VEVO: Server returned 403 Forbidden (access denied)- but plays / works with other files.

[g8keepa]

Please follow the guide below

• 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 this: [x])
• Use the Preview tab to see what your issue will actually look like

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Make sure you are using the latest version: run youtube-dl --version and ensure your version is 2018.03.03. 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 Issues with outdated version will be rejected.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 2018.03.03

Before submitting an issue make sure you have:

• At least skimmed through the README, most notably the FAQ and BUGS sections
• Searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones
• Checked that provided video/audio/playlist URLs (if any) are alive and playable in a browser

What is the purpose of your issue?

• [x ] 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 the -v flag to your command line you run youtube-dl with (youtube-dl -v <your command line>), 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 -f5086-2 --output "Gorgon City - Motorola GBUV71800186.mp4" http://hls-video.vevo.com/v5/GBUV71800186/hls/51a3e611-012b-4733-91fc-97c38383a3b2/index.m3u8
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'-f5086-2', u'--output', u'Gorgon City - Motorola GBUV71800186.mp4', u'http://hls-video.vevo.com/v5/GBUV71800186/hls/51a3e611-012b-4733-91fc-97c38383a3b2/index.m3u8']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2018.03.03
[debug] Python version 2.7.10 (CPython) - Darwin-16.7.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 3.3.2, ffprobe 3.3.2
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[generic] index: Requesting header
[generic] index: Downloading m3u8 information
[debug] Invoking downloader on u'http://hls-fas.vevo.com/v5/GBUV71800186/hls/51a3e611-012b-4733-91fc-97c38383a3b2/5200/GBUV71800186_1920x1080_h264_5200_aac_128.m3u8'
[download] Destination: Gorgon City - Motorola GBUV71800186.mp4
[debug] ffmpeg command line: ffmpeg -y -loglevel verbose -headers 'Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:59.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/59.0 (Chrome)
' -i 'http://hls-fas.vevo.com/v5/GBUV71800186/hls/51a3e611-012b-4733-91fc-97c38383a3b2/5200/GBUV71800186_1920x1080_h264_5200_aac_128.m3u8' -c copy -f mp4 'file:Gorgon City - Motorola GBUV71800186.mp4.part'
ffmpeg version 3.3.2 Copyright (c) 2000-2017 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple LLVM version 8.1.0 (clang-802.0.42)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/3.3.2 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-hardcoded-tables --enable-avresample --cc=clang --host-cflags= --host-ldflags= --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-opencl --disable-lzma --enable-vda
  libavutil      55. 58.100 / 55. 58.100
  libavcodec     57. 89.100 / 57. 89.100
  libavformat    57. 71.100 / 57. 71.100
  libavdevice    57.  6.100 / 57.  6.100
  libavfilter     6. 82.100 /  6. 82.100
  libavresample   3.  5.  0 /  3.  5.  0
  libswscale      4.  6.100 /  4.  6.100
  libswresample   2.  7.100 /  2.  7.100
  libpostproc    54.  5.100 / 54.  5.100
[http @ 0x7fb335c0ee40] HTTP error 403 Forbidden
http://hls-fas.vevo.com/v5/GBUV71800186/hls/51a3e611-012b-4733-91fc-97c38383a3b2/5200/GBUV71800186_1920x1080_h264_5200_aac_128.m3u8: Server returned 403 Forbidden (access denied)


ERROR: ffmpeg exited with code 1
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 162, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code
    exec code in run_globals
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/__main__.py", line 19, in <module>
    youtube_dl.main()
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 471, in main
    _real_main(argv)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 461, in _real_main
    retcode = ydl.download(all_urls)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1989, in download
    url, force_generic_extractor=self.params.get('force_generic_extractor', False))
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 796, in extract_info
    return self.process_ie_result(ie_result, download, extra_info)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 850, in process_ie_result
    return self.process_video_result(ie_result, download=download)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1623, in process_video_result
    self.process_info(new_info)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1896, in process_info
    success = dl(filename, info_dict)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1835, in dl
    return fd.download(name, info)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/downloader/common.py", line 364, in download
    return self.real_download(filename, info_dict)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/downloader/external.py", line 57, in real_download
    self.get_basename(), retval))
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/downloader/common.py", line 166, in report_error
    self.ydl.report_error(*args, **kargs)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 613, in report_error
    self.trouble(error_message, tb)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 575, in trouble
    tb_data = traceback.format_list(traceback.extract_stack())
...
<end of log>

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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):

• Single video: https://www.vevo.com/watch/gorgon-city/motorola-(official-video)/GBUV71800186

To grab the video listed above, I would get the m3u8, find the format using -F and this would be the link:

youtube-dl -f5086-2 --output "Gorgon City - Motorola GBUV71800186.mp4" http://hls-video.vevo.com/v5/GBUV71800186/hls/51a3e611-012b-4733-91fc-97c38383a3b2/index.m3u8

Note that youtube-dl does not support sites dedicated to copyright infringement. In order for site support request to be accepted all provided example URLs should not violate any copyrights.

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Description of your issue, suggested solution and other information

The video link I listed above is shooting an error (a few other videos on VEVO are behaving the same way), not all. It plays correctly in all browsers and regions. Not sure why this is happening with this particular one and a few others. It's not a region issue as the video plays in the browser everywhere.

[g8keepa]

@remitamine I don't think it's a geo issue when the video in question plays in my region without any external tools (VPN etc). It happens with a small handful of videos. If it was a geo-restricted issue, VEVO always shoots a region error.

[rajucomp]

Are you using any kind of proxy ??

[g8keepa]

@rajucomp Not on my end. I've tried different machines as well and different networks and connecting directly. That file specifically does it, and even if it actually was geo-locked, why does it play in all the cases, but won't pull. Strange.

[rajucomp]

Try playing the same video in a mobile device. If the video does play, use youtube-dl and change the user agent to the mobile device which you are using. The syntax for an iPhone should be like this
youtube-dl --user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 10_3_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/603.1.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Mobile/14E304 Safari/602.1" url

[g8keepa]

@rajucomp Plays fine on mobile on the same network. Same error when I use the user agent using your example above. Very weird.

[rajucomp]

Try passing username and password if the site supports it. Your command should look like this
youtube-dl --user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 10_3_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/603.1.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Mobile/14E304 Safari/602.1" --username "yourusername" --password "yourpassword" url
Try both the times viz one with the user agent and one without the user agent. Also try passing the url first. If it does not work, try with the m3u8 link.

[g8keepa]

@rajucomp Very few videos need this. The rest pull fine. It applies to about 2 videos out of the entire catalog it seems. I don't use a login as you don't need one to watch any of their content.

[rajucomp]

It happened to me a few months back. There was one site where you could watch the videos in the browser without logging but it won't let you download them unless you pass the authentication parameters. There is no harm in checking, I guess.