What does these ERROR and WARNING messages mean?

[zoutiyx]

I've been using this format which has worked quite nicely for a long time:

youtube-dl -ix --playlist-start 1 --playlist-end 2 --write-thumbnail --audio-format mp3 https://www.youtube.com/user/DiscoverTheVibes/video \ -o '/home/ubuntu-gnome/Music/%(ext)s'

Unfortunately, I can't download to directories again. This is the error I receive:

ERROR: u'-o' is not a valid URL. Set --default-search "ytsearch" (or run youtube-dl "ytsearch:-o" ) to search YouTube
WARNING: The url doesn't specify the protocol, trying with http
[generic] %(ext)s: Requesting header
WARNING: Could not send HEAD request to http:///home/ubuntu-gnome/Music/%(ext)s:
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
[generic] %(ext)s: Downloading webpage
ERROR: Unable to download webpage:
ubuntu-gnome@ubuntu-gnome:~$

[phihag]

The backslash (\) before the space makes the 11th part of your command line the string consisting of the characters -o (note the preceeding space). youtube-dl tries to interpret this strange string argument and can't do anything with it. Simply remove the backslash to get what you presumably want, i.e. -o.

You can pass in the -v option to detect this kind of errors.

[zoutiyx]

Thanks. Worked.