeric): Unix epoch when creating the file
+- autonumber (numeric): Five-digit number that will be increased with
+ each download, starting at zero
+- playlist (string): Name or id of the playlist that contains the
+ video
+- playlist_index (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded
+ with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist
+- playlist_id (string): Playlist identifier
+- playlist_title (string): Playlist title
+
+Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:
+
+- chapter (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to
+- chapter_number (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to
+- chapter_id (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to
+
+Available for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:
+
+- series (string): Title of the series or programme the video episode
+ belongs to
+- season (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to
+- season_number (numeric): Number of the season the video episode
+ belongs to
+- season_id (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to
+- episode (string): Title of the video episode
+- episode_number (numeric): Number of the video episode within a
+ season
+- episode_id (string): Id of the video episode
+
+Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:
+
+- track (string): Title of the track
+- track_number (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a
+ disc
+- track_id (string): Id of the track
+- artist (string): Artist(s) of the track
+- genre (string): Genre(s) of the track
+- album (string): Title of the album the track belongs to
+- album_type (string): Type of the album
+- album_artist (string): List of all artists appeared on the album
+- disc_number (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium
+ the track belongs to
+- release_year (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released
+
+Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will
+be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. Note
+that some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since they
+depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such
+sequences will be replaced with NA.
+
+For example for -o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s and an mp4 video with title
+youtube-dl test video and id BaW_jenozKcj, this will result in a
+youtube-dl test video-BaW_jenozKcj.mp4 file created in the current
+directory.
+
+For numeric sequences you can use numeric related formatting, for
+example, %(view_count)05d will result in a string with view count padded
+with zeros up to 5 characters, like in 00042.
+
+Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g.
+-o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' which will
+result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this
+path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for
+you.
+
+To use percent literals in an output template use %%. To output to
+stdout use -o -.
The current default template is %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s.
or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the
--restrict-filenames flag to get a shorter title:
- $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
+Output template and Windows batch files
+
+If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then you
+must escape plain percent characters (%) by doubling, so that
+-o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" should become
+-o "%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s". However you should not touch %'s that
+are not plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion
+should stay intact: -o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s".
+
+Output template examples
+
+Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of
+single.
+
+ $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc
youtube-dl test video ''_Ƥāš.mp4 # All kinds of weird characters
- $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
+
+ $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4 # A simple file name
+ # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
+ $ youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re
+
+ # Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory:
+ $ youtube-dl -o '%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists
+
+ # Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home
+ $ 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/
+
+ # Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos
+ $ youtube-dl -o "C:/MyVideos/%(series)s/%(season_number)s - %(season)s/%(episode_number)s - %(episode)s.%(ext)s" https://videomore.ru/kino_v_detalayah/5_sezon/367617
+
+ # Stream the video being downloaded to stdout
+ $ youtube-dl -o - BaW_jenozKc
+
+
+
+FORMAT SELECTION
+
+
+By default youtube-dl tries to download the best available quality, i.e.
+if you want the best quality you DON'T NEED to pass any special options,
+youtube-dl will guess it for you by DEFAULT.
+
+But sometimes you may want to download in a different format, for
+example when you are on a slow or intermittent connection. The key
+mechanism for achieving this is so-called _format selection_ based on
+which you can explicitly specify desired format, select formats based on
+some criterion or criteria, setup precedence and much more.
+
+The general syntax for format selection is --format FORMAT or shorter
+-f FORMAT where FORMAT is a _selector expression_, i.e. an expression
+that describes format or formats you would like to download.
+
+TL;DR: navigate me to examples.
+
+The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example with
+-f 22 you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can
+get the list of available format codes for particular video using
+--list-formats or -F. Note that these format codes are extractor
+specific.
+
+You can also use a file extension (currently 3gp, aac, flv, m4a, mp3,
+mp4, ogg, wav, webm are supported) to download the best quality format
+of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. -f webm
+will download the best quality format with the webm extension served as
+a single file.
+
+You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats: -
+best: Select the best quality format represented by a single file with
+video and audio. - worst: Select the worst quality format represented by
+a single file with video and audio. - bestvideo: Select the best quality
+video-only format (e.g. DASH video). May not be available. - worstvideo:
+Select the worst quality video-only format. May not be available. -
+bestaudio: Select the best quality audio only-format. May not be
+available. - worstaudio: Select the worst quality audio only-format. May
+not be available.
+
+For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use
+-f worstvideo.
