youtube-dl fails to download video; no explanation

[waucka]

$ youtube-dl --version
2012.02.27
$ youtube-dl -v 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YeonrZUMHo'
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] 7YeonrZUMHo: Downloading video webpage
[youtube] 7YeonrZUMHo: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] 7YeonrZUMHo: Extracting video information

ERROR: unable to download video

I can watch the video just fine in my browser, even if I'm not logged in to Youtube. youtube-dl downloads descriptions and .info.json files just fine.

[aksarkar]

It's a 403 error. Most, but not all Youtube URLs I've tried today give this error now.

$ youtube-dl -g 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YeonrZUMHo' | xargs curl -I
HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
Last-Modified: Wed, 02 May 2007 10:26:10 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain
Connection: close
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 03:46:34 GMT
Server: gvs 1.0

[wiserweb]

Confirmed here as well.. Python 2.6.6, generic public videos won't download. Oh, and these things always occur when you've been searching for a solution all day, you finally find one, setup the server, update python, update the paths, and you bash your head for hours.. then finally since it's so recent Google hasn't picked this thread up, and you stumble here, somewhat relieved, somewhat disoriented by a full day gone by and no way to get that gratification that you 'got something working'. :)

[virtulis]

It seems that youtube now has a 'signature' request param. Modifying or removing that results in a 403. No idea where it comes from yet.

[kenrestivo]

I just experienced this too. Something Bad has changed at Google, I think. Not good.

I was having the problem with a release from 2/12/2012 on Python 2.5, then tried with the latest youtbe-dl git commit on Python 2.7.3, same error.

[Zurd]

Confirmed too. Debian Testing.

youtube-dl --version
2012.02.27

python --version
Python 2.7.3rc2

[wiserweb]

The permanent fix for ALL content grabbers is a FireFox command line API, where after you navigate to a page you can pick from the cache what you'd like to keep, and download anything through the browser as a background service without the UI. - YouTube can always break a script, but the browser it has to respect.

[Zurd]

That is a solution for one video at a time but youtube-dl provide the means to download all the videos of a user on youtube in one single command which is what I need.

[virtulis]

The 'signature' param is generated on server like everything else and is present in "url_encoded_fmt_stream_map" as "sig", among other things. Just get the url from "url_encoded_fmt_stream_map", change '&sig=' to '&signature=' and it's ready to use, unless I'm missing something.

[intarstudents]

That doesn't seem to fix it @virtulis

[denisinla]

I agree, still getting an error with that fix.

[virtulis]

Well it sure does for me. Did you recompile (or use youtube-dl.dev)?

[notEthan]

@virtulis that fixed it for me; thanks

[vegagame]

For me it's work, eg: ./youtube-dl.dev http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djbR4DYHyV0

[Zurd]

I don't understand, what is there to compile? youtube-dl is just a python file, can't I just modify this file?

[denisinla]

@virtulis All is well now. Thanks !

[Tailszefox]

@virtulis Confirmed working for me as well, I couldn't download anything this morning and that fixed it. Thanks!

@Zurd The youtube-dl file is a ZIP file now, so changing it by hand is a bit less trivial than before. The easiest way to apply the fix yourself until the pull request is accepted is to clone the repository on your own file system, change the file according to the fix made by @virtulis, and recompile using "make". You'll get a new "youtube-dl" file that you can put somewhere where your $PATH will catch it, if you want it to replace the current version.

[krayon]

@Zurd: it's "make compile" but other than that, yeah what @Tailszefox said. Quick work @virtulis , thanks :D

[Zurd]

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl.git
sudo apt-get install zip
nano youtube_dl/InfoExtractors.py (modify line 405)
make compile
./youtube-dl ...link...

Easy as pie! Confirmed working, thanks!

[virtulis]

@Zurd um, or you could just git clone https://github.com/virtulis/youtube-dl.git
I'm just sayin'

[nublaii]

@virtulis Works like a charm! ;)

[Zurd]

@virtulis ah I see the line 'referenced this issue from a commit in virtulis/youtube-dl', in any case, thanks!

[frikkasoft]

I had the same problem, and after cloning the git repo everything works great again. Thanks all!

[phihag]

@frikkasoft You should now be able to just update youtube-dl since @virtulis 's change has been merged.

[acuity12]

@virtulis you're awesome. I'm so stoked this community exists to jump on this problem just a couple hours after it happened. youtube-dl powers http://imgflip.com/gifgenerator and the URL function is back!

[krayon]

@acuity12 That's a cool tool, and nice that it's powered with youtube-dl too. You should give youtube-dl credit on the site ;)

[cabetof]

It's amazing the solution time. Thank you very much. In my case simply update:

xxx @ Multivac: ~ / Videos $ sudo youtube-dl -U
[sudo] password for xxx:
Updating to latest version ...
Updated youtube-dl. Restart youtube-dl to use the new version.
xxx @ Multivac: ~ / Videos $ youtube-dl --version
2012.09.27

And now everything works ... :)

[ChoHag]

The first part of this bug, "youtube-dl fails to download video" has been fixed (for now...) but the second half, "no explanation", has not.

At the very least, youtube-dl knows that the reason for the error is 'HTTP 403', which it does not report:

ERROR: unable to download video

[pmdzlineur]

su:
password
youtube-dl -U
was the solution for me.
Then youtube-dl thevideo
Nice feature :)

[akash0x53]

sudo youtube-dl -U
update with latest stable release and then download your video

This works :)

[unaexpresion]

exacto, prueben a actualizar la versión.... youtube-dl -U y listo!!

[puppypilgrim]

As said above, I "sudo youtube-dl -U" which updates to the latest version, then used the command as usual and Youtube now works fine.

Thank you to all who made this happen.

Vancouver, Canada

[davidmcdavid]

I got it from github (before reading about the -U option)

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl.git
cd youtube-dl/
python -m youtube_dl <a_youtube_URL>

[atmelino]

same here: before the upgrade, it did not work. After the upgrade, it worked
sudo youtube-dl -U

[awojnowski]

Has anyone experienced the signature being placed with the key "s", rather than "sig" within the fmt_stream_map? This seems to randomly occur with some users on an application of mine, and constructing the url using what appears to be the signature with the key "s" fails, even though "s" takes on the appearance of a completely valid signature.

[FiloSottile]

@speedyapocalypse Umh... never seen anything like that, could you maybe provide a pcap, or a saved html?

[awojnowski]

I've put the HTML of the page in this Gist: https://gist.github.com/speedyapocalypse/5311690

Attached also is an example of one of the parsed "url dictionaries". It looks like you would simply use "s" instead of "sig", but this just flat out doesn't work and you receive a blank page.

[tushar666]

Failed extracting video URL using block due to error:Error Domain=LBYouTubeExtractorErrorDomain Code=2 "Couldn't find the stream URL." UserInfo=0xa1b4940 {NSLocalizedDescription=Couldn't find the stream URL.}
2013-09-17 16:26:03.262 Go For[6699:c07] Failed loading video due to error:Error Domain=LBYouTubeExtractorErrorDomain Code=2 "Couldn't find the stream URL." UserInfo=0xa56e420 {NSLocalizedDescription=Couldn't find the stream URL.}

[jaimeMF]

@tushar666 if you are using LBYouTubeView, you must report its errors to them :https://github.com/larcus94/LBYouTubeView, we can't do anything

[aureooms]

Still facing the same kind of problem, again only with a specific video

[phihag]

@aureooms Can you pass in the -v option and report a new issue? This issue pertains to an ancient version of youtube-dl which you do not seem to have.

[aureooms]

@phihag #3577