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% YOUTUBE-DL(1)

NAME

youtube-dl

SYNOPSIS

youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]

DESCRIPTION

youtube-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.x (x being at least 6), and it is not platform specific. It should work in your Unix box, in Windows or in Mac OS X. It is released to the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.

OPTIONS

-h, --help               print this help text and exit
--version                print program version and exit
-U, --update             update this program to latest version
-i, --ignore-errors      continue on download errors
-r, --rate-limit LIMIT   download rate limit (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
-R, --retries RETRIES    number of retries (default is 10)
--buffer-size SIZE       size of download buffer (e.g. 1024 or 16k) (default
                         is 1024)
--no-resize-buffer       do not automatically adjust the buffer size. By
                         default, the buffer size is automatically resized
                         from an initial value of SIZE.
--dump-user-agent        display the current browser identification
--user-agent UA          specify a custom user agent
--list-extractors        List all supported extractors and the URLs they
                         would handle

Video Selection: --playlist-start NUMBER playlist video to start at (default is 1) --playlist-end NUMBER playlist video to end at (default is last) --match-title REGEX download only matching titles (regex or caseless sub-string) --reject-title REGEX skip download for matching titles (regex or caseless sub-string) --max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files

Filesystem Options: -t, --title use title in file name --id use video ID in file name -l, --literal [deprecated] alias of --title -A, --auto-number number downloaded files starting from 00000 -o, --output TEMPLATE output filename template. Use %(title)s to get the title, %(uploader)s for the uploader name, %(uploader_id)s for the uploader nickname if different, %(autonumber)s to get an automatically incremented number, %(ext)s for the filename extension, %(upload_date)s for the upload date (YYYYMMDD), %(extractor)s for the provider (youtube, metacafe, etc), %(id)s for the video id and %% for a literal percent. Use - to output to stdout. Can also be used to download to a different directory, for example with -o '/my/downloads/%(upl oader)s/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s' . --restrict-filenames Restrict filenames to only ASCII characters, and avoid "&" and spaces in filenames -a, --batch-file FILE file containing URLs to download ('-' for stdin) -w, --no-overwrites do not overwrite files -c, --continue resume partially downloaded files --no-continue do not resume partially downloaded files (restart from beginning) --cookies FILE file to read cookies from and dump cookie jar in --no-part do not use .part files --no-mtime do not use the Last-modified header to set the file modification time --write-description write video description to a .description file --write-info-json write video metadata to a .info.json file

Verbosity / Simulation Options: -q, --quiet activates quiet mode -s, --simulate do not download the video and do not write anything to disk --skip-download do not download the video -g, --get-url simulate, quiet but print URL -e, --get-title simulate, quiet but print title --get-thumbnail simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL --get-description simulate, quiet but print video description --get-filename simulate, quiet but print output filename --get-format simulate, quiet but print output format --no-progress do not print progress bar --console-title display progress in console titlebar -v, --verbose print various debugging information

Video Format Options: -f, --format FORMAT video format code --all-formats download all available video formats --prefer-free-formats prefer free video formats unless a specific one is requested --max-quality FORMAT highest quality format to download -F, --list-formats list all available formats (currently youtube only) --write-srt write video closed captions to a .srt file (currently youtube only) --srt-lang LANG language of the closed captions to download (optional) use IETF language tags like 'en'

Authentication Options: -u, --username USERNAME account username -p, --password PASSWORD account password -n, --netrc use .netrc authentication data

Post-processing Options: -x, --extract-audio convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe) --audio-format FORMAT "best", "aac", "vorbis", "mp3", "m4a", or "wav"; best by default --audio-quality QUALITY ffmpeg/avconv audio quality specification, insert a value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse) for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K (default 5) -k, --keep-video keeps the video file on disk after the post- processing; the video is erased by default --no-post-overwrites do not overwrite post-processed files; the post- processed files are overwritten by default

CONFIGURATION

You can configure youtube-dl by placing default arguments (such as --extract-audio --no-mtime to always extract the audio and not copy the mtime) into /etc/youtube-dl.conf and/or ~/.local/config/youtube-dl.conf.

OUTPUT TEMPLATE

The -o option allows users to indicate a template for the output file names. The basic usage is not to set any template arguments when downloading a single file, like in youtube-dl -o funny_video.flv "http://some/video". However, it may contain special sequences that will be replaced when downloading each video. The special sequences have the format %(NAME)s. To clarify, that is a percent symbol followed by a name in parenthesis, followed by a lowercase S. Allowed names are:

  • id: The sequence will be replaced by the video identifier.
  • url: The sequence will be replaced by the video URL.
  • uploader: The sequence will be replaced by the nickname of the person who uploaded the video.
  • upload_date: The sequence will be replaced by the upload date in YYYYMMDD format.
  • title: The sequence will be replaced by the video title.
  • ext: The sequence will be replaced by the appropriate extension (like flv or mp4).
  • epoch: The sequence will be replaced by the Unix epoch when creating the file.
  • autonumber: The sequence will be replaced by a five-digit number that will be increased with each download, starting at zero.

The current default template is %(id)s.%(ext)s, but that will be switchted to %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s (which can be requested with -t at the moment).

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:

$ youtube-dl --get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc
youtube-dl test video ''_ä↭𝕐.mp4    # All kinds of weird characters
$ youtube-dl --get-filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" BaW_jenozKc --restrict-filenames
youtube-dl_test_video_.mp4          # A simple file name

FAQ

Can you please put the -b option 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 -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.

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 webbrowser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.

I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?

Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as vlc or mplayer.

The links provided by youtube-dl -g are not working anymore

The URLs youtube-dl outputs require the downloader to have the correct cookies. Use the --cookies option to write the required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used, use --dump-user-agent to see the one in use by youtube-dl.

ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info

youtube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. You can update youtube-dl with sudo youtube-dl --update.

ERROR: unable to download video

youtube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. You can update youtube-dl with sudo youtube-dl --update.

SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character

The error

File "youtube-dl", line 2
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '<27>' ...

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.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.

The exe throws a Runtime error from Visual C++

To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package.

COPYRIGHT

youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.

This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton (https://github.com/dbbolton) and is likewise released into the public domain.

BUGS

Bugs and suggestions should be reported at: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues

Please include:

  • Your exact command line, like youtube-dl -t "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHlDtZ6Oc3s&feature=channel_video_title". A common mistake is not to escape the &. Putting URLs in quotes should solve this problem.
  • If possible re-run the command with --verbose, and include the full output, it is really helpful to us.
  • The output of youtube-dl --version
  • The output of python --version
  • The name and version of your Operating System ("Ubuntu 11.04 x64" or "Windows 7 x64" is usually enough).

For discussions, join us in the irc channel #youtube-dl on freenode.