+
+If you want to download multiple videos and they don't have the same
+formats available, you can specify the order of preference using
+slashes. Note that slash is left-associative, i.e. formats on the left
+hand side are preferred, for example -f 22/17/18 will download format 22
+if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's
+available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available,
+otherwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for
+download.
+
+If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as
+a separator, e.g. -f 22,17,18 will download all these three formats, of
+course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined
+with the precedence feature: -f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio.
+
+You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in
+brackets, as in -f "best[height=720]" (or -f "[filesize>10M]").
+
+The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons <, <=, >,
+>=, = (equals), != (not equals): - filesize: The number of bytes, if
+known in advance - width: Width of the video, if known - height: Height
+of the video, if known - tbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in
+KBit/s - abr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s - vbr: Average video
+bitrate in KBit/s - asr: Audio sampling rate in Hertz - fps: Frame rate
+
+Also filtering work for comparisons = (equals), != (not equals), ^=
+(begins with), $= (ends with), *= (contains) and following string meta
+fields: - ext: File extension - acodec: Name of the audio codec in use -
+vcodec: Name of the video codec in use - container: Name of the
+container format - protocol: The protocol that will be used for the
+actual download, lower-case (http, https, rtsp, rtmp, rtmpe, mms, f4m,
+ism, http_dash_segments, m3u8, or m3u8_native) - format_id: A short
+description of the format
+
+Note that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be
+present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particular
+extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the video hoster.
+
+Formats for which the value is not known are excluded unless you put a
+question mark (?) after the operator. You can combine format filters, so
+-f "[height <=? 720][tbr>500]" selects up to 720p videos (or videos
+where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s.
+
+You can merge the video and audio of two formats into a single file
+using -f <video-format>+<audio-format> (requires ffmpeg or avconv
+installed), for example -f bestvideo+bestaudio will download the best
+video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with
+ffmpeg/avconv.
+
+Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if
+you want to download the best mp4 and webm formats with a height lower
+than 480 you can use -f '(mp4,webm)[height<480]'.
+
+Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26, youtube-dl uses
+-f bestvideo+bestaudio/best as the default format selection (see #5447,
+#5456). If ffmpeg or avconv are installed this results in downloading
+bestvideo and bestaudio separately and muxing them together into a
+single file giving the best overall quality available. Otherwise it
+falls back to best and results in downloading the best available quality
+served as a single file. best is also needed for videos that don't come
+from YouTube because they don't provide the audio and video in two
+different files. If you want to only download some DASH formats (for
+example if you are not interested in getting videos with a resolution
+higher than 1080p), you can add
+-f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best to your configuration file.
+Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream to stdout (and most likely to
+pipe it to your media player then), i.e. you explicitly specify output
+template as -o -, youtube-dl still uses -f best format selection in
+order to start content delivery immediately to your player and not to
+wait until bestvideo and bestaudio are downloaded and muxed.
+
+If you want to preserve the old format selection behavior (prior to
+youtube-dl 2015.04.26), i.e. you want to download the best available
+quality media served as a single file, you should explicitly specify
+your choice with -f best. You may want to add it to the configuration
+file in order not to type it every time you run youtube-dl.
+
+Format selection examples
+
+Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of
+single.
+
+ # Download best mp4 format available or any other best if no mp4 available
+ $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best'
+
+ # Download best format available but not better that 480p
+ $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]'
+
+ # Download best video only format but no bigger than 50 MB
+ $ youtube-dl -f 'best[filesize<50M]'
+
+ # Download best format available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol
+ $ youtube-dl -f '(bestvideo+bestaudio/best)[protocol^=http]'
+
+ # Download the best video format and the best audio format without merging them
+ $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo,bestaudio' -o '%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s'
+
+Note that in the last example, an output template is recommended as
+bestvideo and bestaudio may have the same file name.
+
+
+
VIDEO SELECTION
-===============
+
Videos can be filtered by their upload date using the options --date,
---datebefore or --dateafter, they accept dates in two formats:
+--datebefore or --dateafter. They accept dates in two formats:
- Absolute dates: Dates in the format YYYYMMDD.
- Relative dates: Dates in the format
Examples:
- $ youtube-dl --dateafter now-6months #will only download the videos uploaded in the last 6 months
- $ youtube-dl --date 19700101 #will only download the videos uploaded in January 1, 1970
- $ youtube-dl --dateafter 20000101 --datebefore 20100101 #will only download the videos uploaded between 2000 and 2010
+ # Download only the videos uploaded in the last 6 months
+ $ youtube-dl --dateafter now-6months
+
+ # Download only the videos uploaded on January 1, 1970
+ $ youtube-dl --date 19700101
+
+ $ # Download only the videos uploaded in the 200x decade
+ $ youtube-dl --dateafter 20000101 --datebefore 20091231
+
+
FAQ
-===
+
+
+How do I update youtube-dl?
