Failure extracting audio, "TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, NoneType found"

[marenbea]

youtube-dl -v -x https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8V5dAli-Q
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'-x', u'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8V5dAli-Q']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2015.11.02
[debug] Python version 2.7.6 - Darwin-14.4.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffprobe 2.8.1-tessus
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube] so8V5dAli-Q: Downloading webpage
[youtube] so8V5dAli-Q: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] so8V5dAli-Q: Extracting video information
[youtube] {22} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {43} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {18} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {5} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {36} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {17} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {137} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {248} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {136} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {247} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {135} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {244} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {134} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {243} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {133} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {242} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {160} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {278} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {140} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {171} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {249} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {250} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] {251} signature length 41.43, html5 player new-en_US-vfloMUtOf
[youtube] so8V5dAli-Q: Downloading DASH manifest
[debug] Invoking downloader on u'https://r16---sn-o097znel.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?mt=1446700286&expire=1446721923&nh=IgpwcjAyLnBhbzAzKgkxMjcuMC4wLjE&clen=3623823&requiressl=yes&sparams=clen%2Cdur%2Cgcr%2Cgir%2Cid%2Cinitcwndbps%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Ckeepalive%2Clmt%2Cmime%2Cmm%2Cmn%2Cms%2Cmv%2Cnh%2Cpl%2Crequiressl%2Csource%2Cupn%2Cexpire&ipbits=0&itag=251&upn=HXmG_zOdH0Y&fexp=9408710%2C9409129%2C9414764%2C9416126%2C9417683%2C9417707%2C9418401%2C9419541%2C9420238%2C9421544%2C9422596%2C9422618%2C9423625%2C9423644%2C9423663%2C9423667%2C9423793%2C9423940&gcr=us&mv=m&pl=18&id=o-AO6lCdtTTdszA0wciNwTRTtjoATX25mmMqzXqXYK9-rf&ms=au&source=youtube&lmt=1440726237007579&keepalive=yes&dur=213.221&sver=3&ip=76.103.17.144&key=yt6&mm=31&mn=sn-o097znel&initcwndbps=877500&mime=audio%2Fwebm&gir=yes&signature=C3189F6CEF418EA72514E2F25E0BC7A7123F9858.352C92D8FDA19DD426F7DADF2D69EF924A3577B9&ratebypass=yes'
[download] Halsey - Control (Audio)-so8V5dAli-Q.webm has already been downloaded
[download] 100% of 3.46MiB
[debug] None command line: ffprobe -show_streams 'file:Halsey - Control (Audio)-so8V5dAli-Q.webm'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 162, in _run_module_as_main
"main", fname, loader, pkg_name)
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code
exec code in run_globals
File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/main.py", line 19, in
File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/init.py", line 410, in main
File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/init.py", line 400, in _real_main
File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1666, in download
File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 672, in extract_info
File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 718, in process_ie_result
File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1336, in process_video_result
File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1648, in process_info
File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 1712, in post_process
File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/postprocessor/ffmpeg.py", line 281, in run
TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, NoneType found

[jaimeMF]

Note that you need to have ffmpeg installed to extract the audio, but it's strange that you have ffprobe available but not ffmpeg. If you can't run ffmpeg from the command line, you must install it (for example with homebrew or macports). If you can run ffmpeg, please let us now so that we can try to fix it.

[marenbea]

Hi jaime, thanks for the response. I installed ffmpeg and it fixed the issue. I got confused by an error message. Let me show you where that error message was.

When I first downloaded youtube-dl and I did not have ffmpeg installed, I got the following result

youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8V5dAli-Q
[youtube] so8V5dAli-Q: Downloading webpage
[youtube] so8V5dAli-Q: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] so8V5dAli-Q: Extracting video information
[youtube] so8V5dAli-Q: Downloading DASH manifest
[download] Destination: Halsey - Control (Audio)-so8V5dAli-Q.webm
[download] 100% of 3.46MiB in 00:35
ERROR: ffprobe or avprobe not found. Please install one.

Knowing that youtube-dl depended on ffmpeg for audio extraction, I read the error message too fast and thought it said ffmpeg, not ffprobe. I installed ffmpeg and got the same result as not having it installed. Thinking I only needed ffprobe, I uninstalled ffmpeg then installed ffprobe. That's how I wound up in the state where I reported the issue.

If the error message said that I needed ffmpeg and ffprobe installed I may have been able to avoid the confusion. I don't know if ffmpeg and ffprobe usually come bundled together, in which case my problem would be unusual, but I was installing them (in the laziest way possible) on my mac by copying binaries to /usr/local/bin, and on the websites that ffmpeg.org links to for mac binaries they have separate ones for ffmpeg and ffprobe.

Thanks for your hard work, jaime! I'm a huge fan of youtube-dl (: