improbable flash object is really youtube video

[hildred]

Make sure you are using the latest version: run youtube-dl --version and ensure your version is 2017.04.03. 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 Issues with outdated version will be rejected.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 2017.04.03

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 ```):

youtube-dl -v 'http://www.improbable.com/2017/04/03/untrained-modern-youths-and-ancient-masters-in-selfie-portraits/'
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'http://www.improbable.com/2017/04/03/untrained-modern-youths-and-ancient-masters-in-selfie-portraits/']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs UTF-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2017.04.03
[debug] Python version 2.7.13 - Linux-4.9.0-1-rt-686-pae-i686-with-debian-9.0
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 3.2.4, ffprobe 3.2.4, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[generic] untrained-modern-youths-and-ancient-masters-in-selfie-portraits: Requesting header
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
[generic] untrained-modern-youths-and-ancient-masters-in-selfie-portraits: Downloading webpage
[generic] untrained-modern-youths-and-ancient-masters-in-selfie-portraits: Extracting information
ERROR: Unsupported URL: http://www.improbable.com/2017/04/03/untrained-modern-youths-and-ancient-masters-in-selfie-portraits/
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ben/.bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/generic.py", line 1805, in _real_extract
    doc = compat_etree_fromstring(webpage.encode('utf-8'))
  File "/home/ben/.bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/compat.py", line 2526, in compat_etree_fromstring
    doc = _XML(text, parser=etree.XMLParser(target=_TreeBuilder(element_factory=_element_factory)))
  File "/home/ben/.bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/compat.py", line 2515, in _XML
    parser.feed(text)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 1653, in feed
    self._raiseerror(v)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 1517, in _raiseerror
    raise err
ParseError: undefined entity »: line 8, column 27
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ben/.bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 761, in extract_info
    ie_result = ie.extract(url)
  File "/home/ben/.bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 429, in extract
    ie_result = self._real_extract(url)
  File "/home/ben/.bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/generic.py", line 2667, in _real_extract
    raise UnsupportedError(url)
UnsupportedError: Unsupported URL: http://www.improbable.com/2017/04/03/untrained-modern-youths-and-ancient-masters-in-selfie-portraits/

<end of log>

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Description of your issue, suggested solution and other information

http://www.improbable.com/2017/04/03/untrained-modern-youths-and-ancient-masters-in-selfie-portraits/ contains a flash video specifically http://www.youtube.com/v/msN87y-iEx0&rel=0 (which dowloads fine using that url.

[Ziao]

Unless I'm mistaken, I really don't believe the aim of youtube-dl is to extract arbitrary webpages to look for embedded videos. If that's what you need, I'd suggest building your own scraper to get those urls and then feeding them into youtube-dl.

[hildred]

@Ziao, you could have fooled me, because it is really good at it. More than 90 percent of blog posts, and every broken video I have ever tried to watch just works (except when someone changes their format in which case an upgrade or wait three days and upgrade always does the trick). It is my goto tool for video.