Description Field in --write-info-json doesn't populate "No description available."

[bencrundwell]

If I download a video (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q5ZHU8yvLQ) with the --write-info-json flag it creates me a .info.json file with a description element of "description": "No description available."

However if I use the --write-description flag i get a file containing: "My Mini is my dream car"

Could the json output be updated to contain this information as I would rather not have to parse 2 separate outputs

[phihag]

Sorry, I cannot reproduce this problem, and it seems unlikely anyways, since both description entries come from the same source. Can you provide a precise command line that fails? I get

$ youtube-dl 4q5ZHU8yvLQ --write-info-json --write-description --skip-download
[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] 4q5ZHU8yvLQ: Downloading video webpage
[youtube] 4q5ZHU8yvLQ: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] 4q5ZHU8yvLQ: Extracting video information
[info] Writing video description to: 4q5ZHU8yvLQ.flv.description
[info] Video description metadata as JSON to: 4q5ZHU8yvLQ.flv.info.json
$ head -c 80 4q5ZHU8yvLQ.flv.info.json
{"upload_date": "20060727", "description": "My Mini is my dream car", "stitle": 

This might have been a temporary issue on youtube's side. I'm temporarily closing this bug, until it can be reproduced.

[bencrundwell]

Curious. If you drop the '--write-description' option then the json file doesn't contain the description it just says "No description available.". This looks like a temporary workaround for the problem, however its annoying having to then delete the 4q5ZHU8yvLQ.flv.description file afterwards.

Cant '--write-info-json' just grab the description anyway, without needing you to add '--write-description' and generate a pointless file?

The precise command line that fails is:
youtube-dl 4q5ZHU8yvLQ --write-info-json --skip-download

[phihag]

Oops, found the problem. We always wrote the same description with --write-info-json, but we didn't determine it if only --write-info-json was set. This issue should be fixed in youtube-dl 2012.02.27. Does that work for you?