1 [](https://travis-ci.org/ytdl-org/youtube-dl)
2
3 youtube-dl - download videos from youtube.com or other video platforms
4
5 - [INSTALLATION](#installation)
6 - [DESCRIPTION](#description)
7 - [OPTIONS](#options)
8 - [CONFIGURATION](#configuration)
9 - [OUTPUT TEMPLATE](#output-template)
10 - [FORMAT SELECTION](#format-selection)
11 - [VIDEO SELECTION](#video-selection)
12 - [FAQ](#faq)
13 - [DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS](#developer-instructions)
14 - [EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL](#embedding-youtube-dl)
15 - [BUGS](#bugs)
16 - [COPYRIGHT](#copyright)
17
18 # INSTALLATION
19
20 To install it right away for all UNIX users (Linux, macOS, etc.), type:
21
22 sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
23 sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
24
25 If you do not have curl, you can alternatively use a recent wget:
26
27 sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
28 sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
29
30 Windows users can [download an .exe file](https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl.exe) and place it in any location on their [PATH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATH_%28variable%29) except for `%SYSTEMROOT%\System32` (e.g. **do not** put in `C:\Windows\System32`).
31
32 You can also use pip:
33
34 sudo -H pip install --upgrade youtube-dl
35
36 This command will update youtube-dl if you have already installed it. See the [pypi page](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/youtube_dl) for more information.
37
38 macOS users can install youtube-dl with [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/):
39
40 brew install youtube-dl
41
42 Or with [MacPorts](https://www.macports.org/):
43
44 sudo port install youtube-dl
45
46 Alternatively, refer to the [developer instructions](#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](https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html).
47
48 # DESCRIPTION
49 **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.
50
51 youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]
52
53 # OPTIONS
54 -h, --help Print this help text and exit
55 --version Print program version and exit
56 -U, --update Update this program to latest version. Make
57 sure that you have sufficient permissions
58 (run with sudo if needed)
59 -i, --ignore-errors Continue on download errors, for example to
60 skip unavailable videos in a playlist
61 --abort-on-error Abort downloading of further videos (in the
62 playlist or the command line) if an error
63 occurs
64 --dump-user-agent Display the current browser identification
65 --list-extractors List all supported extractors
66 --extractor-descriptions Output descriptions of all supported
67 extractors
68 --force-generic-extractor Force extraction to use the generic
69 extractor
70 --default-search PREFIX Use this prefix for unqualified URLs. For
71 example "gvsearch2:" downloads two videos
72 from google videos for youtube-dl "large
73 apple". Use the value "auto" to let
74 youtube-dl guess ("auto_warning" to emit a
75 warning when guessing). "error" just throws
76 an error. The default value "fixup_error"
77 repairs broken URLs, but emits an error if
78 this is not possible instead of searching.
79 --ignore-config Do not read configuration files. When given
80 in the global configuration file
81 /etc/youtube-dl.conf: Do not read the user
82 configuration in ~/.config/youtube-
83 dl/config (%APPDATA%/youtube-dl/config.txt
84 on Windows)
85 --config-location PATH Location of the configuration file; either
86 the path to the config or its containing
87 directory.
88 --flat-playlist Do not extract the videos of a playlist,
89 only list them.
90 --mark-watched Mark videos watched (YouTube only)
91 --no-mark-watched Do not mark videos watched (YouTube only)
92 --no-color Do not emit color codes in output
93
94 ## Network Options:
95 --proxy URL Use the specified HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS proxy.
96 To enable SOCKS proxy, specify a proper
97 scheme. For example
98 socks5://127.0.0.1:1080/. Pass in an empty
99 string (--proxy "") for direct connection
100 --socket-timeout SECONDS Time to wait before giving up, in seconds
101 --source-address IP Client-side IP address to bind to
102 -4, --force-ipv4 Make all connections via IPv4
103 -6, --force-ipv6 Make all connections via IPv6
104
105 ## Geo Restriction:
106 --geo-verification-proxy URL Use this proxy to verify the IP address for
107 some geo-restricted sites. The default
108 proxy specified by --proxy (or none, if the
109 option is not present) is used for the
110 actual downloading.
111 --geo-bypass Bypass geographic restriction via faking
112 X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
113 --no-geo-bypass Do not bypass geographic restriction via
114 faking X-Forwarded-For HTTP header
115 --geo-bypass-country CODE Force bypass geographic restriction with
116 explicitly provided two-letter ISO 3166-2
117 country code
118 --geo-bypass-ip-block IP_BLOCK Force bypass geographic restriction with
119 explicitly provided IP block in CIDR
120 notation
121
122 ## Video Selection:
123 --playlist-start NUMBER Playlist video to start at (default is 1)
124 --playlist-end NUMBER Playlist video to end at (default is last)
125 --playlist-items ITEM_SPEC Playlist video items to download. Specify
126 indices of the videos in the playlist
127 separated by commas like: "--playlist-items
128 1,2,5,8" if you want to download videos
129 indexed 1, 2, 5, 8 in the playlist. You can
130 specify range: "--playlist-items
131 1-3,7,10-13", it will download the videos
132 at index 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13.
133 --match-title REGEX Download only matching titles (regex or
134 caseless sub-string)
135 --reject-title REGEX Skip download for matching titles (regex or
136 caseless sub-string)
137 --max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files
138 --min-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos smaller than
139 SIZE (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
140 --max-filesize SIZE Do not download any videos larger than SIZE
141 (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
142 --date DATE Download only videos uploaded in this date
143 --datebefore DATE Download only videos uploaded on or before
144 this date (i.e. inclusive)
145 --dateafter DATE Download only videos uploaded on or after
146 this date (i.e. inclusive)
147 --min-views COUNT Do not download any videos with less than
148 COUNT views
149 --max-views COUNT Do not download any videos with more than
150 COUNT views
151 --match-filter FILTER Generic video filter. Specify any key (see
152 the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a list of
153 available keys) to match if the key is
154 present, !key to check if the key is not
155 present, key > NUMBER (like "comment_count
156 > 12", also works with >=, <, <=, !=, =) to
157 compare against a number, key = 'LITERAL'
158 (like "uploader = 'Mike Smith'", also works
159 with !=) to match against a string literal
160 and & to require multiple matches. Values
161 which are not known are excluded unless you
162 put a question mark (?) after the operator.
163 For example, to only match videos that have
164 been liked more than 100 times and disliked
165 less than 50 times (or the dislike
166 functionality is not available at the given
167 service), but who also have a description,
168 use --match-filter "like_count > 100 &
169 dislike_count <? 50 & description" .