+
+If you've followed our manual installation instructions, you can simply
+run youtube-dl -U (or, on Linux, sudo youtube-dl -U).
+
+If you have used pip, a simple sudo pip install -U youtube-dl is
+sufficient to update.
+
+If you have installed youtube-dl using a package manager like _apt-get_
+or _yum_, use the standard system update mechanism to update. Note that
+distribution packages are often outdated. As a rule of thumb, youtube-dl
+releases at least once a month, and often weekly or even daily. Simply
+go to https://yt-dl.org to find out the current version. Unfortunately,
+there is nothing we youtube-dl developers can do if your distribution
+serves a really outdated version. You can (and should) complain to your
+distribution in their bugtracker or support forum.
+
+As a last resort, you can also uninstall the version installed by your
+package manager and follow our manual installation instructions. For
+that, remove the distribution's package, with a line like
+
+ sudo apt-get remove -y youtube-dl
+
+Afterwards, simply follow our manual installation instructions:
+
+ sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
+ sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
+ hash -r
+
+Again, from then on you'll be able to update with sudo youtube-dl -U.
+
+youtube-dl is extremely slow to start on Windows
+
+Add a file exclusion for youtube-dl.exe in Windows Defender settings.
+
+I'm getting an error Unable to extract OpenGraph title on YouTube playlists
+
+YouTube changed their playlist format in March 2014 and later on, so
+you'll need at least youtube-dl 2014.07.25 to download all YouTube
+videos.
+
+If you have installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py
+or a tarball, please use that to update. Note that Ubuntu packages do
+not seem to get updated anymore. Since we are not affiliated with
+Ubuntu, there is little we can do. Feel free to report bugs to the
+Ubuntu packaging people - all they have to do is update the package to a
+somewhat recent version. See above for a way to update.
+
+I'm getting an error when trying to use output template: error: using output template conflicts with using title, video ID or auto number
+
+Make sure you are not using -o with any of these options -t, --title,
+--id, -A or --auto-number set in command line or in a configuration
+file. Remove the latter if any.
+
+Do I always have to pass -citw?
+
+By default, youtube-dl intends to have the best options (incidentally,
+if you have a convincing case that these should be different, please
+file an issue where you explain that). Therefore, it is unnecessary and
+sometimes harmful to copy long option strings from webpages. In
+particular, the only option out of -citw that is regularly useful is -i.
Can you please put the -b option back?
Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download
too much. We're considering to provide a way to let you solve the
-CAPTCHA, but at the moment, your best course of action is pointing a
-webbrowser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart
-youtube-dl.
+CAPTCHA, but at the moment, your best course of action is pointing a web
+browser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.
+
+Do I need any other programs?
+
+youtube-dl works fine on its own on most sites. However, if you want to
+convert video/audio, you'll need avconv or ffmpeg. On some sites - most
+notably YouTube - videos can be retrieved in a higher quality format
+without sound. youtube-dl will detect whether avconv/ffmpeg is present
+and automatically pick the best option.
+
+Videos or video formats streamed via RTMP protocol can only be
+downloaded when rtmpdump is installed. Downloading MMS and RTSP videos
+requires either mplayer or mpv to be installed.
I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?
-Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as vlc or
-mplayer.
+Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as mpv,
+vlc or mplayer.
+
+I extracted a video URL with -g, but it does not play on another machine / in my web browser.
-The links provided by youtube-dl -g are not working anymore
+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 and/or HTTP headers. 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. You can also
+get necessary cookies and HTTP headers from JSON output obtained with
+--dump-json.
-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.
+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.
+
+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
-youtube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is
-not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. You can update youtube-dl
-with sudo youtube-dl --update.
+YouTube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is
+not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update
+youtube-dl.
ERROR: unable to download video
-youtube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is
-not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. You can update youtube-dl
-with sudo youtube-dl --update.
+YouTube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is
+not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See above for how to update
+youtube-dl.
+
+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
+
+That's actually the output from your shell. Since ampersand is one of
+the special shell characters it's interpreted by the shell preventing
+you from passing the whole URL to youtube-dl. To disable your shell from
+interpreting the ampersands (or any other special characters) you have
+to either put the whole URL in quotes or escape them with a backslash
+(which approach will work depends on your shell).
