vimeo embed-only error message is unhelpful

[sramsay64]

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When downloading a video from vimeo that can only be viewed when embedded in a page youtube-dl tells me to provide it the embedding url. But it doesn't say how. It should tell me that I need to use the --referer option but instead I have to google this every time.

I think this section in vimeo.py should be changed to:

                        'Cannot download embed-only video without embedding '
                        'URL. Please call youtube-dl with the URL of the page '
                        'that embeds this video using the --referer option.',

or something that includes --referer somewhere, so users know how to follow the instructions given.

(e.g. "https://player.vimeo.com/video/273870088" in "https://www.publicchristianity.org/episode-1-war-peace-guided-tour/#oldTestament")

[dstftw]

I wonder how you even read it. It clearly tells you to "call youtube-dl with the URL of the page that embeds this video", like youtube-dl https://www.publicchristianity.org/episode-1-war-peace-guided-tour/#oldTestament.

[sramsay64]

That downloads all 11 videos from the page. The command that downloads only the video I told it to download (and the only one I wanted) is youtube-dl "https://player.vimeo.com/video/273870088" --referer "https://www.publicchristianity.org/episode-1-war-peace-guided-tour/#oldTestament". If I use your command I get 10 extra videos that I didn't want (and no indication of which video is the one that I asked for).

Let me clarify why I read it wrong. In the past I've downloaded videos this way (supplying 2 urls) so I knew that such a thing was possible. And I didn't know this video was embed only until I got the error message from running youtube-dl "https://player.vimeo.com/video/273870088". So I knew there was an option but not what it was. Still even if I did follow it literally, I only wanted to download one of the videos

[dstftw]

Passing or not passing referer is an implementation detail that should be handled internally by youtube-dl. Today passing referer works tomorrow it will require passing some additional headers/cookies/wahtever making using --referer alone useless. On the other hand when you pass the original URL youtube-dl handles this all implicitly. So I won't add such implementation specific messages that may become outdated.

[sramsay64]

Yeah, I thought it would be a quick fix. I didn't realise that the implementation is quite complicated.