170 --no-playlist Download only the video, if the URL refers
171 to a video and a playlist.
172 --yes-playlist Download the playlist, if the URL refers to
173 a video and a playlist.
174 --age-limit YEARS Download only videos suitable for the given
175 age
176 --download-archive FILE Download only videos not listed in the
177 archive file. Record the IDs of all
178 downloaded videos in it.
179 --include-ads Download advertisements as well
180 (experimental)
181
182 ## Download Options:
183 -r, --limit-rate RATE Maximum download rate in bytes per second
184 (e.g. 50K or 4.2M)
185 -R, --retries RETRIES Number of retries (default is 10), or
186 "infinite".
187 --fragment-retries RETRIES Number of retries for a fragment (default
188 is 10), or "infinite" (DASH, hlsnative and
189 ISM)
190 --skip-unavailable-fragments Skip unavailable fragments (DASH, hlsnative
191 and ISM)
192 --abort-on-unavailable-fragment Abort downloading when some fragment is not
193 available
194 --keep-fragments Keep downloaded fragments on disk after
195 downloading is finished; fragments are
196 erased by default
197 --buffer-size SIZE Size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16K)
198 (default is 1024)
199 --no-resize-buffer Do not automatically adjust the buffer
200 size. By default, the buffer size is
201 automatically resized from an initial value
202 of SIZE.
203 --http-chunk-size SIZE Size of a chunk for chunk-based HTTP
204 downloading (e.g. 10485760 or 10M) (default
205 is disabled). May be useful for bypassing
206 bandwidth throttling imposed by a webserver
207 (experimental)
208 --playlist-reverse Download playlist videos in reverse order
209 --playlist-random Download playlist videos in random order
210 --xattr-set-filesize Set file xattribute ytdl.filesize with
211 expected file size
212 --hls-prefer-native Use the native HLS downloader instead of
213 ffmpeg
214 --hls-prefer-ffmpeg Use ffmpeg instead of the native HLS
215 downloader
216 --hls-use-mpegts Use the mpegts container for HLS videos,
217 allowing to play the video while
218 downloading (some players may not be able
219 to play it)
220 --external-downloader COMMAND Use the specified external downloader.
221 Currently supports
222 aria2c,avconv,axel,curl,ffmpeg,httpie,wget
223 --external-downloader-args ARGS Give these arguments to the external
224 downloader
225
226 ## Filesystem Options:
227 -a, --batch-file FILE File containing URLs to download ('-' for
228 stdin), one URL per line. Lines starting
229 with '#', ';' or ']' are considered as
230 comments and ignored.
231 --id Use only video ID in file name
232 -o, --output TEMPLATE Output filename template, see the "OUTPUT
233 TEMPLATE" for all the info
234 --autonumber-start NUMBER Specify the start value for %(autonumber)s
235 (default is 1)
236 --restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII
237 characters, and avoid "&" and spaces in
238 filenames
239 -w, --no-overwrites Do not overwrite files
240 -c, --continue Force resume of partially downloaded files.
241 By default, youtube-dl will resume
242 downloads if possible.
243 --no-continue Do not resume partially downloaded files
244 (restart from beginning)
245 --no-part Do not use .part files - write directly
246 into output file
247 --no-mtime Do not use the Last-modified header to set
248 the file modification time
249 --write-description Write video description to a .description
250 file
251 --write-info-json Write video metadata to a .info.json file
252 --write-annotations Write video annotations to a
253 .annotations.xml file
254 --load-info-json FILE JSON file containing the video information
255 (created with the "--write-info-json"
256 option)
257 --cookies FILE File to read cookies from and dump cookie
258 jar in
259 --cache-dir DIR Location in the filesystem where youtube-dl
260 can store some downloaded information
261 permanently. By default
262 $XDG_CACHE_HOME/youtube-dl or
263 ~/.cache/youtube-dl . At the moment, only
264 YouTube player files (for videos with
265 obfuscated signatures) are cached, but that
266 may change.
267 --no-cache-dir Disable filesystem caching
268 --rm-cache-dir Delete all filesystem cache files
269
270 ## Thumbnail images:
271 --write-thumbnail Write thumbnail image to disk
272 --write-all-thumbnails Write all thumbnail image formats to disk
273 --list-thumbnails Simulate and list all available thumbnail
274 formats
275
276 ## Verbosity / Simulation Options:
277 -q, --quiet Activate quiet mode
278 --no-warnings Ignore warnings
279 -s, --simulate Do not download the video and do not write
280 anything to disk
281 --skip-download Do not download the video
282 -g, --get-url Simulate, quiet but print URL
283 -e, --get-title Simulate, quiet but print title
284 --get-id Simulate, quiet but print id
285 --get-thumbnail Simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL
286 --get-description Simulate, quiet but print video description
287 --get-duration Simulate, quiet but print video length
288 --get-filename Simulate, quiet but print output filename
289 --get-format Simulate, quiet but print output format
290 -j, --dump-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information.
291 See the "OUTPUT TEMPLATE" for a description
292 of available keys.
293 -J, --dump-single-json Simulate, quiet but print JSON information
294 for each command-line argument. If the URL
295 refers to a playlist, dump the whole
296 playlist information in a single line.
297 --print-json Be quiet and print the video information as
298 JSON (video is still being downloaded).
299 --newline Output progress bar as new lines
300 --no-progress Do not print progress bar
301 --console-title Display progress in console titlebar
302 -v, --verbose Print various debugging information
303 --dump-pages Print downloaded pages encoded using base64
304 to debug problems (very verbose)
305 --write-pages Write downloaded intermediary pages to
306 files in the current directory to debug
307 problems
308 --print-traffic Display sent and read HTTP traffic
309 -C, --call-home Contact the youtube-dl server for debugging
310 --no-call-home Do NOT contact the youtube-dl server for
311 debugging
312
313 ## Workarounds:
314 --encoding ENCODING Force the specified encoding (experimental)
315 --no-check-certificate Suppress HTTPS certificate validation
316 --prefer-insecure Use an unencrypted connection to retrieve
317 information about the video. (Currently
318 supported only for YouTube)
319 --user-agent UA Specify a custom user agent
320 --referer URL Specify a custom referer, use if the video
321 access is restricted to one domain
322 --add-header FIELD:VALUE Specify a custom HTTP header and its value,
323 separated by a colon ':'. You can use this
324 option multiple times
325 --bidi-workaround Work around terminals that lack
326 bidirectional text support. Requires bidiv
327 or fribidi executable in PATH
328 --sleep-interval SECONDS Number of seconds to sleep before each
329 download when used alone or a lower bound
330 of a range for randomized sleep before each
331 download (minimum possible number of
332 seconds to sleep) when used along with
333 --max-sleep-interval.