+
+For example if your URL is
+https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc you should end up with
+following command:
+
+youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc'
+
+or
+
+youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKc
+
+For Windows you have to use the double quotes:
+
+youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc"
+
+ExtractorError: Could not find JS function u'OF'
+
+In February 2015, the new YouTube player contained a character sequence
+in a string that was misinterpreted by old versions of youtube-dl. See
+above for how to update youtube-dl.
+
+HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests or 402: Payment Required
+
+These two error codes indicate that the service is blocking your IP
+address because of overuse. Contact the service and ask them to unblock
+your IP address, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address
+already - use the --proxy or --source-address options to select another
+IP address.
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character
the code, you can run it by executing the __main__.py file. To recompile
the executable, run make youtube-dl.
-The exe throws a Runtime error from Visual C++
+The exe throws an error due to missing MSVCR100.dll
-To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008
-Redistributable Package.
+To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010
+Redistributable Package (x86).
-COPYRIGHT
-=========
+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 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 do I put downloads into a specific folder?
+
+Use the -o to specify an output template, for example
+-o "/home/user/videos/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s". If you want this for
+all of your downloads, put the option into your configuration file.
+
+How do I download a video starting with a -?
+
+Either prepend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= or separate the ID from
+the options with --:
+
+ youtube-dl -- -wNyEUrxzFU
+ youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"
+
+How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?
+
+Use the --cookies option, for example
+--cookies /path/to/cookies/file.txt.
+
+In order to extract cookies from browser use any conforming browser
+extension for exporting cookies. For example, cookies.txt (for Chrome)
+or Export Cookies (for Firefox).
+
+Note that the cookies file must be in Mozilla/Netscape format and the
+first line of the cookies file must be either # HTTP Cookie File or
+# Netscape HTTP Cookie File. Make sure you have correct newline format
+in the cookies file and convert newlines if necessary to correspond with
+your OS, namely CRLF (\r\n) for Windows and LF (\n) for Unix and
+Unix-like systems (Linux, Mac OS, etc.). HTTP Error 400: Bad Request
+when using --cookies is a good sign of invalid newline format.
+
+Passing cookies to youtube-dl is a good way to workaround login when a
+particular extractor does not implement it explicitly. Another use case
+is working around CAPTCHA some websites require you to solve in
+particular cases in order to get access (e.g. YouTube, CloudFlare).
+
+How do I stream directly to media player?
+
+You will first need to tell youtube-dl to stream media to stdout with
+-o -, and also tell your media player to read from stdin (it must be
+capable of this for streaming) and then pipe former to latter. For
+example, streaming to vlc can be achieved with:
+
+ youtube-dl -o - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj" | vlc -
+
+How do I download only new videos from a playlist?
+
+Use download-archive feature. With this feature you should initially
+download the complete playlist with
+--download-archive /path/to/download/archive/file.txt that will record
+identifiers of all the videos in a special file. Each subsequent run
+with the same --download-archive will download only new videos and skip
+all videos that have been downloaded before. Note that only successful
+downloads are recorded in the file.
+
+For example, at first,
+
+ youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
+
+will download the complete PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re playlist
+and create a file archive.txt. Each subsequent run will only download
+new videos if any:
+
+ youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
+
+Should I add --hls-prefer-native into my config?
+
+When youtube-dl detects an HLS video, it can download it either with the
+built-in downloader or ffmpeg. Since many HLS streams are slightly
+invalid and ffmpeg/youtube-dl each handle some invalid cases better than
+the other, there is an option to switch the downloader if needed.
+
+When youtube-dl knows that one particular downloader works better for a
+given website, that downloader will be picked. Otherwise, youtube-dl
+will pick the best downloader for general compatibility, which at the
+moment happens to be ffmpeg. This choice may change in future versions
+of youtube-dl, with improvements of the built-in downloader and/or
+ffmpeg.
+
+In particular, the generic extractor (used when your website is not in
+the list of supported sites by youtube-dl cannot mandate one specific
+downloader.
+
+If you put either --hls-prefer-native or --hls-prefer-ffmpeg into your
+configuration, a different subset of videos will fail to download
+correctly. Instead, it is much better to file an issue or a pull request
+which details why the native or the ffmpeg HLS downloader is a better
+choice for your use case.
+
+Can you add support for this anime video site, or site which shows current movies for free?
