ARD Mediathek doesn't work with 2014.06.26

[tkan]

Trying to access ARD Mediathek on Ubuntu 12.04

sudo youtube-dl -U
>> youtube-dl is up-to-date (2014.06.26)

For exampe this link http://mediathek.daserste.de/sendungen_a-z/21675666_fifa-wm-2014/22226718_mehmet-scholl-das-ist-nicht-mehr-mein-sport-?buchstabe=F throws this error message:

[ARD] 22226718_mehmet-scholl-das-ist-nicht-mehr-mein-sport-: Downloading webpage
WARNING: unable to extract description; please report this issue on http://yt-dl.org/bug
WARNING: unable to extract thumbnail url; please report this issue on http://yt-dl.org/bug
[ARD] 22226718_mehmet-scholl-das-ist-nicht-mehr-mein-sport-: Downloading JSON metadata
ERROR: Failed to download JSON; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output. Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 307, in _download_json
    return json.loads(json_string)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 326, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 366, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 384, in raw_decode
    raise ValueError("No JSON object could be decoded")
ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 516, in extract_info
    ie_result = ie.extract(url)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 167, in extract
    return self._real_extract(url)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/ard.py", line 51, in _real_extract
    'http://www.ardmediathek.de/play/media/%s' % video_id, video_id)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 309, in _download_json
    raise ExtractorError('Failed to download JSON', cause=ve)
ExtractorError: Failed to download JSON; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output. Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update.

[tkan]

As a quick & dirty workaround:

#!/bin/bash
> ard_mp4.txt
while read line
do
        name=$line
        curl $name | grep "mediaCollection.addMediaStream(1, 2" | cut -d, -f4 | sed -e 's/"//g' | tr -d ' '>> ard_mp4.txt
done < $1
wget -N -c -i ard_mp4.txt

Make executable chmod +x ard.sh and call with:

./ard.sh mediathek-URIs.txt

It will produce ard_mp4.txt and download the files. Be aware, the server does seem to block based on IP range or something; couldn't get this to work on my vServer (--user-agent wouldn't work); worked fine via webhost SSH. Change the last digit after addMediaStream ('2' in this case) for different qualities: 2 = highest, 1= medium, 0 = lowest.

[TRox1972]

The provided URL doesn't point to any one video, just like the test URL in ard.py. Videos that do link to one video still work, though, like this one

[dstftw]

Should work fine with latest version.