What Does `--retries infinite` actually do?

[Queuecumber]

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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 ```):

[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
[debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
[debug] youtube-dl version 2018.05.01
[debug] Python version 2.7.11 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
...
<end of log>

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Description of your issue, suggested solution and other information

I'm running with youtube-dl --socket-timeout 1 --retries infinite to work around some potential throttling issues I'm seeing, but I often get errors like

ERROR: unable to download video data: <urlopen error _ssl.c:761: The handshake operation timed out>

or

ERROR: Unable to download webpage: The read operation timed out (caused by timeout('The read operation timed out',))

I expect these kinds of errors with the --socket-timeout flag set to 1. But then the script exits without retrying even though I specified --retries infinte on the command line.

So is this intended behavior and if so what does --retries actually control?

For reference I will leave the playlist URL I am working with here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist\?list\=PLj_Goi54wf0cgpOuy60CdTQLi4Q-BrIGS

[dstftw]

--retries only work for downloading final media.