334 --max-sleep-interval SECONDS Upper bound of a range for randomized sleep
335 before each download (maximum possible
336 number of seconds to sleep). Must only be
337 used along with --min-sleep-interval.
338
339 ## Video Format Options:
340 -f, --format FORMAT Video format code, see the "FORMAT
341 SELECTION" for all the info
342 --all-formats Download all available video formats
343 --prefer-free-formats Prefer free video formats unless a specific
344 one is requested
345 -F, --list-formats List all available formats of requested
346 videos
347 --youtube-skip-dash-manifest Do not download the DASH manifests and
348 related data on YouTube videos
349 --merge-output-format FORMAT If a merge is required (e.g.
350 bestvideo+bestaudio), output to given
351 container format. One of mkv, mp4, ogg,
352 webm, flv. Ignored if no merge is required
353
354 ## Subtitle Options:
355 --write-sub Write subtitle file
356 --write-auto-sub Write automatically generated subtitle file
357 (YouTube only)
358 --all-subs Download all the available subtitles of the
359 video
360 --list-subs List all available subtitles for the video
361 --sub-format FORMAT Subtitle format, accepts formats
362 preference, for example: "srt" or
363 "ass/srt/best"
364 --sub-lang LANGS Languages of the subtitles to download
365 (optional) separated by commas, use --list-
366 subs for available language tags
367
368 ## Authentication Options:
369 -u, --username USERNAME Login with this account ID
370 -p, --password PASSWORD Account password. If this option is left
371 out, youtube-dl will ask interactively.
372 -2, --twofactor TWOFACTOR Two-factor authentication code
373 -n, --netrc Use .netrc authentication data
374 --video-password PASSWORD Video password (vimeo, smotri, youku)
375
376 ## Adobe Pass Options:
377 --ap-mso MSO Adobe Pass multiple-system operator (TV
378 provider) identifier, use --ap-list-mso for
379 a list of available MSOs
380 --ap-username USERNAME Multiple-system operator account login
381 --ap-password PASSWORD Multiple-system operator account password.
382 If this option is left out, youtube-dl will
383 ask interactively.
384 --ap-list-mso List all supported multiple-system
385 operators
386
387 ## Post-processing Options:
388 -x, --extract-audio Convert video files to audio-only files
389 (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or
390 avprobe)
391 --audio-format FORMAT Specify audio format: "best", "aac",
392 "flac", "mp3", "m4a", "opus", "vorbis", or
393 "wav"; "best" by default; No effect without
394 -x
395 --audio-quality QUALITY Specify ffmpeg/avconv audio quality, insert
396 a value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse)
397 for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K
398 (default 5)
399 --recode-video FORMAT Encode the video to another format if
400 necessary (currently supported:
401 mp4|flv|ogg|webm|mkv|avi)
402 --postprocessor-args ARGS Give these arguments to the postprocessor
403 -k, --keep-video Keep the video file on disk after the post-
404 processing; the video is erased by default
405 --no-post-overwrites Do not overwrite post-processed files; the
406 post-processed files are overwritten by
407 default
408 --embed-subs Embed subtitles in the video (only for mp4,
409 webm and mkv videos)
410 --embed-thumbnail Embed thumbnail in the audio as cover art
411 --add-metadata Write metadata to the video file
412 --metadata-from-title FORMAT Parse additional metadata like song title /
413 artist from the video title. The format
414 syntax is the same as --output. Regular
415 expression with named capture groups may
416 also be used. The parsed parameters replace
417 existing values. Example: --metadata-from-
418 title "%(artist)s - %(title)s" matches a
419 title like "Coldplay - Paradise". Example
420 (regex): --metadata-from-title
421 "(?P<artist>.+?) - (?P<title>.+)"
422 --xattrs Write metadata to the video file's xattrs
423 (using dublin core and xdg standards)
424 --fixup POLICY Automatically correct known faults of the
425 file. One of never (do nothing), warn (only
426 emit a warning), detect_or_warn (the
427 default; fix file if we can, warn
428 otherwise)
429 --prefer-avconv Prefer avconv over ffmpeg for running the
430 postprocessors
431 --prefer-ffmpeg Prefer ffmpeg over avconv for running the
432 postprocessors (default)
433 --ffmpeg-location PATH Location of the ffmpeg/avconv binary;
434 either the path to the binary or its
435 containing directory.
436 --exec CMD Execute a command on the file after
437 downloading and post-processing, similar to
438 find's -exec syntax. Example: --exec 'adb
439 push {} /sdcard/Music/ && rm {}'
440 --convert-subs FORMAT Convert the subtitles to other format
441 (currently supported: srt|ass|vtt|lrc)
442
443 # CONFIGURATION
444
445 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.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.
446
447 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:
448 ```
449 # Lines starting with # are comments
450
451 # Always extract audio
452 -x
453
454 # Do not copy the mtime
455 --no-mtime
456
457 # Use this proxy
458 --proxy 127.0.0.1:3128
459
460 # Save all videos under Movies directory in your home directory
461 -o ~/Movies/%(title)s.%(ext)s
462 ```
463
464 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`.
465
466 You can use `--ignore-config` if you want to disable the configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.
467
468 You can also use `--config-location` if you want to use custom configuration file for a particular youtube-dl run.
469
470 ### Authentication with `.netrc` file
471
472 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](https://stackoverflow.com/tags/.netrc/info) 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:
473 ```
474 touch $HOME/.netrc
475 chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc
476 ```
477 After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following format, where *extractor* is the name of the extractor in lowercase:
478 ```
479 machine <extractor> login <login> password <password>
480 ```
481 For example:
482 ```
483 machine youtube login myaccount@gmail.com password my_youtube_password
484 machine twitch login my_twitch_account_name password my_twitch_password
485 ```
486 To activate authentication with the `.netrc` file you should pass `--netrc` to youtube-dl or place it in the [configuration file](#configuration).
487
488 On Windows you may also need to setup the `%HOME%` environment variable manually. For example:
489 ```
490 set HOME=%USERPROFILE%
491 ```
492
493 # OUTPUT TEMPLATE
494
495 The `-o` option allows users to indicate a template for the output file names.
496
497 **tl;dr:** [navigate me to examples](#output-template-examples).
