目录
- .github[workflows/ci] Avoid installing wheel and setuptools with pip6个月前
- binadding the script hook13年前
- devscripts[build] Fix typo in `devscripts/fish-completion.py` (fix 2285605)2年前
- docsrelease 2021.12.174年前
- test[utils] Support additional codecs and dynamic_range5个月前
- youtube_dl[YouTube] Bug-fix for `c1f5c3274a`5个月前
- .gitignore[.gitignore] Add .vscode7年前
- AUTHORSCredit @adrianheine for #277325年前
- CONTRIBUTING.md[Readme] Clarified extractor naming (#29799)3年前
- ChangeLogrelease 2021.12.174年前
- LICENSEaddedd a serious Public Domain dedication, see http://unlicense.org/13年前
- MANIFEST.in[MANIFEST.in] Include all test data in PyPI package8年前
- MakefileMove issue template templates into separate folder7年前
- README.md[doc] Update developer guidance2年前
- setup.cfgFix W504 and disable W503 (closes #20863)7年前
- setup.pyStart moving to ytdl-org7年前
- tox.ini[test/test_socks] Add tests for SOCKS proxies10年前
- youtube-dl.plugin.zshStart moving to ytdl-org7年前
youtube-dl - download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms
INSTALLATION
To install it right away for all UNIX users (Linux, macOS, etc.), type:
If you do not have curl, you can alternatively use a recent wget:
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 inC:\Windows\System32).You can also use pip:
This command will update youtube-dl if you have already installed it. See the pypi page for more information.
macOS users can install youtube-dl with Homebrew:
Or with MacPorts:
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.
DESCRIPTION
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 macOS. It is released to the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.
OPTIONS
Network Options:
Geo Restriction:
Video Selection:
Download Options:
Filesystem Options:
Thumbnail Options:
Verbosity / Simulation Options:
Workarounds:
Video Format Options:
Subtitle Options:
Authentication Options:
Adobe Pass Options:
Post-processing Options:
CONFIGURATION
You can configure youtube-dl by placing any supported command line option to a configuration file. On Linux and macOS, the system wide configuration file is located at
/etc/youtube-dl.confand the user wide configuration file at~/.config/youtube-dl/config. On Windows, the user wide configuration file locations are%APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txtorC:\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
Moviesdirectory in your home directory: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.-oor--proxybut not- oor-- proxy.You can use
--ignore-configif you want to disable the configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.You can also use
--config-locationif you want to use custom configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.Authentication with
.netrcfileYou may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for extractors that support authentication (by providing login and password with
--usernameand--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.netrcfile on a per extractor basis. For that you will need to create a.netrcfile in your$HOMEand restrict permissions to read/write by only you:After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following format, where extractor is the name of the extractor in lowercase:
For example:
To activate authentication with the
.netrcfile you should pass--netrcto youtube-dl or place it in the configuration file.On Windows you may also need to setup the
%HOME%environment variable manually. For example:OUTPUT TEMPLATE
The
-ooption allows users to indicate a template for the output file 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)sor%(NAME)05d. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in parentheses, followed by formatting operations. Allowed names along with sequence type are:id(string): Video identifiertitle(string): Video titleurl(string): Video URLext(string): Video filename extensionalt_title(string): A secondary title of the videodisplay_id(string): An alternative identifier for the videouploader(string): Full name of the video uploaderlicense(string): License name the video is licensed undercreator(string): The creator of the videorelease_date(string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was releasedtimestamp(numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became availableupload_date(string): Video upload date (YYYYMMDD)uploader_id(string): Nickname or id of the video uploaderchannel(string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded onchannel_id(string): Id of the channellocation(string): Physical location where the video was filmedduration(numeric): Length of the video in secondsview_count(numeric): How many users have watched the video on the platformlike_count(numeric): Number of positive ratings of the videodislike_count(numeric): Number of negative ratings of the videorepost_count(numeric): Number of reposts of the videoaverage_rating(numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale used depends on the webpagecomment_count(numeric): Number of comments on the videoage_limit(numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)is_live(boolean): Whether this video is a live stream or a fixed-length videostart_time(numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should start, as specified in the URLend_time(numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should end, as specified in the URLformat(string): A human-readable description of the formatformat_id(string): Format code specified by--formatformat_note(string): Additional info about the formatwidth(numeric): Width of the videoheight(numeric): Height of the videoresolution(string): Textual description of width and heighttbr(numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/sabr(numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/sacodec(string): Name