### Authentication with `.netrc` file
-You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for extractors that support authentication (by providing login and password with `--username` and `--password`) in order not to pass credentials as command line arguments on every youtube-dl execution and prevent tracking plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can achieve this using a [`.netrc` file](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/.netrc/info) on per extractor basis. For that you will need to create a `.netrc` file in your `$HOME` and restrict permissions to read/write by you only:
+You may also want to configure automatic credentials storage for extractors that support authentication (by providing login and password with `--username` and `--password`) in order not to pass credentials as command line arguments on every youtube-dl execution and prevent tracking plain text passwords in the shell command history. You can achieve this using a [`.netrc` file](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/.netrc/info) on a per extractor basis. For that you will need to create a `.netrc` file in your `$HOME` and restrict permissions to read/write by only you:
```
touch $HOME/.netrc
chmod a-rwx,u+rw $HOME/.netrc
```
-After that you can add credentials for extractor in the following format, where *extractor* is the name of extractor in lowercase:
+After that you can add credentials for an extractor in the following format, where *extractor* is the name of the extractor in lowercase:
```
machine <extractor> login <login> password <password>
```
- `disc_number`: Number of the disc or other physical medium the track belongs to
- `release_year`: Year (YYYY) when the album was released
-Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in output template will be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. Note that some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since they depend on the metadata obtained by particular extractor, such sequences will be replaced with `NA`.
+Each aforementioned sequence when referenced in an output template will be replaced by the actual value corresponding to the sequence name. Note that some of the sequences are not guaranteed to be present since they depend on the metadata obtained by a particular extractor. Such sequences will be replaced with `NA`.
-For example for `-o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s` and mp4 video with title `youtube-dl test video` and id `BaW_jenozKcj` this will result in a `youtube-dl test video-BaW_jenozKcj.mp4` file created in the current directory.
+For example for `-o %(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s` and an mp4 video with title `youtube-dl test video` and id `BaW_jenozKcj`, this will result in a `youtube-dl test video-BaW_jenozKcj.mp4` file created in the current directory.
-Output template can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g. `-o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s'` that will result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for you.
+Output templates can also contain arbitrary hierarchical path, e.g. `-o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s'` which will result in downloading each video in a directory corresponding to this path template. Any missing directory will be automatically created for you.
-To specify percent literal in output template use `%%`. To output to stdout use `-o -`.
+To use percent literals in an output template use `%%`. To output to stdout use `-o -`.
The current default template is `%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s`.
#### Output template and Windows batch files
-If you are using output template inside a Windows batch file then you must escape plain percent characters (`%`) by doubling, so that `-o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"` should become `-o "%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s"`. However you should not touch `%`'s that are not plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion should stay intact: `-o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s"`.
+If you are using an output template inside a Windows batch file then you must escape plain percent characters (`%`) by doubling, so that `-o "%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"` should become `-o "%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s"`. However you should not touch `%`'s that are not plain characters, e.g. environment variables for expansion should stay intact: `-o "C:\%HOMEPATH%\Desktop\%%(title)s.%%(ext)s"`.
#### Output template examples
By default youtube-dl tries to download the best available quality, i.e. if you want the best quality you **don't need** to pass any special options, youtube-dl will guess it for you by **default**.
-But sometimes you may want to download in a different format, for example when you are on a slow or intermittent connection. The key mechanism for achieving this is so called *format selection* based on which you can explicitly specify desired format, select formats based on some criterion or criteria, setup precedence and much more.
+But sometimes you may want to download in a different format, for example when you are on a slow or intermittent connection. The key mechanism for achieving this is so-called *format selection* based on which you can explicitly specify desired format, select formats based on some criterion or criteria, setup precedence and much more.
The general syntax for format selection is `--format FORMAT` or shorter `-f FORMAT` where `FORMAT` is a *selector expression*, i.e. an expression that describes format or formats you would like to download.
The simplest case is requesting a specific format, for example with `-f 22` you can download the format with format code equal to 22. You can get the list of available format codes for particular video using `--list-formats` or `-F`. Note that these format codes are extractor specific.
-You can also use a file extension (currently `3gp`, `aac`, `flv`, `m4a`, `mp3`, `mp4`, `ogg`, `wav`, `webm` are supported) to download best quality format of particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. `-f webm` will download best quality format with `webm` extension served as a single file.
+You can also use a file extension (currently `3gp`, `aac`, `flv`, `m4a`, `mp3`, `mp4`, `ogg`, `wav`, `webm` are supported) to download the best quality format of a particular file extension served as a single file, e.g. `-f webm` will download the best quality format with the `webm` extension served as a single file.