+
+As a matter of policy (as well as legality), youtube-dl does not include
+support for services that specialize in infringing copyright. As a rule
+of thumb, if you cannot easily find a video that the service is quite
+obviously allowed to distribute (i.e. that has been uploaded by the
+creator, the creator's distributor, or is published under a free
+license), the service is probably unfit for inclusion to youtube-dl.
+
+A note on the service that they don't host the infringing content, but
+just link to those who do, is evidence that the service should NOT be
+included into youtube-dl. The same goes for any DMCA note when the whole
+front page of the service is filled with videos they are not allowed to
+distribute. A "fair use" note is equally unconvincing if the service
+shows copyright-protected videos in full without authorization.
+
+Support requests for services that DO purchase the rights to distribute
+their content are perfectly fine though. If in doubt, you can simply
+include a source that mentions the legitimate purchase of content.
+
+How can I speed up work on my issue?
+
+(Also known as: Help, my important issue not being solved!) The
+youtube-dl core developer team is quite small. While we do our best to
+solve as many issues as possible, sometimes that can take quite a while.
+To speed up your issue, here's what you can do:
+
+First of all, please do report the issue at our issue tracker. That
+allows us to coordinate all efforts by users and developers, and serves
+as a unified point. Unfortunately, the youtube-dl project has grown too
+large to use personal email as an effective communication channel.
+
+Please read the bug reporting instructions below. A lot of bugs lack all
+the necessary information. If you can, offer proxy, VPN, or shell access
+to the youtube-dl developers. If you are able to, test the issue from
+multiple computers in multiple countries to exclude local censorship or
+misconfiguration issues.
+
+If nobody is interested in solving your issue, you are welcome to take
+matters into your own hands and submit a pull request (or coerce/pay
+somebody else to do so).
+
+Feel free to bump the issue from time to time by writing a small comment
+("Issue is still present in youtube-dl version ...from France, but fixed
+from Belgium"), but please not more than once a month. Please do not
+declare your issue as important or urgent.
+
+How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
+
+For one, have a look at the list of supported sites. Note that it can
+sometimes happen that the site changes its URL scheme (say, from
+https://example.com/video/1234567 to https://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.
+
+
+
+WHY DO I NEED TO GO THROUGH THAT MUCH RED TAPE WHEN FILING BUGS?
+
+
+Before we had the issue template, despite our extensive bug reporting
+instructions, about 80% of the issue reports we got were useless, for
+instance because people used ancient versions hundreds of releases old,
+because of simple syntactic errors (not in youtube-dl but in general
+shell usage), because the problem was already reported multiple times
+before, because people did not actually read an error message, even if
+it said "please install ffmpeg", because people did not mention the URL
+they were trying to download and many more simple, easy-to-avoid
+problems, many of whom were totally unrelated to youtube-dl.
+
+youtube-dl is an open-source project manned by too few volunteers, so
+we'd rather spend time fixing bugs where we are certain none of those
+simple problems apply, and where we can be reasonably confident to be
+able to reproduce the issue without asking the reporter repeatedly. As
+such, the output of youtube-dl -v YOUR_URL_HERE is really all that's
+required to file an issue. The issue template also guides you through
+some basic steps you can do, such as checking that your version of
+youtube-dl is current.
+
+
+
+DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
+
+
+Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can download the builds
+or get them from their distribution.
+
+To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything
+either. Simply execute
+
+ python -m youtube_dl
+
+To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a
+test file directly; any of the following work:
+
+ python -m unittest discover
+ python test/test_download.py
+ nosetests
+
+See item 6 of new extractor tutorial for how to run extractor specific
+test cases.
+
+If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need
+
+- python
+- make (only GNU make is supported)
+- pandoc
+- zip
+- nosetests
+
+Adding support for a new site
+
+If you want to add support for a new site, first of all MAKE SURE this
+site is NOT DEDICATED TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. youtube-dl does NOT
+SUPPORT such sites thus pull requests adding support for them WILL BE
+REJECTED.
+
+After you have ensured this site is distributing its content legally,
+you can follow this quick list (assuming your service is called
+yourextractor):
+
+1. Fork this repository
+2. Check out the source code with:
+
+ git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
+
+3. Start a new git branch with
+
+ cd youtube-dl
+ git checkout -b yourextractor
+
+4. Start with this simple template and save it to
+ youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py:
+
+ # coding: utf-8
+ from __future__ import unicode_literals
+
+ from .common import InfoExtractor
+
+
+ class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
+ _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
+ _TEST = {
+ 'url': 'https://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
+ 'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
+ 'info_dict': {
+ 'id': '42',
+ 'ext': 'mp4',
+ 'title': 'Video title goes here',
+ 'thumbnail': r're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
+ # TODO more properties, either as:
+ # * A value
+ # * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
+ # * A regular expression; start the string with re:
+ # * Any Python type (for example int or float)
+ }
+ }
+
+ 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 ...
