youtube-dl is not working

Question

I am using youtube-dl to download some videos from youtube. But when I write:

youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn_YodiJO6k

I get:

[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] rn_YodiJO6k: Downloading video webpage
[youtube] rn_YodiJO6k: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] rn_YodiJO6k: Extracting video information

ERROR: unable to download video

What am I doing wrong?

Did you try to watch that video? I can't access it from my country. — January, Sep 29 '12 at 13:19
When I press this link Is shows it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn_YodiJO6k — Rondogiannis Aristophanes, Sep 29 '12 at 13:19
Is it a problem with this particular video, or with others as well? — January, Sep 29 '12 at 13:22
This is actually a bug, and I entered a launchpad bug *https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/youtube-dl/+bug/1128610) that refers to the upstream fix. — nealmcb, Feb 18 '13 at 01:56

score 32 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

32

Same question was asked on unix.stackexchange.com.

Youtube changed something to make it incompatible with youtube-dl, it's been fixed in the latest version. Use the following to update youtube-dl until the package system gets the updated version:

sudo youtube-dl -U

Update

As noted by sup in the comments youtube-dl is patched in Ubuntu to disable the --update option because of security concerns (the bugreport is here). It is also argued in the bugreport that youtube-dl is a moving target, so the version in the repositories is often out of date. This makes easy upgrade a necessity.

Easy upgrade is still possible with e.g. pip. Install like this (you may want to uninstall old versions of youtube-dl first):

sudo pip install youtube_dl

Upgrading can now be done with:

sudo pip install --upgrade youtube_dl

As documented on the youtube-dl download page. Note that similar security concerns are attached to this method as well.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

Community

1

answered Sep 29 '12 at 14:24

Thor

3,578

1

This no longer work: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/youtube-dl/+bug/1063469
Install a new version from upstream: sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/2013.11.07/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl (info from here: http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html )
– sup Nov 07 '13 at 21:41
1

@sup: I have added a pip alternative which is almost as convenient. – Thor Nov 08 '13 at 10:39
Cool, only it already is disabled, I edit your answer to reflect it. – sup Nov 08 '13 at 21:03

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 25 '15 at 17:06

6

For me the following lines worked:

sudo apt-get remove -y youtube-dl
wget -O - https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl | sudo tee /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl > /dev/null
sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
hash -r

edited Feb 25 '15 at 17:06

David Foerster

36,264
56
94
147

answered Feb 25 '15 at 16:47

Nadia

61

Adding the pip install bin folder to the path could also help. – Timo Dec 25 '20 at 21:34

score -6 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 26 '13 at 17:38

-6

You have to put double quotes (") before and after the URL of the video to make it work. I don't think it's a bug.

For example:

youtube-dl "<video-URL>"

edited Sep 26 '13 at 17:38

Alaa Ali

31,535

answered Sep 26 '13 at 16:38

S. Lootz

1

This won't solve the issue. – David Foerster Feb 25 '15 at 17:08

youtube-dl is not working

3 Answers3

Update

Linked