498
499 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](https://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#string-formatting). For example, `%(NAME)s` or `%(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:
500
501 - `id` (string): Video identifier
502 - `title` (string): Video title
503 - `url` (string): Video URL
504 - `ext` (string): Video filename extension
505 - `alt_title` (string): A secondary title of the video
506 - `display_id` (string): An alternative identifier for the video
507 - `uploader` (string): Full name of the video uploader
508 - `license` (string): License name the video is licensed under
509 - `creator` (string): The creator of the video
510 - `release_date` (string): The date (YYYYMMDD) when the video was released
511 - `timestamp` (numeric): UNIX timestamp of the moment the video became available
512 - `upload_date` (string): Video upload date (YYYYMMDD)
513 - `uploader_id` (string): Nickname or id of the video uploader
514 - `channel` (string): Full name of the channel the video is uploaded on
515 - `channel_id` (string): Id of the channel
516 - `location` (string): Physical location where the video was filmed
517 - `duration` (numeric): Length of the video in seconds
518 - `view_count` (numeric): How many users have watched the video on the platform
519 - `like_count` (numeric): Number of positive ratings of the video
520 - `dislike_count` (numeric): Number of negative ratings of the video
521 - `repost_count` (numeric): Number of reposts of the video
522 - `average_rating` (numeric): Average rating give by users, the scale used depends on the webpage
523 - `comment_count` (numeric): Number of comments on the video
524 - `age_limit` (numeric): Age restriction for the video (years)
525 - `is_live` (boolean): Whether this video is a live stream or a fixed-length video
526 - `start_time` (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should start, as specified in the URL
527 - `end_time` (numeric): Time in seconds where the reproduction should end, as specified in the URL
528 - `format` (string): A human-readable description of the format
529 - `format_id` (string): Format code specified by `--format`
530 - `format_note` (string): Additional info about the format
531 - `width` (numeric): Width of the video
532 - `height` (numeric): Height of the video
533 - `resolution` (string): Textual description of width and height
534 - `tbr` (numeric): Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
535 - `abr` (numeric): Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
536 - `acodec` (string): Name of the audio codec in use
537 - `asr` (numeric): Audio sampling rate in Hertz
538 - `vbr` (numeric): Average video bitrate in KBit/s
539 - `fps` (numeric): Frame rate
540 - `vcodec` (string): Name of the video codec in use
541 - `container` (string): Name of the container format
542 - `filesize` (numeric): The number of bytes, if known in advance
543 - `filesize_approx` (numeric): An estimate for the number of bytes
544 - `protocol` (string): The protocol that will be used for the actual download
545 - `extractor` (string): Name of the extractor
546 - `extractor_key` (string): Key name of the extractor
547 - `epoch` (numeric): Unix epoch when creating the file
548 - `autonumber` (numeric): Number that will be increased with each download, starting at `--autonumber-start`
549 - `playlist` (string): Name or id of the playlist that contains the video
550 - `playlist_index` (numeric): Index of the video in the playlist padded with leading zeros according to the total length of the playlist
551 - `playlist_id` (string): Playlist identifier
552 - `playlist_title` (string): Playlist title
553 - `playlist_uploader` (string): Full name of the playlist uploader
554 - `playlist_uploader_id` (string): Nickname or id of the playlist uploader
555
556 Available for the video that belongs to some logical chapter or section:
557
558 - `chapter` (string): Name or title of the chapter the video belongs to
559 - `chapter_number` (numeric): Number of the chapter the video belongs to
560 - `chapter_id` (string): Id of the chapter the video belongs to
561
562 Available for the video that is an episode of some series or programme:
563
564 - `series` (string): Title of the series or programme the video episode belongs to
565 - `season` (string): Title of the season the video episode belongs to
566 - `season_number` (numeric): Number of the season the video episode belongs to
567 - `season_id` (string): Id of the season the video episode belongs to
568 - `episode` (string): Title of the video episode
569 - `episode_number` (numeric): Number of the video episode within a season
570 - `episode_id` (string): Id of the video episode
571
572 Available for the media that is a track or a part of a music album:
573
574 - `track` (string): Title of the track
575 - `track_number` (numeric): Number of the track within an album or a disc
576 - `track_id` (string): Id of the track
577 - `artist` (string): Artist(s) of the track
578 - `genre` (string): Genre(s) of the track
579 - `album` (string): Title of the album the track belongs to
580 - `album_type` (string): Type of the album
581 - `album_artist` (string): List of all artists appeared on the album
582 - `disc_number` (numeric): Number of the disc or other physical medium the track belongs to
583 - `release_year` (numeric): Year (YYYY) when the album was released
584
585 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`.
586
587 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.
588
589 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`.
590
591 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.
592
593 To use percent literals in an output template use `%%`. To output to stdout use `-o -`.
594
595 The current default template is `%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s`.
596
597 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-filenames` flag to get a shorter title:
598
599 #### Output template and Windows batch files
600
601 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"`.
602
603 #### Output template examples
604
605 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of single.
606
607 ```bash
608 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc
609 youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.mp4 # All kinds of weird characters
610
611 $ youtube-dl --get-filename -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
612 youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4 # A simple file name
613
614 # Download YouTube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in a playlist
615 $ youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re
616
617 # Download all playlists of YouTube channel/user keeping each playlist in separate directory:
618 $ youtube-dl -o '%(uploader)s/%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/playlists
619
620 # Download Udemy course keeping each chapter in separate directory under MyVideos directory in your home
621 $ 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/
622
623 # Download entire series season keeping each series and each season in separate directory under C:/MyVideos
624 $ 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
625
626 # Stream the video being downloaded to stdout
627 $ youtube-dl -o - BaW_jenozKc
628 ```
629
630 # FORMAT SELECTION
631
632 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**.
633
634 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.
635
636 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.
637
638 **tl;dr:** [navigate me to examples](#format-selection-examples).
639
640 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.
641
642 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.
643
644 You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats:
645
646 - `best`: Select the best quality format represented by a single file with video and audio.
647 - `worst`: Select the worst quality format represented by a single file with video and audio.
648 - `bestvideo`: Select the best quality video-only format (e.g. DASH video). May not be available.
649 - `worstvideo`: Select the worst quality video-only format. May not be available.
650 - `bestaudio`: Select the best quality audio only-format. May not be available.
651 - `worstaudio`: Select the worst quality audio only-format. May not be available.
652
653 For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use `-f worstvideo`.
654
655 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.
656
657 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`.