of the audio codec in useasr(numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertzvbr(numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/sfps(numeric): Frame ratevcodec(string): Name of the video codec in usecontainer(string): Name of the container formatfilesize(numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advancefilesize_approx(numeric): An estimate for the number of bytesprotocol(string): The protocol that will be used for the actual downloadextractor(string): Name of the extractorextractor_key(string): Key name of the extractorepoch(numeric): Unix epoch when creating the fileautonumber(numeric): Number that will be increased with each download, starting at--autonumber-startplaylist(string): Name or id of the playlist that contains the videoplaylist_index(numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlistplaylist_id(string): Playlist identifierplaylist_title(string): Playlist titleplaylist_uploader(string): Full name of the playlist uploaderplaylist_uploader_id(string): Nickname or id of the playlist uploaderAvailable for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:
chapter(string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs tochapter_number(numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs tochapter_id(string): Id of the chapter the video belongs toAvailable for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:
series(string): Title of the series or programme the video episode belongs toseason(string): Title of the season the video episode belongs toseason_number(numeric): Number of the season the video episode belongs toseason_id(string): Id of the season the video episode belongs toepisode(string): Title of the video episodeepisode_number(numeric): Number of the video episode within a seasonepisode_id(string): Id of the video episodeAvailable for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:
track(string): Title of the tracktrack_number(numeric): Number of the track within an album or a disctrack_id(string): Id of the trackartist(string): Artist(s) of the trackgenre(string): Genre(s) of the trackalbum(string): Title of the album the track belongs toalbum_type(string): Type of the albumalbum_artist(string): List of all artists appeared on the albumdisc_number(numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium the track belongs torelease_year(numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was releasedEach 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 placeholder value provided with
--output-na-placeholder(NAby default).For example for
-o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)sand an mp4 video with titleyoutube-dl test videoand idBaW_jenozKcj, this will result in ayoutube-dl test video-BaW_jenozKcj.mp4file created in the current directory.For numeric sequences you can use numeric related formatting, for example,
%(view_count)05dwill result in a string with view count padded with zeros up to 5 characters, like in00042.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.In some cases, you don’t want special characters such as 中, spaces, or &, such as when transferring the downloaded filename to a Windows system or the filename through an 8bit-unsafe channel. In these cases, add the
--restrict-filenamesflag to get a shorter title.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.
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 FORMATor shorter-f FORMATwhereFORMATis 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 22you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can get the list of available format codes for particular video using--list-formatsor-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,webmare supported) to download the best quality format of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g.-f webmwill download the best quality format with thewebmextension 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 22/17/18will 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 22,17,18will 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 advancewidth: Width of the video, if knownheight: Height of the video, if knowntbr: Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/sabr: Average audio bitrate in KBit/svbr: Average video bitrate in KBit/sasr: Audio sampling rate in Hertzfps: Frame rateAlso filtering work for comparisons
=(equals),^=(starts with),$=(ends with),*=(contains) and following string meta fields:ext: File extensionacodec: Name of the audio codec in usevcodec: Name of the video codec in usecontainer: Name of the container formatprotocol: The protocol that will be used for the actual download, lower-case (http,https,rtsp,rtmp,rtmpe,mms,f4m,ism,http_dash_segments,m3u8, orm3u8_native)format_id: A short description of the formatlanguage: Language codeAny string comparison may be prefixed with negation
!in order to produce an opposite comparison, e.g.!*=(does not contain).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+bestaudiowill 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/bestas the default format selection (see #5447, #5456). If ffmpeg or avconv are installed this results in downloadingbestvideoandbestaudioseparately and muxing them together into a single file giving the best overall quality available. Otherwise it falls back tobestand results in downloading the best available quality served as a single file.bestis 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/bestto your configuration file. Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream tostdout(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 bestformat selection in order to start content delivery immediately to your player and not to wait untilbestvideoandbestaudioare 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.