+ title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
+
+ return {
+ 'id': video_id,
+ 'title': title,
+ 'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
+ 'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
+ # TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
+ }
+
+5. Add an import in youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py.
+6. Run python test/test_download.py TestDownload.test_YourExtractor.
+ This _should fail_ at first, but you can continually re-run it until
+ you're done. If you decide to add more than one test, then rename
+ _TEST to _TESTS and make it into a list of dictionaries. The tests
+ will then be named TestDownload.test_YourExtractor,
+ TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_1,
+ TestDownload.test_YourExtractor_2, etc. Note that tests with
+ only_matching key in test's dict are not counted in.
+7. Have a look at youtube_dl/extractor/common.py for possible helper
+ methods and a detailed description of what your extractor should and
+ may return. Add tests and code for as many as you want.
+8. Make sure your code follows youtube-dl coding conventions and check
+ the code with flake8. Also make sure your code works under all
+ Python versions claimed supported by youtube-dl, namely 2.6, 2.7,
+ and 3.2+.
+9. When the tests pass, add the new files and commit them and push the
+ result, like this:
+
+ $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
+ $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
+ $ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
+ $ git push origin yourextractor
+
+10. Finally, create a pull request. We'll then review and merge it.
+
+In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!
+
+
+youtube-dl coding conventions
+
+This section introduces a guide lines for writing idiomatic, robust and
+future-proof extractor code.
+
+Extractors are very fragile by nature since they depend on the layout of
+the source data provided by 3rd party media hosters out of your control
+and this layout tends to change. As an extractor implementer your task
+is not only to write code that will extract media links and metadata
+correctly but also to minimize dependency on the source's layout and
+even to make the code foresee potential future changes and be ready for
+that. This is important because it will allow the extractor not to break
+on minor layout changes thus keeping old youtube-dl versions working.
+Even though this breakage issue is easily fixed by emitting a new
+version of youtube-dl with a fix incorporated, all the previous versions
+become broken in all repositories and distros' packages that may not be
+so prompt in fetching the update from us. Needless to say, some non
+rolling release distros may never receive an update at all.
+
+Mandatory and optional metafields
+
+For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor
+extracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by an information
+dictionary or simply _info dict_. Only the following meta fields in the
+_info dict_ are considered mandatory for a successful extraction process
+by youtube-dl:
+
+- id (media identifier)
+- title (media title)
+- url (media download URL) or formats
+
+In fact only the last option is technically mandatory (i.e. if you can't
+figure out the download location of the media the extraction does not
+make any sense). But by convention youtube-dl also treats id and title
+as mandatory. Thus the aforementioned metafields are the critical data
+that the extraction does not make any sense without and if any of them
+fail to be extracted then the extractor is considered completely broken.
+
+Any field apart from the aforementioned ones are considered OPTIONAL.
+That means that extraction should be TOLERANT to situations when sources
+for these fields can potentially be unavailable (even if they are always
+available at the moment) and FUTURE-PROOF in order not to break the
+extraction of general purpose mandatory fields.
+
+Example
+
+Say you have some source dictionary meta that you've fetched as JSON
+with HTTP request and it has a key summary:
+
+ meta = self._download_json(url, video_id)
+
+Assume at this point meta's layout is:
+
+ {
+ ...
+ "summary": "some fancy summary text",
+ ...
+ }
+
+Assume you want to extract summary and put it into the resulting info
+dict as description. Since description is an optional meta field you
+should be ready that this key may be missing from the meta dict, so that
+you should extract it like:
+
+ description = meta.get('summary') # correct
+
+and not like:
+
+ description = meta['summary'] # incorrect
+
+The latter will break extraction process with KeyError if summary
+disappears from meta at some later time but with the former approach
+extraction will just go ahead with description set to None which is
+perfectly fine (remember None is equivalent to the absence of data).
+
+Similarly, you should pass fatal=False when extracting optional data
+from a webpage with _search_regex, _html_search_regex or similar
+methods, for instance:
+
+ description = self._search_regex(
+ r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
+ webpage, 'description', fatal=False)
+
+With fatal set to False if _search_regex fails to extract description it
+will emit a warning and continue extraction.