658
659 You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in brackets, as in `-f "best[height=720]"` (or `-f "[filesize>10M]"`).
660
661 The following numeric meta fields can be used with comparisons `<`, `<=`, `>`, `>=`, `=` (equals), `!=` (not equals):
662
663 - `filesize`: The number of bytes, if known in advance
664 - `width`: Width of the video, if known
665 - `height`: Height of the video, if known
666 - `tbr`: Average bitrate of audio and video in KBit/s
667 - `abr`: Average audio bitrate in KBit/s
668 - `vbr`: Average video bitrate in KBit/s
669 - `asr`: Audio sampling rate in Hertz
670 - `fps`: Frame rate
671
672 Also filtering work for comparisons `=` (equals), `^=` (starts with), `$=` (ends with), `*=` (contains) and following string meta fields:
673
674 - `ext`: File extension
675 - `acodec`: Name of the audio codec in use
676 - `vcodec`: Name of the video codec in use
677 - `container`: Name of the container format
678 - `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`)
679 - `format_id`: A short description of the format
680
681 Any string comparison may be prefixed with negation `!` in order to produce an opposite comparison, e.g. `!*=` (does not contain).
682
683 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.
684
685 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.
686
687 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.
688
689 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]'`.
690
691 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](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/5447), [#5456](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/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.
692
693 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](#configuration) in order not to type it every time you run youtube-dl.
694
695 #### Format selection examples
696
697 Note that on Windows you may need to use double quotes instead of single.
698
699 ```bash
700 # Download best mp4 format available or any other best if no mp4 available
701 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best'
702
703 # Download best format available but no better than 480p
704 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo[height<=480]+bestaudio/best[height<=480]'
705
706 # Download best video only format but no bigger than 50 MB
707 $ youtube-dl -f 'best[filesize<50M]'
708
709 # Download best format available via direct link over HTTP/HTTPS protocol
710 $ youtube-dl -f '(bestvideo+bestaudio/best)[protocol^=http]'
711
712 # Download the best video format and the best audio format without merging them
713 $ youtube-dl -f 'bestvideo,bestaudio' -o '%(title)s.f%(format_id)s.%(ext)s'
714 ```
715 Note that in the last example, an output template is recommended as bestvideo and bestaudio may have the same file name.
716
717
718 # VIDEO SELECTION
719
720 Videos can be filtered by their upload date using the options `--date`, `--datebefore` or `--dateafter`. They accept dates in two formats:
721
722 - Absolute dates: Dates in the format `YYYYMMDD`.
723 - Relative dates: Dates in the format `(now|today)[+-][0-9](day|week|month|year)(s)?`
724
725 Examples:
726
727 ```bash
728 # Download only the videos uploaded in the last 6 months
729 $ youtube-dl --dateafter now-6months
730
731 # Download only the videos uploaded on January 1, 1970
732 $ youtube-dl --date 19700101
733
734 $ # Download only the videos uploaded in the 200x decade
735 $ youtube-dl --dateafter 20000101 --datebefore 20091231
736 ```
737
738 # FAQ
739
740 ### How do I update youtube-dl?
741
742 If you've followed [our manual installation instructions](https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html), you can simply run `youtube-dl -U` (or, on Linux, `sudo youtube-dl -U`).
743
744 If you have used pip, a simple `sudo pip install -U youtube-dl` is sufficient to update.
745
746 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.
747
748 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
749
750 sudo apt-get remove -y youtube-dl
751
752 Afterwards, simply follow [our manual installation instructions](https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html):
753
754 ```
755 sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
756 sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
757 hash -r
758 ```
759
760 Again, from then on you'll be able to update with `sudo youtube-dl -U`.
761
762 ### youtube-dl is extremely slow to start on Windows
763
764 Add a file exclusion for `youtube-dl.exe` in Windows Defender settings.
765
766 ### I'm getting an error `Unable to extract OpenGraph title` on YouTube playlists
767
768 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.
769
770 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](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/youtube-dl/+filebug) to the [Ubuntu packaging people](mailto:ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com?subject=outdated%20version%20of%20youtube-dl) - all they have to do is update the package to a somewhat recent version. See above for a way to update.
771
772 ### I'm getting an error when trying to use output template: `error: using output template conflicts with using title, video ID or auto number`
773
774 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.
775
776 ### Do I always have to pass `-citw`?
777
778 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](https://yt-dl.org/bug)). 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`.
779
780 ### Can you please put the `-b` option back?
781
782 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 `-b` option. 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 `-f` option and youtube-dl will try to download it.
783
784 ### I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's this?
785
786 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](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/154), 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.
787
788 ### Do I need any other programs?
789
790 youtube-dl works fine on its own on most sites. However, if you want to convert video/audio, you'll need [avconv](https://libav.org/) or [ffmpeg](https://www.ffmpeg.org/). 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.
791
792 Videos or video formats streamed via RTMP protocol can only be downloaded when [rtmpdump](https://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/) is installed. Downloading MMS and RTSP videos requires either [mplayer](https://mplayerhq.hu/) or [mpv](https://mpv.io/) to be installed.
793
794 ### I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?
795
796 Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as [mpv](https://mpv.io/), [vlc](https://www.videolan.org/) or [mplayer](https://www.mplayerhq.hu/).
797
798 ### I extracted a video URL with `-g`, but it does not play on another machine / in my web browser.
799
800 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`.
801
802 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.
803
804 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.
805
806 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.
807
808 ### ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info
809
810 YouTube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See [above](#how-do-i-update-youtube-dl) for how to update youtube-dl.
811
812 ### ERROR: unable to download video
813
814 YouTube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. See [above](#how-do-i-update-youtube-dl) for how to update youtube-dl.
815
816 ### 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`
817
818 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).
819
820 For example if your URL is https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc you should end up with following command:
821
822 ```youtube-dl 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc'```
823
824 or
825
826 ```youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4\&v=BaW_jenozKc```
827
828 For Windows you have to use the double quotes:
829
830 ```youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=BaW_jenozKc"```
831
832 ### ExtractorError: Could not find JS function u'OF'
833
834 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](#how-do-i-update-youtube-dl) for how to update youtube-dl.
835
836 ### HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests or 402: Payment Required
837
838 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](#how-do-i-pass-cookies-to-youtube-dl) 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`](#network-options). Also you may need to pass a `User-Agent` HTTP header of your browser with [`--user-agent`](#workarounds).
839
840 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 [`--proxy` or `--source-address` options](#network-options) to select another IP address.
841
842 ### SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character
843
844 The error
845
846 File "youtube-dl", line 2
847 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x93' ...
