Question about youtube publication date and actual file timestamp

[pprw]

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Question

This is a question regarding youtube-dl and youtube, it is not a bug of youtube-dl.

I download videos from youtube using youtube-dl and I have some trouble to organize these videos on my computer. The reason is that date modification of files are neither the publication date nor the upload date by the channel author.

Here is an example:

This video was published on Sep 10, 2015

I download it:

~$ youtube-dl -v --date 20150910 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJqppbg7WKo[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'--date', u'20150910', u'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJqppbg7WKo']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs UTF-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2016.05.01
[debug] Python version 2.7.10 - Linux-4.2.0-35-generic-x86_64-with-Ubuntu-15.10-wily
[debug] exe versions: rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube] EJqppbg7WKo: Downloading webpage
[youtube] EJqppbg7WKo: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] EJqppbg7WKo: Extracting video information
[youtube] EJqppbg7WKo: Downloading MPD manifest
[debug] Invoking downloader on u'https://r1---sn-gxo5uxg-jqbe.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?expire=1462380219&sparams=dur%2Cid%2Cinitcwndbps%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Clmt%2Cmime%2Cmm%2Cmn%2Cms%2Cmv%2Cpcm2cms%2Cpl%2Cratebypass%2Crequiressl%2Csource%2Cupn%2Cexpire&mime=video%2Fmp4&dur=529.298&itag=22&pl=19&source=youtube&requiressl=yes&fexp=9410706%2C9416126%2C9416891%2C9418751%2C9419451%2C9422596%2C9425352%2C9428398%2C9431012%2C9431045%2C9432564%2C9432583%2C9432684%2C9433096%2C9433425%2C9433946%2C9434289%2C9434344%2C9434510%2C9434601&lmt=1446984847946854&mm=31&mn=sn-gxo5uxg-jqbe&id=o-ACteetZ9aVH3H1MFgIMbyloLqgIFfqs6yGwRHZ8kNZJg&upn=IEuvL_l3QKA&ip=193.54.3.218&key=yt6&mt=1462358488&mv=m&ms=au&ipbits=0&initcwndbps=6202500&pcm2cms=yes&signature=A0C8A777E4D9A169A0135B6810B2A1F89CF93EF4.D8D3D451E3E3362A46508E0C5F11658B7F7175CC&sver=3&ratebypass=yes'
[download] Destination: Death by Selfie-EJqppbg7WKo.mp4
[download] 100% of 153.16MiB in 00:13

And I obtain a file edited on Nov 8, 2015:

$ ls -la Death\ by\ Selfie-EJqppbg7WKo.mp4 
-rw-rw-r-- 1 user user 160601568 nov.   8 13:14 Death by Selfie-EJqppbg7WKo.mp4

Therefore I cannot organize videos on my hard drive by publication or upload date.

Could someone explain to me this behavior? Is it a way to obtain a file with the date of upload or publication?

[dstftw]

Last modification date is set according to Last-Modified HTTP header. This behavior can be disabled with --no-mtime (modification time will be set according to current time).