% youtube-dl(1)

NAME

youtube-dl

SYNOPSIS

youtube-dl [OPTIONS] URL [URL...]

DESCRIPTION

youtube-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.x (x being at least 6), and it is not platform specific. It should work in your Unix box, in Windows or in Mac OS X. It is released to the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.

OPTIONS

-h, --help               print this help text and exit
--version                print program version and exit
-U, --update             update this program to latest version
-i, --ignore-errors      continue on download errors
-r, --rate-limit LIMIT   download rate limit (e.g. 50k or 44.6m)
-R, --retries RETRIES    number of retries (default is 10)
--dump-user-agent        display the current browser identification
--user-agent UA          specify a custom user agent
--list-extractors        List all supported extractors and the URLs they
                         would handle

Video Selection: --playlist-start NUMBER playlist video to start at (default is 1) --playlist-end NUMBER playlist video to end at (default is last) --match-title REGEX download only matching titles (regex or caseless sub-string) --reject-title REGEX skip download for matching titles (regex or caseless sub-string) --max-downloads NUMBER Abort after downloading NUMBER files

Filesystem Options: -t, --title use title in file name --id use video ID in file name -l, --literal use literal title in file name -A, --auto-number number downloaded files starting from 00000 -o, --output TEMPLATE output filename template. Use %(stitle)s to get the title, %(uploader)s for the uploader name, %(autonumber)s to get an automatically incremented number, %(ext)s for the filename extension, %(upload_date)s for the upload date (YYYYMMDD), %(extractor)s for the provider (youtube, metacafe, etc), %(id)s for the video id and %% for a literal percent. Use - to output to stdout. -a, --batch-file FILE file containing URLs to download ('-' for stdin) -w, --no-overwrites do not overwrite files -c, --continue resume partially downloaded files --no-continue do not resume partially downloaded files (restart from beginning) --cookies FILE file to read cookies from and dump cookie jar in --no-part do not use .part files --no-mtime do not use the Last-modified header to set the file modification time --write-description write video description to a .description file --write-info-json write video metadata to a .info.json file

Verbosity / Simulation Options: -q, --quiet activates quiet mode -s, --simulate do not download the video and do not write anything to disk --skip-download do not download the video -g, --get-url simulate, quiet but print URL -e, --get-title simulate, quiet but print title --get-thumbnail simulate, quiet but print thumbnail URL --get-description simulate, quiet but print video description --get-filename simulate, quiet but print output filename --get-format simulate, quiet but print output format --no-progress do not print progress bar --console-title display progress in console titlebar -v, --verbose print various debugging information

Video Format Options: -f, --format FORMAT video format code --all-formats download all available video formats --prefer-free-formats prefer free video formats unless a specific one is requested --max-quality FORMAT highest quality format to download -F, --list-formats list all available formats (currently youtube only) --write-srt write video closed captions to a .srt file (currently youtube only) --srt-lang LANG language of the closed captions to download (optional) use IETF language tags like 'en'

Authentication Options: -u, --username USERNAME account username -p, --password PASSWORD account password -n, --netrc use .netrc authentication data

Post-processing Options: -x, --extract-audio convert video files to audio-only files (requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe) --audio-format FORMAT "best", "aac", "vorbis", "mp3", "m4a", or "wav"; best by default --audio-quality QUALITY ffmpeg/avconv audio quality specification, insert a value between 0 (better) and 9 (worse) for VBR or a specific bitrate like 128K (default 5) -k, --keep-video keeps the video file on disk after the post- processing; the video is erased by default

FAQ

Can you please put the -b option back?

Most people asking this question are not aware that youtube-dl now defaults to downloading the highest available quality as reported by YouTube, which will be 1080p or 720p in some cases, so you no longer need the -b option. For some specific videos, maybe YouTube does not report them to be available in a specific high quality format you''re interested in. In that case, simply request it with the -f option and youtube-dl will try to download it.

I get HTTP error 402 when trying to download a video. What's this?

Apparently YouTube requires you to pass a CAPTCHA test if you download too much. We''re considering to provide a way to let you solve the CAPTCHA, but at the moment, your best course of action is pointing a webbrowser to the youtube URL, solving the CAPTCHA, and restart youtube-dl.

I have downloaded a video but how can I play it?

Once the video is fully downloaded, use any video player, such as vlc or mplayer.

The links provided by youtube-dl -g are not working anymore

The URLs youtube-dl outputs require the downloader to have the correct cookies. Use the --cookies option to write the required cookies into a file, and advise your downloader to read cookies from that file. Some sites also require a common user agent to be used, use --dump-user-agent to see the one in use by youtube-dl.

ERROR: no fmt_url_map or conn information found in video info

youtube has switched to a new video info format in July 2011 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. You can update youtube-dl with sudo youtube-dl --update.

ERROR: unable to download video

youtube requires an additional signature since September 2012 which is not supported by old versions of youtube-dl. You can update youtube-dl with sudo youtube-dl --update.

SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character

The error

File "youtube-dl", line 2
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '<27>' ...

means you're using an outdated version of Python. Please update to Python 2.6 or 2.7.

To run youtube-dl under Python 2.5, you'll have to manually check it out like this:

git clone git://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl.git
cd youtube-dl
python -m youtube_dl --help

Please note that Python 2.5 is not supported anymore.

What is this binary file? Where has the code gone?

Since June 2012 (#342) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile, simply unzip it (might need renaming to youtube-dl.zip first on some systems) or clone the git repo to see the code. If you modify the code, you can run it by executing the __main__.py file. To recompile the executable, run make compile.

The exe throws a Runtime error from Visual C++

To run the exe you need to install first the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package.

COPYRIGHT

youtube-dl is released into the public domain by the copyright holders.

This README file was originally written by Daniel Bolton (https://github.com/dbbolton) and is likewise released into the public domain.

BUGS

Bugs and suggestions should be reported at: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues

Please include:

• Your exact command line, like youtube-dl -t "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHlDtZ6Oc3s&feature=channel_video_title". A common mistake is not to escape the &. Putting URLs in quotes should solve this problem.
• The output of youtube-dl --version
• The output of python --version
• The name and version of your Operating System ("Ubuntu 11.04 x64" or "Windows 7 x64" is usually enough).