848
849 means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to Python 2.6 or 2.7.
850
851 ### What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?
852
853 Since June 2012 ([#342](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/342)) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile, simply unzip it (might need renaming to `youtube-dl.zip` first 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__.py` file. To recompile the executable, run `make youtube-dl`.
854
855 ### The exe throws an error due to missing `MSVCR100.dll`
856
857 To run the exe you need to install first the [Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86)](https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=5555).
858
859 ### On Windows, how should I set up ffmpeg and youtube-dl? Where should I put the exe files?
860
861 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.
862
863 To make a different directory work - either for ffmpeg, or for youtube-dl, or for both - simply create the directory (say, `C:\bin`, or `C:\Users\<User name>\bin`), put all the executables directly in there, and then [set your PATH environment variable](https://www.java.com/en/download/help/path.xml) to include that directory.
864
865 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.
866
867 ### How do I put downloads into a specific folder?
868
869 Use the `-o` to specify an [output template](#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](#configuration).
870
871 ### How do I download a video starting with a `-`?
872
873 Either prepend `https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=` or separate the ID from the options with `--`:
874
875 youtube-dl -- -wNyEUrxzFU
876 youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wNyEUrxzFU"
877
878 ### How do I pass cookies to youtube-dl?
879
880 Use the `--cookies` option, for example `--cookies /path/to/cookies/file.txt`.
881
882 In order to extract cookies from browser use any conforming browser extension for exporting cookies. For example, [cookies.txt](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cookiestxt/njabckikapfpffapmjgojcnbfjonfjfg) (for Chrome) or [cookies.txt](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookies-txt/) (for Firefox).
883
884 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline) 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, macOS, etc.). `HTTP Error 400: Bad Request` when using `--cookies` is a good sign of invalid newline format.
885
886 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA) some websites require you to solve in particular cases in order to get access (e.g. YouTube, CloudFlare).
887
888 ### How do I stream directly to media player?
889
890 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](https://www.videolan.org/) can be achieved with:
891
892 youtube-dl -o - "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj" | vlc -
893
894 ### How do I download only new videos from a playlist?
895
896 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.
897
898 For example, at first,
899
900 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
901
902 will download the complete `PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re` playlist and create a file `archive.txt`. Each subsequent run will only download new videos if any:
903
904 youtube-dl --download-archive archive.txt "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiyx1dc3P2JR9N8gQaQN_BCvlSlap7re"
905
906 ### Should I add `--hls-prefer-native` into my config?
907
908 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.
909
910 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.
911
912 In particular, the generic extractor (used when your website is not in the [list of supported sites by youtube-dl](https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html) cannot mandate one specific downloader.
913
914 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](https://yt-dl.org/bug) or a pull request which details why the native or the ffmpeg HLS downloader is a better choice for your use case.
915
916 ### Can you add support for this anime video site, or site which shows current movies for free?
917
918 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.
919
920 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.
921
922 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.
923
924 ### How can I speed up work on my issue?
925
926 (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:
927
928 First of all, please do report the issue [at our issue tracker](https://yt-dl.org/bugs). 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.
929
930 Please read the [bug reporting instructions](#bugs) 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.
931
932 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).
933
934 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`.
935
936 ### How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
937
938 For one, have a look at the [list of supported sites](docs/supportedsites.md). 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.
939
940 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.
941
942 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.
943
944 # Why do I need to go through that much red tape when filing bugs?
945
946 Before we had the issue template, despite our extensive [bug reporting instructions](#bugs), 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.
947
948 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.
949
950 # DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
951
952 Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can [download the builds](https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html) or get them from their distribution.
953
954 To run youtube-dl as a developer, you don't need to build anything either. Simply execute
955
956 python -m youtube_dl
957
958 To run the test, simply invoke your favorite test runner, or execute a test file directly; any of the following work:
959
960 python -m unittest discover
961 python test/test_download.py
962 nosetests
963
964 See item 6 of [new extractor tutorial](#adding-support-for-a-new-site) for how to run extractor specific test cases.
965
966 If you want to create a build of youtube-dl yourself, you'll need
967
968 * python
969 * make (only GNU make is supported)
970 * pandoc
971 * zip
972 * nosetests
973
974 ### Adding support for a new site
975
976 If you want to add support for a new site, first of all **make sure** this site is **not dedicated to [copyright infringement](README.md#can-you-add-support-for-this-anime-video-site-or-site-which-shows-current-movies-for-free)**. youtube-dl does **not support** such sites thus pull requests adding support for them **will be rejected**.
977
978 After you have ensured this site is distributing its content legally, you can follow this quick list (assuming your service is called `yourextractor`):
979
980 1. [Fork this repository](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/fork)
981 2. Check out the source code with:
982
983 git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/youtube-dl.git
984
985 3. Start a new git branch with
986
987 cd youtube-dl
988 git checkout -b yourextractor
989
990 4. Start with this simple template and save it to `youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py`:
991
992 ```python
993 # coding: utf-8
994 from __future__ import unicode_literals
995
996 from .common import InfoExtractor
997
998
999 class YourExtractorIE(InfoExtractor):
1000 _VALID_URL = r'https?://(?:www\.)?yourextractor\.com/watch/(?P<id>[0-9]+)'
1001 _TEST = {
1002 'url': 'https://yourextractor.com/watch/42',
1003 'md5': 'TODO: md5 sum of the first 10241 bytes of the video file (use --test)',
1004 'info_dict': {
1005 'id': '42',
1006 'ext': 'mp4',
1007 'title': 'Video title goes here',
1008 'thumbnail': r're:^https?://.*\.jpg$',
1009 # TODO more properties, either as:
1010 # * A value
1011 # * MD5 checksum; start the string with md5:
1012 # * A regular expression; start the string with re:
1013 # * Any Python type (for example int or float)
1014 }
1015 }
1016
1017 def _real_extract(self, url):
1018 video_id = self._match_id(url)
1019 webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)
1020
1021 # TODO more code goes here, for example ...
1022 title = self._html_search_regex(r'<h1>(.+?)</h1>', webpage, 'title')
1023
1024 return {
1025 'id': video_id,
1026 'title': title,
1027 'description': self._og_search_description(webpage),
1028 'uploader': self._search_regex(r'<div[^>]+id="uploader"[^>]*>([^<]+)<', webpage, 'uploader', fatal=False),
1029 # TODO more properties (see youtube_dl/extractor/common.py)
1030 }
1031 ```
1032 5. Add an import in [`youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py`](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py).
1033 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.
