UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii'

[acigolotti]

C:\Users\******>youtube-dl.py -ti "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tfwQE4qvbI&fe
ature=watch-now-button&wide=1"
[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] 7tfwQE4qvbI: Downloading video webpage
[youtube] 7tfwQE4qvbI: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] 7tfwQE4qvbI: Extracting video information
[youtube] RTMP download detected
[download] Destination: ____American_Daughter-7tfwQE4qvbI.flv
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python27\lib\runpy.py", line 162, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)
File "C:\Python27\lib\runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code
    exec code in run_globals
File "C:\Users\******\Commands\youtube-dl.py\__main__.py", line 7, in <module>

File "C:\Users\******\Commands\youtube-dl.py\__init__.py", line 547, in main
File "C:\Users\******\Commands\youtube-dl.py\__init__.py", line 531, in _real_
main
File "C:\Users\******\Commands\youtube-dl.py\FileDownloader.py", line 479, in
download
File "C:\Users\******\Commands\youtube-dl.py\FileDownloader.py", line 442, in
process_info
File "C:\Users\******\Commands\youtube-dl.py\FileDownloader.py", line 556, in
_do_download
File "C:\Users\******\Commands\youtube-dl.py\FileDownloader.py", line 523, in
_download_with_rtmpdump
File "C:\Python27\lib\subprocess.py", line 493, in call
    return Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs).wait()
File "C:\Python27\lib\subprocess.py", line 679, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
File "C:\Python27\lib\subprocess.py", line 896, in _execute_child
    startupinfo)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 65-76: ord
inal not in range(128)

rtmpdump 2.4
Windows7 64bits
python 2.7.3
C:\Users******>youtube-dl.py --update
Updating to latest version...
youtube-dl is up-to-date (2012.09.27)

Sorry but I'm french and I don't speak english very well but I have this bug and and don't know what to do and I have read this: #264 (comment) so I open this.

[phihag]

Mmm, we're definitely passing a unicode object to subprocess.call, and it seems to get confused. I cannot reproduce the error on Linux. I'm a little bit suspicious because the file name should be Американская_дочь___American_Daughter-7tfwQE4qvbI.flv, and that gets completely garbled in your output.

Can anyone with a Windows machine verify the error? Do we need to restrict Windows file names to ASCII only?

Anyway, thanks for reporting this issue, @BomberCraft . We'll look into it.

[Tailszefox]

Confirmed on a Windows XP machine running with Python 2.6.6 and the latest version of the script:

C:\Documents and Settings\Tails\Bureau\youtube-dl>youtube-dl.py -ti -v "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tfwQE4qvbI&fe"
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] 7tfwQE4qvbI: Downloading video webpage
[youtube] 7tfwQE4qvbI: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] 7tfwQE4qvbI: Extracting video information
[youtube] RTMP download detected
[download] Destination: ____American_Daughter-7tfwQE4qvbI.flv
[debug] rtmpdump command line: rtmpdump -q -r rtmpe://v23.nonxt3.c.youtube.com/videoplayback -o '____American_Daughter-7tfwQE4qvbI.flv.part' -e -k 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Tails\Bureau\youtube-dl\youtube-dl\__main__.py", line 7, in <module>
    __init__.main()
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Tails\Bureau\youtube-dl\youtube-dl\__init__.py", line 547, in main
    _real_main()
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Tails\Bureau\youtube-dl\youtube-dl\__init__.py", line 531, in _real_main
    retcode = fd.download(all_urls)
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Tails\Bureau\youtube-dl\youtube-dl\FileDownloader.py", line 479, in download
    self.process_info(video)
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Tails\Bureau\youtube-dl\youtube-dl\FileDownloader.py", line 442, in process_info
    success = self._do_download(filename, info_dict)
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Tails\Bureau\youtube-dl\youtube-dl\FileDownloader.py", line 556, in _do_download
    return self._download_with_rtmpdump(filename, url, player_url)
  File "C:\Documents and Settings\Tails\Bureau\youtube-dl\youtube-dl\FileDownloader.py", line 523, in _download_with_rtmpdump
    retval = subprocess.call(args)
  File "C:\Python26\lib\subprocess.py", line 470, in call
    return Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs).wait()
  File "C:\Python26\lib\subprocess.py", line 623, in __init__
    errread, errwrite)
  File "C:\Python26\lib\subprocess.py", line 833, in _execute_child
    startupinfo)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 65-76: ordinal not in range(128)

Printing the "args" object passed to subprocess.call yields this. I would guess that it doesn't like the Unicode characters in there:

['rtmpdump', '-q', '-r', u'rtmpe://v23.nonxt3.c.youtube.com/videoplayback', '-o', u'\u0410\u043c\u0435\u0440\u0438\u043a\u0430\u043d\u0441\u043a\u0430
\u044f_\u0434\u043e\u0447\u044c___American_Daughter-7tfwQE4qvbI.flv.part', '-e', '-k', '1']

[acigolotti]

Thank you, but without the -t argument, it should no longer be any Unicode character but the video still doesn't want to download:
C:\Users******>youtube-dl.py -v "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tfwQE4qvbI&feature=watch-now-button&wide=1"
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] 7tfwQE4qvbI: Downloading video webpage
[youtube] 7tfwQE4qvbI: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] 7tfwQE4qvbI: Extracting video information
[youtube] RTMP download detected
[download] Destination: 7tfwQE4qvbI.flv
[debug] rtmpdump command line: rtmpdump -q -r rtmpe://v23.nonxt3.c.youtube.com/v
ideoplayback -o 7tfwQE4qvbI.flv.part -e -k 1

ERROR: unable to download video

Is this an another bug?
And on linux it still doesn't download the video, it seems to be Gnone-keyring problem but there is no relation with youtube-dl I think.

[Tailszefox]

Yeah, unfortunately even without the -t argument, I think you hit bug #343 since the video uses RTMP. That's another issue entirely as far as I can tell.

[yasoob]

@BomberCraft for the ascii issue you can use --restrict-filenames flag. It will deal with the ascii problems. I hope this helps. 👍

[yasoob]

@BomberCraft did --restrict-filenames help ?

[acigolotti]

Sorry, but It's been a long time since I've no longer download videos with special characters in the title, so I haven't tested the --restrict-filenames argument.

[yasoob]

@BomberCraft plz check it so that we can know that this issue is resolved and so we can close this issue. :)

[acigolotti]

It seems to be resolved, I can't have this error again, I try download some russian video with the -t argument and all the unicode character have been delete in the title, so it works now. maybe....

[yasoob]

@phihag this issue is resolved now. It's good to close.