youtube-dl piping to vlc works on ubuntu but fails on WSL

[Genius1237]

Checklist

• I'm reporting a broken site support issue
• I've verified that I'm running youtube-dl version 2020.07.28
• I've checked that all provided URLs are alive and playable in a browser
• I've checked that all URLs and arguments with special characters are properly quoted or escaped
• I've searched the bugtracker for similar bug reports including closed ones
• I've read bugs section in FAQ

Verbose log

VLC media player 3.0.8 Vetinari (revision 3.0.8-0-gf350b6b5a7)
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: ['-v', 'https://live-hls-web-aje.getaj.net/AJE/index.m3u8', '-o', '-']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2020.07.28
[debug] Python version 3.6.10 (CPython) - Linux-4.19.104-microsoft-standard-x86_64-with-debian-buster-sid
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 3.4.8, ffprobe 3.4.8
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[generic] index: Requesting header
[generic] index: Downloading m3u8 information
[debug] Default format spec: best/bestvideo+bestaudio
[debug] Invoking downloader on 'https://live-hls-web-aje.getaj.net/AJE/01.m3u8'
[download] Destination: -
[debug] ffmpeg command line: ffmpeg -y -loglevel verbose -headers 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/73.0.3666.1 Safari/537.36
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
' -i https://live-hls-web-aje.getaj.net/AJE/01.m3u8 -c copy -f mpegts -
ffmpeg version 3.4.8-0ubuntu0.2 Copyright (c) 2000-2020 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 7 (Ubuntu 7.5.0-3ubuntu1~18.04)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr --extra-version=0ubuntu0.2 --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --incdir=/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu --enable-gpl --disable-stripping --enable-avresample --enable-avisynth --enable-gnutls --enable-ladspa --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcaca --enable-libcdio --enable-libflite --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libmysofa --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopenmpt --enable-libopus --enable-libpulse --enable-librubberband --enable-librsvg --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libssh --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzmq --enable-libzvbi --enable-omx --enable-openal --enable-opengl --enable-sdl2 --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdrm --enable-libiec61883 --enable-chromaprint --enable-frei0r --enable-libopencv --enable-libx264 --enable-shared
  libavutil      55. 78.100 / 55. 78.100
  libavcodec     57.107.100 / 57.107.100
  libavformat    57. 83.100 / 57. 83.100
  libavdevice    57. 10.100 / 57. 10.100
  libavfilter     6.107.100 /  6.107.100
  libavresample   3.  7.  0 /  3.  7.  0
  libswscale      4.  8.100 /  4.  8.100
  libswresample   2.  9.100 /  2.  9.100
  libpostproc    54.  7.100 / 54.  7.100
[hls,applehttp @ 0x561e2f5316e0] HLS request for url 'https://live-hls-web-aje.getaj.net/AJE/20190710T110056-01-5833901.ts', offset 0, playlist 0
[hls,applehttp @ 0x561e2f5316e0] Opening 'https://live-hls-web-aje.getaj.net/AJE/20190710T110056-01-5833901.ts' for reading
[h264 @ 0x561e2f885260] Reinit context to 1920x1088, pix_fmt: yuv420p
[h264 @ 0x561e2f885260] Increasing reorder buffer to 1
[h264 @ 0x561e2f885260] Increasing reorder buffer to 2
Input #0, hls,applehttp, from 'https://live-hls-web-aje.getaj.net/AJE/01.m3u8':
  Duration: N/A, start: 7817.849356, bitrate: N/A
  Program 0
    Metadata:
      variant_bitrate : 0
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), 1 reference frame ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), yuv420p(tv, left), 1920x1080 (1920x1088) [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 50 tbc
    Metadata:
      variant_bitrate : 0
    Stream #0:1: Audio: aac (LC) ([15][0][0][0] / 0x000F), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp
    Metadata:
      variant_bitrate : 0
[mpegts @ 0x561e2f8839e0] muxrate VBR, pcr every 9000 pkts, sdt every 200, pat/pmt every 40 pkts
Output #0, mpegts, to 'pipe:':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf57.83.100
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), 1 reference frame ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), yuv420p(tv, left), 1920x1080 (0x0) [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], q=2-31, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc
    Metadata:
      variant_bitrate : 0
    Stream #0:1: Audio: aac (LC) ([15][0][0][0] / 0x000F), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp
    Metadata:
      variant_bitrate : 0
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (copy)
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (copy)
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help


ERROR: ffmpeg exited with code -13
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/bin/youtube-dl", line 8, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 474, in main
    _real_main(argv)
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 464, in _real_main
    retcode = ydl.download(all_urls)
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 2019, in download
    url, force_generic_extractor=self.params.get('force_generic_extractor', False))
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 808, in extract_info
    return self.process_ie_result(ie_result, download, extra_info)
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 863, in process_ie_result
    return self.process_video_result(ie_result, download=download)
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1644, in process_video_result
    self.process_info(new_info)
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1926, in process_info
    success = dl(filename, info_dict)
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1865, in dl
    return fd.download(name, info)
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/downloader/common.py", line 366, in download
    return self.real_download(filename, info_dict)
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/downloader/external.py", line 64, in real_download
    self.get_basename(), retval))
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/downloader/common.py", line 165, in report_error
    self.ydl.report_error(*args, **kargs)
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 625, in report_error
    self.trouble(error_message, tb)
  File "/home/t-ansrin/miniconda3/envs/py36/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 587, in trouble
    tb_data = traceback.format_list(traceback.extract_stack())

Description

Command run

youtube-dl -v https://live-hls-web-aje.getaj.net/AJE/index.m3u8 -o - | cvlc --sout "#standard{access=http,mux=ts,dst=0.0.0.0
:8080}" -

I am using youtube-dl to download a HLS stream on the fly and stream it over my network using VLC. The standard method for piping youtube-dl to vlc is as follows: youtube-dl URL -o - | vlc - and I am using it. On a ubuntu desktop system of mine, this works successfully. However, on a WSL2 (with ubuntu as the distro), I get this error with FFMPEG. I have the latest version of youtube-dl from pip and ffmpeg from my distro's repos. To add, if I run youtube-dl without piping it to VLC, it runs fine. The error with ffmpeg only appears when it is piped to vlc.

I would really appreciate it if someone is able to look into this, or atleast guide me on how to investigate this myself.

[blackjack4494]

Seems permission related. What kind of user are you using? Have you tried sudo?

[Genius1237]

I am running as a normal user. I tried running both youtube-dl and vlc with sudo and there is no difference.

Would it be able to identify what the actual error with ffmpeg is? The current error message ERROR: ffmpeg exited with code -13 is pretty uninformative. Not able to find anything for this error code on google.

[blackjack4494]

That is depending on your OS. In Ubuntu errno.h 13 should be a permission issues. Don't worry about the '-' before the error code. Back then it was common to use positive and negative to signal respectively success or failure.

[Genius1237]

Interesting. Since you say that ffmpeg is having issues writing to a pipe, I decided to do some digging on my own. vlc was failing to stream .mp4 files that I'd manually downloaded as well.

To get a "headless" vlc install, I'd installed the vlc-bin package alone. Turns out that this doesn't have all the features for streaming and it needs vlc-plugin-base installed as well. After installing this, everything is working as expected.

On a side note, I thought that a popular package like vlc would have instructions for a headless/server install, but it doesn't. Hand to manually dig and install the packages that were needed.