DiscoveryGO.com - Can no longer download videos

[Mr-Jake]

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• You will be asked some questions and requested to provide some information, please read them carefully and answer honestly
• Put an x into all the boxes [ ] relevant to your issue (like that [x])
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Make sure you are using the latest version: run youtube-dl --version and ensure your version is 2016.12.22. If it's not read this FAQ entry and update. Issues with outdated version will be rejected.

• I've verified and I assure that I'm running youtube-dl 2016.12.22

Before submitting an issue make sure you have:

• At least skimmed through README and most notably FAQ and BUGS sections
• Searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones

What is the purpose of your issue?

• Bug report (encountered problems with youtube-dl)
• Site support request (request for adding support for a new site)
• Feature request (request for a new functionality)
• Question
• Other

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The following sections concretize particular purposed issues, you can erase any section (the contents between triple ---) not applicable to your issue

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If the purpose of this issue is a bug report, site support request or you are not completely sure provide the full verbose output as follows:

Add -v flag to your command line you run youtube-dl with, copy the whole output and insert it here. It should look similar to one below (replace it with your log inserted between triple ```):

C:\>youtube-dl\youtube-dl.exe "https://www.discoverygo.com/alaska-the-last-frontier/homesteading-for-the-holidays/" -v
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Command-line args: ['https://www.discoverygo.com/alaska-the-last-frontier/homesteading-for-the-holidays/', '-v']
[debug] Encodings: locale cp1252, fs mbcs, out cp437, pref cp1252
[debug] youtube-dl version 2016.12.22
[debug] Python version 3.4.4 - Windows-XP-5.1.2600-SP3
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg n3.1.2, ffprobe n3.1.2, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[DiscoveryGo] homesteading-for-the-holidays: Downloading webpage
ERROR: homesteading-for-the-holidays: Failed to parse JSON  (caused by ValueError("Expecting ',' delimiter: line 1 column 24418 (char 24417)",)); please report
this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose
flag and include its complete output.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\dst\AppData\Roaming\Build archive\youtube-dl\rg3\tmptqqgo4yk\build\youtube_dl\extractor\common.py", line 560, in _parse_json
  File "C:\Python\Python34\lib\json\__init__.py", line 318, in loads
  File "C:\Python\Python34\lib\json\decoder.py", line 343, in decode
  File "C:\Python\Python34\lib\json\decoder.py", line 359, in raw_decode
ValueError: Expecting ',' delimiter: line 1 column 24418 (char 24417)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\dst\AppData\Roaming\Build archive\youtube-dl\rg3\tmptqqgo4yk\build\youtube_dl\extractor\common.py", line 560, in _parse_json
  File "C:\Python\Python34\lib\json\__init__.py", line 318, in loads
  File "C:\Python\Python34\lib\json\decoder.py", line 343, in decode
  File "C:\Python\Python34\lib\json\decoder.py", line 359, in raw_decode
ValueError: Expecting ',' delimiter: line 1 column 24418 (char 24417)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\dst\AppData\Roaming\Build archive\youtube-dl\rg3\tmptqqgo4yk\build\youtube_dl\YoutubeDL.py", line 694, in extract_info
  File "C:\Users\dst\AppData\Roaming\Build archive\youtube-dl\rg3\tmptqqgo4yk\build\youtube_dl\extractor\common.py", line 358, in extract
  File "C:\Users\dst\AppData\Roaming\Build archive\youtube-dl\rg3\tmptqqgo4yk\build\youtube_dl\extractor\discoverygo.py", line 53, in _real_extract
  File "C:\Users\dst\AppData\Roaming\Build archive\youtube-dl\rg3\tmptqqgo4yk\build\youtube_dl\extractor\common.py", line 564, in _parse_json
youtube_dl.utils.ExtractorError: homesteading-for-the-holidays: Failed to parse JSON  (caused by ValueError("Expecting ',' delimiter: line 1 column 24418 (char24417)",)); please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.

C:\>

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If the purpose of this issue is a site support request please provide all kinds of example URLs support for which should be included (replace following example URLs by yours):

https://www.discoverygo.com/alaska-the-last-frontier/homesteading-for-the-holidays/

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Description of your issue, suggested solution and other information

youtube-dl can no longer download videos from discoverygo.com (animalplanetgo.com, sciencechannelgo.com, etc). I have posted the error log above. While most videos require a cable company login, I have posted a free video link that does not require a login. The last time youtube-dl was able to download from discoverygo.com was early December 2016.

[StevenDTX]

Actually, it hasnt worked since early November. This is a duplicate of #11219

[Mr-Jake]

Thanks @StevenDTX

Did that "hack" work for you? I tried it without success. But I think I put it in the wrong line of common.py. It says line 559, but common.py was edited since then and I don't know what release that was intended for.

Would you or anyone else know under what line I would insert the "hack"?

Line 559 is in this function of common.py:

    def _parse_json(self, json_string, video_id, transform_source=None, fatal=True):
        if transform_source:
            json_string = transform_source(json_string)
        try:
            return json.loads(json_string)
        except ValueError as ve:
            errmsg = '%s: Failed to parse JSON ' % video_id
            if fatal:
                raise ExtractorError(errmsg, cause=ve)
            else:
                self.report_warning(errmsg + str(ve))

Code by KyleBS:

for i in xrange(json_string.count('"&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <VAST')):
        start = json_string.find('"&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <VAST')
        end = json_string.find('VAST> "') + len('VAST> "')
        json_string = json_string[:start] + json_string[end:]

[KyleBS]

Updated the original comment to use 'git diff' -- should have the commit id I am on and a bit of context.

[breffasst]

Thanks @KyleBS

I applied your diff and it works perfectly now.

[Mr-Jake]

Thanks @KyleBS for updating. The diff was easy to apply and DiscoveryGO now works with cookies.

[yan12125]

Yes this is a duplicate of #11219 and the latter is fixed and will be included in the next version.