youtube-dl fails when downloading from CSpan.

[MBRosenthal]

I'm trying to use youtube-dl, version 2015.03.24 under OS X 10.8.5 to download a video from CSpan, but instead of downloading the video, youtube-dl produces an error. Here are the details.

I just downloaded and installed youtube-dl by doing the following:

I navigated to http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html to download youtube-dl.  That page says:

    To install it right away for all UNIX users (Linux, OS X, etc.), type:

        sudo curl https://yt-dl.org/downloads/2015.03.24/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
        sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

I ran those commands. I then ran youtube-dl as follows:

youtube-dl 'http://www.c-span.org/video/?104517-1/immigration-reforms-needed-protect-skilled-american-workers'

It complained:

[CSpan] 104517: Downloading webpage
ERROR: Unable to extract description; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.

I updated youtube-dl and reran it with the --verbose flag. Below are the commands I ran and the output from those commands.

bash-3.2$ youtube-dl -U
youtube-dl is up-to-date (2015.03.24)

bash-3.2$ youtube-dl --verbose 'http://www.c-span.org/video/?104517-1/immigration-reforms-needed-protect-skilled-american-workers'
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'--verbose', u'http://www.c-span.org/video/?104517-1/immigration-reforms-needed-protect-skilled-american-workers']
[debug] Encodings: locale US-ASCII, fs utf-8, out US-ASCII, pref US-ASCII
[debug] youtube-dl version 2015.03.24
[debug] Python version 2.7.2 - Darwin-12.5.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: none
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[CSpan] 104517: Downloading webpage
ERROR: Unable to extract description; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 651, in extract_info
    ie_result = ie.extract(url)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 275, in extract
    return self._real_extract(url)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/cspan.py", line 59, in _real_extract
    webpage, 'description', flags=re.DOTALL)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 557, in _html_search_regex
    res = self._search_regex(pattern, string, name, default, fatal, flags, group)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 547, in _search_regex
    raise RegexNotFoundError('Unable to extract %s' % _name)
RegexNotFoundError: Unable to extract description; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.

[yan12125]

Thanks for the report. This video is hosted by senate.gov rather than cspan itself. Such videos will be supported in the next version of youtube-dl.

[dstftw]

Support for videos hosted on senate.gov has been added in youtube-dl 2015.04.26. See our FAQ if you have problems updating.