+
+You can also pass default=<some fallback value>, for example:
+
+ description = self._search_regex(
+ r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
+ webpage, 'description', default=None)
+
+On failure this code will silently continue the extraction with
+description set to None. That is useful for metafields that may or may
+not be present.
+
+Provide fallbacks
+
+When extracting metadata try to do so from multiple sources. For example
+if title is present in several places, try extracting from at least some
+of them. This makes it more future-proof in case some of the sources
+become unavailable.
+
+Example
+
+Say meta from the previous example has a title and you are about to
+extract it. Since title is a mandatory meta field you should end up with
+something like:
+
+ title = meta['title']
+
+If title disappears from meta in future due to some changes on the
+hoster's side the extraction would fail since title is mandatory. That's
+expected.
+
+Assume that you have some another source you can extract title from, for
+example og:title HTML meta of a webpage. In this case you can provide a
+fallback scenario:
+
+ title = meta.get('title') or self._og_search_title(webpage)
+
+This code will try to extract from meta first and if it fails it will
+try extracting og:title from a webpage.
+
+Make regular expressions flexible
+
+When using regular expressions try to write them fuzzy and flexible.
+
+Example
+
+Say you need to extract title from the following HTML code:
+
+ <span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">some fancy title</span>
+
+The code for that task should look similar to:
+
+ title = self._search_regex(
+ r'<span[^>]+class="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)', webpage, 'title')
+
+Or even better:
+
+ title = self._search_regex(
+ r'<span[^>]+class=(["\'])title\1[^>]*>(?P<title>[^<]+)',
+ webpage, 'title', group='title')
+
+Note how you tolerate potential changes in the style attribute's value
+or switch from using double quotes to single for class attribute:
+
+The code definitely should not look like:
+
+ title = self._search_regex(
+ r'<span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">(.*?)</span>',
+ webpage, 'title', group='title')
+
+Use safe conversion functions
+
+Wrap all extracted numeric data into safe functions from utils:
+int_or_none, float_or_none. Use them for string to number conversions as
+well.
+
+
+
+EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
+
+
+youtube-dl makes the best effort to be a good command-line program, and
+thus should be callable from any programming language. If you encounter
+any problems parsing its output, feel free to create a report.
+
+From a Python program, you can embed youtube-dl in a more powerful
+fashion, like this:
+
+ from __future__ import unicode_literals
+ import youtube_dl
+
+ ydl_opts = {}
+ with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
+ ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
+
+Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options
+available, have a look at youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py. 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:
+
+ from __future__ import unicode_literals
+ 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(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
-youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
-This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton
-(https://github.com/dbbolton) and is likewise released into the public
-domain.
BUGS
-====
+
Bugs and suggestions should be reported at:
-https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues
-
-Please include:
-
-- Your exact command line, like
- youtube-dl -t "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHlDtZ6Oc3s&feature=channel_video_title".
- A common mistake is not to escape the &. Putting URLs in quotes
- should solve this problem.
-- If possible re-run the command with --verbose, and include the full
- output, it is really helpful to us.
-- The output of youtube-dl --version
-- The output of python --version
-- The name and version of your Operating System ("Ubuntu 11.04 x64" or
- "Windows 7 x64" is usually enough).
-
-For discussions, join us in the irc channel #youtube-dl on freenode.
+https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues. Unless you were prompted to 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
+(webchat).
+
+PLEASE INCLUDE THE FULL OUTPUT OF YOUTUBE-DL WHEN RUN WITH -v, i.e. ADD
+-v flag to YOUR COMMAND LINE, copy the WHOLE output and post it in the
+issue body wrapped in ``` for better formatting. It should look similar
+to this:
+
+ $ youtube-dl -v <your command line>
+ [debug] System config: []
+ [debug] User config: []
+ [debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
+ [debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
+ [debug] youtube-dl version 2015.12.06
+ [debug] Git HEAD: 135392e
+ [debug] Python version 2.6.6 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
+ [debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
+ [debug] Proxy map: {}
+ ...
+
+DO NOT POST SCREENSHOTS OF VERBOSE LOGS; ONLY PLAIN TEXT IS ACCEPTABLE.
+
+The output (including the first lines) contains important debugging
+information. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible
+and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
+
+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?
+
+We often get issue reports that we cannot really decipher. While in most
+cases we eventually get the required information after asking back
+multiple times, this poses an unnecessary drain on our resources. Many
+contributors, including myself, are also not native speakers, so we may
+misread some parts.