1034 7. Have a look at [`youtube_dl/extractor/common.py`](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py) for possible helper methods and a [detailed description of what your extractor should and may return](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L94-L303). Add tests and code for as many as you want.
1035 8. Make sure your code follows [youtube-dl coding conventions](#youtube-dl-coding-conventions) and check the code with [flake8](https://flake8.pycqa.org/en/latest/index.html#quickstart):
1036
1037 $ flake8 youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
1038
1039 9. Make sure your code works under all [Python](https://www.python.org/) versions claimed supported by youtube-dl, namely 2.6, 2.7, and 3.2+.
1040 10. When the tests pass, [add](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-add) the new files and [commit](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit) them and [push](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-push) the result, like this:
1041
1042 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/extractors.py
1043 $ git add youtube_dl/extractor/yourextractor.py
1044 $ git commit -m '[yourextractor] Add new extractor'
1045 $ git push origin yourextractor
1046
1047 11. Finally, [create a pull request](https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-pull-request). We'll then review and merge it.
1048
1049 In any case, thank you very much for your contributions!
1050
1051 ## youtube-dl coding conventions
1052
1053 This section introduces a guide lines for writing idiomatic, robust and future-proof extractor code.
1054
1055 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.
1056
1057 ### Mandatory and optional metafields
1058
1059 For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor extracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by an [information dictionary](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L94-L303) or simply *info dict*. Only the following meta fields in the *info dict* are considered mandatory for a successful extraction process by youtube-dl:
1060
1061 - `id` (media identifier)
1062 - `title` (media title)
1063 - `url` (media download URL) or `formats`
1064
1065 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.
1066
1067 [Any field](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/7f41a598b3fba1bcab2817de64a08941200aa3c8/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L188-L303) 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.
1068
1069 #### Example
1070
1071 Say you have some source dictionary `meta` that you've fetched as JSON with HTTP request and it has a key `summary`:
1072
1073 ```python
1074 meta = self._download_json(url, video_id)
1075 ```
1076
1077 Assume at this point `meta`'s layout is:
1078
1079 ```python
1080 {
1081 ...
1082 "summary": "some fancy summary text",
1083 ...
1084 }
1085 ```
1086
1087 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:
1088
1089 ```python
1090 description = meta.get('summary') # correct
1091 ```
1092
1093 and not like:
1094
1095 ```python
1096 description = meta['summary'] # incorrect
1097 ```
1098
1099 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).
1100
1101 Similarly, you should pass `fatal=False` when extracting optional data from a webpage with `_search_regex`, `_html_search_regex` or similar methods, for instance:
1102
1103 ```python
1104 description = self._search_regex(
1105 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1106 webpage, 'description', fatal=False)
1107 ```
1108
1109 With `fatal` set to `False` if `_search_regex` fails to extract `description` it will emit a warning and continue extraction.
1110
1111 You can also pass `default=<some fallback value>`, for example:
1112
1113 ```python
1114 description = self._search_regex(
1115 r'<span[^>]+id="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)<',
1116 webpage, 'description', default=None)
1117 ```
1118
1119 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.
1120
1121 ### Provide fallbacks
1122
1123 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.
1124
1125 #### Example
1126
1127 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:
1128
1129 ```python
1130 title = meta['title']
1131 ```
1132
1133 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.
1134
1135 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:
1136
1137 ```python
1138 title = meta.get('title') or self._og_search_title(webpage)
1139 ```
1140
1141 This code will try to extract from `meta` first and if it fails it will try extracting `og:title` from a `webpage`.
1142
1143 ### Regular expressions
1144
1145 #### Don't capture groups you don't use
1146
1147 Capturing group must be an indication that it's used somewhere in the code. Any group that is not used must be non capturing.
1148
1149 ##### Example
1150
1151 Don't capture id attribute name here since you can't use it for anything anyway.
1152
1153 Correct:
1154
1155 ```python
1156 r'(?:id|ID)=(?P<id>\d+)'
1157 ```
1158
1159 Incorrect:
1160 ```python
1161 r'(id|ID)=(?P<id>\d+)'
1162 ```
1163
1164
1165 #### Make regular expressions relaxed and flexible
1166
1167 When using regular expressions try to write them fuzzy, relaxed and flexible, skipping insignificant parts that are more likely to change, allowing both single and double quotes for quoted values and so on.
1168
1169 ##### Example
1170
1171 Say you need to extract `title` from the following HTML code:
1172
1173 ```html
1174 <span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">some fancy title</span>
1175 ```
1176
1177 The code for that task should look similar to:
1178
1179 ```python
1180 title = self._search_regex(
1181 r'<span[^>]+class="title"[^>]*>([^<]+)', webpage, 'title')
1182 ```
1183
1184 Or even better:
1185
1186 ```python
1187 title = self._search_regex(
1188 r'<span[^>]+class=(["\'])title\1[^>]*>(?P<title>[^<]+)',
1189 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1190 ```
1191
1192 Note how you tolerate potential changes in the `style` attribute's value or switch from using double quotes to single for `class` attribute:
1193
1194 The code definitely should not look like:
1195
1196 ```python
1197 title = self._search_regex(
1198 r'<span style="position: absolute; left: 910px; width: 90px; float: right; z-index: 9999;" class="title">(.*?)</span>',
1199 webpage, 'title', group='title')
1200 ```
1201
1202 ### Long lines policy
1203
1204 There is a soft limit to keep lines of code under 80 characters long. This means it should be respected if possible and if it does not make readability and code maintenance worse.
1205
1206 For example, you should **never** split long string literals like URLs or some other often copied entities over multiple lines to fit this limit:
1207
1208 Correct:
1209
1210 ```python
1211 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZTN594JQw&list=PLMYEtVRpaqY00V9W81Cwmzp6N6vZqfUKD4'
1212 ```
1213
1214 Incorrect:
1215
1216 ```python
1217 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZTN594JQw&list='
1218 'PLMYEtVRpaqY00V9W81Cwmzp6N6vZqfUKD4'
1219 ```
1220
1221 ### Inline values
1222
1223 Extracting variables is acceptable for reducing code duplication and improving readability of complex expressions. However, you should avoid extracting variables used only once and moving them to opposite parts of the extractor file, which makes reading the linear flow difficult.
1224
1225 #### Example
1226
1227 Correct:
1228
1229 ```python
1230 title = self._html_search_regex(r'<title>([^<]+)</title>', webpage, 'title')
1231 ```
1232
1233 Incorrect:
1234
1235 ```python
1236 TITLE_RE = r'<title>([^<]+)</title>'
1237 # ...some lines of code...
