Question

33

youtube-dl is not working

rated 0 times [ 33] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 49852 / 3 Years ago, sat, july 3, 2021, 5:32:10

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?

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1 Year ago

answered 3 Years ago onomicsiberated · Accepted Answer

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 It is also argued in the bugreport that youtube-dl is a moving target, so the version in the repositories is often out of date.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.