[VK Video] supposedly updated protocol inhibits downloads

[asjuravleva]

Checklist

• I'm reporting that yt-dlp is broken on a supported site
• I've verified that I have updated yt-dlp to nightly or master (update instructions)
• I've checked that all provided URLs are playable in a browser with the same IP and same login details
• I've checked that all URLs and arguments with special characters are properly quoted or escaped
• I've searched known issues, the FAQ, and the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones. DO NOT post duplicates
• I've read the policy against AI/LLM contributions and understand I may be blocked from the repository if it is violated
• I've read about sharing account credentials and I'm willing to share it if required

Region

Russia

Provide a description that is worded well enough to be understood

VK supposedly updated their protocols, so the video that is embedded on a site and playable in browser isn't detected and won't download.

Provide verbose output that clearly demonstrates the problem

• Run your yt-dlp command with -vU flag added (yt-dlp -vU <your command line>)
• If using API, add 'verbose': True to YoutubeDL params instead
• Copy the WHOLE output (starting with [debug] Command-line config) and insert it below

Complete Verbose Output

[debug] Command-line config: ['-vU', 'https://vk.com/video_ext.php?oid=-226836549&id=456240037&hd=2&hash=3e01dae0a9357708']
[debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs utf-8, pref cp1251, out utf-8, error utf-8, screen utf-8
[debug] yt-dlp version stable@2026.02.21 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp [646bb31f3] (win_exe)
[debug] Python 3.10.11 (CPython AMD64 64bit) - Windows-10-10.0.19045-SP0 (OpenSSL 1.1.1t  7 Feb 2023)
[debug] exe versions: none
[debug] Optional libraries: Cryptodome-3.23.0, brotli-1.2.0, certifi-2026.01.04, curl_cffi-0.14.0, mutagen-1.47.0, requests-2.32.5, sqlite3-3.40.1, urllib3-2.6.3, websockets-16.0, yt_dlp_ejs-0.5.0
[debug] JS runtimes: none
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[debug] Request Handlers: urllib, requests, websockets, curl_cffi
[debug] Plugin directories: none
[debug] Loaded 1864 extractors
[debug] Fetching release info: https://api.github.com/repos/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest
Latest version: stable@2026.02.21 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp
yt-dlp is up to date (stable@2026.02.21 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp)
[vk] Extracting URL: https://vk.com/video_ext.php?oid=-226836549&id=456240037&hd=2&hash=3e01dae0a9357708
[vk] -226836549_456240037: Downloading webpage
ERROR: [vk] 456240037: Unable to extract player params; please report this issue on  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using  yt-dlp -U
  File "yt_dlp\extractor\common.py", line 765, in extract
  File "yt_dlp\extractor\vk.py", line 469, in _real_extract
  File "yt_dlp\extractor\common.py", line 1347, in _search_regex

[bashonly]

May be fixed by #16066