+
+So please elaborate on what feature you are requesting, or what bug you
+want to be fixed. Make sure that it's obvious
+
+- What the problem is
+- How it could be fixed
+- How your proposed solution would look like
+
+If your report is shorter than two lines, it is almost certainly missing
+some of these, which makes it hard for us to respond to it. We're often
+too polite to close the issue outright, but the missing info makes
+misinterpretation likely. As a committer myself, I often get frustrated
+by these issues, since the only possible way for me to move forward on
+them is to ask for clarification over and over.
+
+For bug reports, this means that your report should contain the
+_complete_ output of youtube-dl when called with the -v flag. The error
+message you get for (most) bugs even says so, but you would not believe
+how many of our bug reports do not contain this information.
+
+If your server has multiple IPs or you suspect censorship, adding
+--call-home may be a good idea to get more diagnostics. If the error is
+ERROR: Unable to extract ... and you cannot reproduce it from multiple
+countries, add --dump-pages (warning: this will yield a rather large
+output, redirect it to the file log.txt by adding >log.txt 2>&1 to your
+command-line) or upload the .dump files you get when you add
+--write-pages somewhere.
+
+SITE SUPPORT REQUESTS MUST CONTAIN AN EXAMPLE URL. An example URL is a
+URL you might want to download, like
+https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc. There should be an obvious
+video present. Except under very special circumstances, the main page of
+a video service (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/) is _not_ an example URL.
+
+Are you using the latest version?
+
+Before reporting any issue, type youtube-dl -U. This should report that
+you're up-to-date. About 20% of the reports we receive are already
+fixed, but people are using outdated versions. This goes for feature
+requests as well.
+
+Is the issue already documented?
+
+Make sure that someone has not already opened the issue you're trying to
+open. Search at the top of the window or browse the GitHub Issues of
+this repository. If there is an issue, feel free to write something
+along the lines of "This affects me as well, with version 2015.01.01.
+Here is some more information on the issue: ...". While some issues may
+be old, a new post into them often spurs rapid activity.
+
+Why are existing options not enough?
+
+Before requesting a new feature, please have a quick peek at the list of
+supported options. Many feature requests are for features that actually
+exist already! Please, absolutely do show off your work in the issue
+report and detail how the existing similar options do _not_ solve your
+problem.
+
+Is there enough context in your bug report?
+
+People want to solve problems, and often think they do us a favor by
+breaking down their larger problems (e.g. wanting to skip already
+downloaded files) to a specific request (e.g. requesting us to look
+whether the file exists before downloading the info page). However, what
+often happens is that they break down the problem into two steps: One
+simple, and one impossible (or extremely complicated one).
+
+We are then presented with a very complicated request when the original
+problem could be solved far easier, e.g. by recording the downloaded
+video IDs in a separate file. To avoid this, you must include the
+greater context where it is non-obvious. In particular, every feature
+request that does not consist of adding support for a new site should
+contain a use case scenario that explains in what situation the missing
+feature would be useful.
+
+Does the issue involve one problem, and one problem only?
+
+Some of our users seem to think there is a limit of issues they can or
+should open. There is no limit of issues they can or should open. While
+it may seem appealing to be able to dump all your issues into one
+ticket, that means that someone who solves one of your issues cannot
+mark the issue as closed. Typically, reporting a bunch of issues leads
+to the ticket lingering since nobody wants to attack that behemoth,
+until someone mercifully splits the issue into multiple ones.
+
+In particular, every site support request issue should only pertain to
+services at one site (generally under a common domain, but always using
+the same backend technology). Do not request support for vimeo user
+videos, White house podcasts, and Google Plus pages in the same issue.
+Also, make sure that you don't post bug reports alongside feature
+requests. As a rule of thumb, a feature request does not include outputs
+of youtube-dl that are not immediately related to the feature at hand.
+Do not post reports of a network error alongside the request for a new
+video service.
+
+Is anyone going to need the feature?
+
+Only post features that you (or an incapacitated friend you can
+personally talk to) require. Do not post features because they seem like
+a good idea. If they are really useful, they will be requested by
+someone who requires them.
+
+Is your question about youtube-dl?
+
+It may sound strange, but some bug reports we receive are completely
+unrelated to youtube-dl and relate to a different, or even the
+reporter's own, application. Please make sure that you are actually
+using youtube-dl. If you are using a UI for youtube-dl, report the bug
+to the maintainer of the actual application providing the UI. On the
+other hand, if your UI for youtube-dl fails in some way you believe is
+related to youtube-dl, by all means, go ahead and report the bug.
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT
+
+
+youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
+
+This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton and is likewise
+released into the public domain.