youtub-dl error... does this mean I've been blocked?

[Wastrel-zz]

After using youtube-dl WAY TOO MUCH I get the following:

wastrel@someplace:~/Desktop/current$ youtube-dl -wt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWnhmMFusdI
[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] xWnhmMFusdI: Downloading video webpage
[youtube] xWnhmMFusdI: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] xWnhmMFusdI: Extracting video information
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 162, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code
    exec code in run_globals
  File "/usr/bin/youtube-dl/__main__.py", line 7, in <module>
  File "/usr/bin/youtube-dl/__init__.py", line 536, in main

  File "/usr/bin/youtube-dl/__init__.py", line 520, in _real_main

  File "/usr/bin/youtube-dl/FileDownloader.py", line 475, in download
  File "/usr/bin/youtube-dl/InfoExtractors.py", line 80, in extract
  File "/usr/bin/youtube-dl/InfoExtractors.py", line 355, in _real_extract
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/encodings/utf_8.py", line 16, in decode
    return codecs.utf_8_decode(input, errors, True)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x8b in position 1: invalid start byte
wastrel@someplace:~/Desktop/current$

Would like to know what this means. I will of course be getting a new IP address... :-)

Wastrel

[phihag]

No, this is not an intentional blocking, but an error on our part - sorry! We fail to correctly handle broken youtube inputs. Curiously, I cannot reproduce the error (the video is indeed blocked from outside the US). Which youtube-dl version are you using? (type youtube-dl --version to find out).

On the technical side, we should really decode early and make video_info_webpage a string of characters (and then pass ignore to decode). I'll have a look at it.

Anyways, thanks @Wastrel for reporting this issue! I'll see to it that it gets fixed, sorry for the inconvenience.

[Wastrel-zz]

Darn it, I did not have the latest version -- I hope I have not inadvertently created a issue over an issue. My version was 2012.09.27. I've updated to 2012.10.09 and now it seems to work. However, I suspect the youtube is on to me -- I got the Captcha at one point last night and this this error began.

Thanks for your help. My apologies for not checking the version first.

Eric

[phihag]

We're already thinking about solving the captcha issue, see #154. I'm glad your issue could be solved that easily.

[Wastrel-zz]

You may also find it interesting to know that the error apparently was caused by my cable connection or my proxy server. I lost connection completely last night and reset them both, and I haven't had the error since.

Eric

Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 07:30:42 -0700
From: notifications@github.com
To: youtube-dl@noreply.github.com
CC: wastrelway@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [youtube-dl] youtub-dl error... does this mean I've been blocked? (#492)

We're already thinking about solving the captcha issue, see #154. I'm glad your issue could be solved that easily.

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