1238 title = self._html_search_regex(TITLE_RE, webpage, 'title')
1239 ```
1240
1241 ### Collapse fallbacks
1242
1243 Multiple fallback values can quickly become unwieldy. Collapse multiple fallback values into a single expression via a list of patterns.
1244
1245 #### Example
1246
1247 Good:
1248
1249 ```python
1250 description = self._html_search_meta(
1251 ['og:description', 'description', 'twitter:description'],
1252 webpage, 'description', default=None)
1253 ```
1254
1255 Unwieldy:
1256
1257 ```python
1258 description = (
1259 self._og_search_description(webpage, default=None)
1260 or self._html_search_meta('description', webpage, default=None)
1261 or self._html_search_meta('twitter:description', webpage, default=None))
1262 ```
1263
1264 Methods supporting list of patterns are: `_search_regex`, `_html_search_regex`, `_og_search_property`, `_html_search_meta`.
1265
1266 ### Trailing parentheses
1267
1268 Always move trailing parentheses after the last argument.
1269
1270 #### Example
1271
1272 Correct:
1273
1274 ```python
1275 lambda x: x['ResultSet']['Result'][0]['VideoUrlSet']['VideoUrl'],
1276 list)
1277 ```
1278
1279 Incorrect:
1280
1281 ```python
1282 lambda x: x['ResultSet']['Result'][0]['VideoUrlSet']['VideoUrl'],
1283 list,
1284 )
1285 ```
1286
1287 ### Use convenience conversion and parsing functions
1288
1289 Wrap all extracted numeric data into safe functions from [`youtube_dl/utils.py`](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/utils.py): `int_or_none`, `float_or_none`. Use them for string to number conversions as well.
1290
1291 Use `url_or_none` for safe URL processing.
1292
1293 Use `try_get` for safe metadata extraction from parsed JSON.
1294
1295 Use `unified_strdate` for uniform `upload_date` or any `YYYYMMDD` meta field extraction, `unified_timestamp` for uniform `timestamp` extraction, `parse_filesize` for `filesize` extraction, `parse_count` for count meta fields extraction, `parse_resolution`, `parse_duration` for `duration` extraction, `parse_age_limit` for `age_limit` extraction.
1296
1297 Explore [`youtube_dl/utils.py`](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/utils.py) for more useful convenience functions.
1298
1299 #### More examples
1300
1301 ##### Safely extract optional description from parsed JSON
1302 ```python
1303 description = try_get(response, lambda x: x['result']['video'][0]['summary'], compat_str)
1304 ```
1305
1306 ##### Safely extract more optional metadata
1307 ```python
1308 video = try_get(response, lambda x: x['result']['video'][0], dict) or {}
1309 description = video.get('summary')
1310 duration = float_or_none(video.get('durationMs'), scale=1000)
1311 view_count = int_or_none(video.get('views'))
1312 ```
1313
1314 # EMBEDDING YOUTUBE-DL
1315
1316 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](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/new).
1317
1318 From a Python program, you can embed youtube-dl in a more powerful fashion, like this:
1319
1320 ```python
1321 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1322 import youtube_dl
1323
1324 ydl_opts = {}
1325 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1326 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1327 ```
1328
1329 Most likely, you'll want to use various options. For a list of options available, have a look at [`youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py`](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/3e4cedf9e8cd3157df2457df7274d0c842421945/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py#L137-L312). For a start, if you want to intercept youtube-dl's output, set a `logger` object.
1330
1331 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:
1332
1333 ```python
1334 from __future__ import unicode_literals
1335 import youtube_dl
1336
1337
1338 class MyLogger(object):
1339 def debug(self, msg):
1340 pass
1341
1342 def warning(self, msg):
1343 pass
1344
1345 def error(self, msg):
1346 print(msg)
1347
1348
1349 def my_hook(d):
1350 if d['status'] == 'finished':
1351 print('Done downloading, now converting ...')
1352
1353
1354 ydl_opts = {
1355 'format': 'bestaudio/best',
1356 'postprocessors': [{
1357 'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
1358 'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
1359 'preferredquality': '192',
1360 }],
1361 'logger': MyLogger(),
1362 'progress_hooks': [my_hook],
1363 }
1364 with youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl:
1365 ydl.download(['https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc'])
1366 ```
1367
1368 # BUGS
1369
1370 Bugs and suggestions should be reported at: <https://github.com/ytdl-org/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](irc://chat.freenode.net/#youtube-dl) on freenode ([webchat](https://webchat.freenode.net/?randomnick=1&channels=youtube-dl)).
1371
1372 **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:
1373 ```
1374 $ youtube-dl -v <your command line>
1375 [debug] System config: []
1376 [debug] User config: []
1377 [debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
1378 [debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
1379 [debug] youtube-dl version 2015.12.06
1380 [debug] Git HEAD: 135392e
1381 [debug] Python version 2.6.6 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
1382 [debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
1383 [debug] Proxy map: {}
1384 ...
1385 ```
1386 **Do not post screenshots of verbose logs; only plain text is acceptable.**
1387
1388 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.
1389
1390 Please re-read your issue once again to avoid a couple of common mistakes (you can and should use this as a checklist):
1391
1392 ### Is the description of the issue itself sufficient?
1393
1394 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.
1395
1396 So please elaborate on what feature you are requesting, or what bug you want to be fixed. Make sure that it's obvious
1397
1398 - What the problem is
1399 - How it could be fixed
1400 - How your proposed solution would look like
1401
1402 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.
1403
1404 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.
1405
1406 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](https://gist.github.com/).
1407
1408 **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.
1409
1410 ### Are you using the latest version?
1411
1412 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.
1413
1414 ### Is the issue already documented?
1415
1416 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](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/search?type=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.
1417
1418 ### Why are existing options not enough?
1419
1420 Before requesting a new feature, please have a quick peek at [the list of supported options](https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/README.md#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.
1421
1422 ### Is there enough context in your bug report?
1423
1424 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).
1425
1426 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.
1427
1428 ### Does the issue involve one problem, and one problem only?
1429
1430 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.
1431
1432 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.
1433
1434 ### Is anyone going to need the feature?
1435
1436 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.
1437
1438 ### Is your question about youtube-dl?
1439
1440 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.
1441
1442 # COPYRIGHT
1443
1444 youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.
1445
1446 This README file was originally written by [Daniel Bolton](https://github.com/dbbolton) and is likewise released into the public domain.
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