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,--datebeforeor--dateafter. They accept dates in two formats:YYYYMMDD.(now|today)[+-][0-9](day|week|month|year)(s)?Examples:
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-dlis 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
Afterwards, simply follow our manual installation instructions:
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.exein Windows Defender settings.I’m getting an error
Unable to extract OpenGraph titleon YouTube playlistsYouTube 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 numberMake sure you are not using
-owith any of these options-t,--title,--id,-Aor--auto-numberset 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
-citwthat is regularly useful is-i.Can you please put the
-boption back?Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now defaults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer need the
-boption. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not report them to be available in a specific high quality format you’re interested in. In that case, simply request it with the-foption and youtube-dl will try to download it.I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What’s this?
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 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 mpv, vlc or mplayer.
I extracted a video URL with
-g, but it does not play on another machine / in my web browser.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
--cookiesoption 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-agentto see the one in use by youtube-dl. You can also get necessary cookies and HTTP headers from JSON output obtained with--dump-json.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. 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. See above for how to update youtube-dl.
Video URL contains an ampersand and I’m getting some strange output
[1] 2839or'v' is not recognized as an internal or external commandThat’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=4outube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKcv=BaW_jenozKcv=BaW_jenozKcFor 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. Usually this is a soft block meaning that you can gain access again after solving CAPTCHA. Just open a browser and solve a CAPTCHA the service suggests you and after that pass cookies to youtube-dl. Note that if your machine has multiple external IPs then you should also pass exactly the same IP you’ve used for solving CAPTCHA with
--source-address. Also you may need to pass aUser-AgentHTTP header of your browser with--user-agent.If this is not the case (no CAPTCHA suggested to solve by the service) then you can contact the service and ask them to unblock your IP address, or - if you have acquired a whitelisted IP address already - use the
--proxyor--source-addressoptions to select another IP address.SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character
The error
means you’re using an outdated version of Python. Please update to Python 2.6 or 2.7.
What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?
Since June 2012 (#342) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile, simply unzip it (might need renaming to
youtube-dl.zipfirst on some systems) or clone the git repository, as laid out above. If you modify the code, you can run it by executing the__main__.pyfile. To recompile the executable, runmake youtube-dl.The exe throws an error due to missing
MSVCR100.dllTo run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package (x86).
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, orC:\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-dlorffmpeg, no matter what directory you’re in.How do I put downloads into a specific folder?
Use the
-oto 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--:How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?
Use the
--cookiesoption, 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, Get cookies.txt LOCALLY (for Chrome) or cookies.txt (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 Fileor# 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, namelyCRLF(\r\n) for Windows andLF(\n) for Unix and Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS, etc.).HTTP Error 400: Bad Requestwhen using--cookiesis 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: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.txtthat will record identifiers of all the videos in a special file. Each subsequent run with the same--download-archivewill 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,
will download the complete
PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7replaylist and create a filearchive.txt. Each subsequent run will only download new videos if any:Should I add
--hls-prefer-nativeinto 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-nativeor--hls-prefer-ffmpeginto 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
importantorurgent.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
UnsupportedErrorexception 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_HEREis 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
To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a test file directly; any of the following work:
For Python versions 3.6 and later, you can use pynose to implement
nosetests. The original nose has not been upgraded for 3.10 and later.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
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):Fork this repository
Check out the source code with:
Start a new git branch with
Start with this simple template and save it to
youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py:```python
coding: utf-8
from future import unicode_literals
from .common import InfoExtractor