-You can also use special names to select particular edge case format:
- - `best`: Select best quality format represented by single file with video and audio
- - `worst`: Select worst quality format represented by single file with video and audio
- - `bestvideo`: Select best quality video only format (e.g. DASH video), may not be available
- - `worstvideo`: Select worst quality video only format, may not be available
- - `bestaudio`: Select best quality audio only format, may not be available
- - `worstaudio`: Select worst quality audio only format, may not be available
+You can also use special names to select particular edge case formats:
+ - `best`: Select the best quality format represented by a single file with video and audio.
+ - `worst`: Select the worst quality format represented by a single file with video and audio.
+ - `bestvideo`: Select the best quality video-only format (e.g. DASH video). May not be available.
+ - `worstvideo`: Select the worst quality video-only format. May not be available.
+ - `bestaudio`: Select the best quality audio only-format. May not be available.
+ - `worstaudio`: Select the worst quality audio only-format. May not be available.
-For example, to download worst quality video only format you can use `-f worstvideo`.
+For example, to download the worst quality video-only format you can use `-f worstvideo`.
If you want to download multiple videos and they don't have the same formats available, you can specify the order of preference using slashes. Note that slash is left-associative, i.e. formats on the left hand side are preferred, for example `-f 22/17/18` will download format 22 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 17 if it's available, otherwise it will download format 18 if it's available, otherwise it will complain that no suitable formats are available for download.
-If you want to download several formats of the same video use comma as a separator, e.g. `-f 22,17,18` will download all these three formats, of course if they are available. Or more sophisticated example combined with precedence feature `-f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio`.
+If you want to download several formats of the same video use a comma as a separator, e.g. `-f 22,17,18` will download all these three formats, of course if they are available. Or a more sophisticated example combined with the precedence feature: `-f 136/137/mp4/bestvideo,140/m4a/bestaudio`.
You can also filter the video formats by putting a condition in brackets, as in `-f "best[height=720]"` (or `-f "[filesize>10M]"`).
- `protocol`: The protocol that will be used for the actual download, lower-case. `http`, `https`, `rtsp`, `rtmp`, `rtmpe`, `m3u8`, or `m3u8_native`
- `format_id`: A short description of the format
-Note that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particular extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by video hoster.
+Note that none of the aforementioned meta fields are guaranteed to be present since this solely depends on the metadata obtained by particular extractor, i.e. the metadata offered by the video hoster.
Formats for which the value is not known are excluded unless you put a question mark (`?`) after the operator. You can combine format filters, so `-f "[height <=? 720][tbr>500]"` selects up to 720p videos (or videos where the height is not known) with a bitrate of at least 500 KBit/s.
-You can merge the video and audio of two formats into a single file using `-f <video-format>+<audio-format>` (requires ffmpeg or avconv installed), for example `-f bestvideo+bestaudio` will download best video only format, best audio only format and mux them together with ffmpeg/avconv.
+You can merge the video and audio of two formats into a single file using `-f <video-format>+<audio-format>` (requires ffmpeg or avconv installed), for example `-f bestvideo+bestaudio` will download the best video-only format, the best audio-only format and mux them together with ffmpeg/avconv.
Format selectors can also be grouped using parentheses, for example if you want to download the best mp4 and webm formats with a height lower than 480 you can use `-f '(mp4,webm)[height<480]'`.
-Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26 youtube-dl uses `-f bestvideo+bestaudio/best` as default format selection (see [#5447](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/5447), [#5456](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/5456)). If ffmpeg or avconv are installed this results in downloading `bestvideo` and `bestaudio` separately and muxing them together into a single file giving the best overall quality available. Otherwise it falls back to `best` and results in downloading the best available quality served as a single file. `best` is also needed for videos that don't come from YouTube because they don't provide the audio and video in two different files. If you want to only download some DASH formats (for example if you are not interested in getting videos with a resolution higher than 1080p), you can add `-f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best` to your configuration file. Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream to `stdout` (and most likely to pipe it to your media player then), i.e. you explicitly specify output template as `-o -`, youtube-dl still uses `-f best` format selection in order to start content delivery immediately to your player and not to wait until `bestvideo` and `bestaudio` are downloaded and muxed.
+Since the end of April 2015 and version 2015.04.26, youtube-dl uses `-f bestvideo+bestaudio/best` as the default format selection (see [#5447](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/5447), [#5456](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/5456)). If ffmpeg or avconv are installed this results in downloading `bestvideo` and `bestaudio` separately and muxing them together into a single file giving the best overall quality available. Otherwise it falls back to `best` and results in downloading the best available quality served as a single file. `best` is also needed for videos that don't come from YouTube because they don't provide the audio and video in two different files. If you want to only download some DASH formats (for example if you are not interested in getting videos with a resolution higher than 1080p), you can add `-f bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best` to your configuration file. Note that if you use youtube-dl to stream to `stdout` (and most likely to pipe it to your media player then), i.e. you explicitly specify output template as `-o -`, youtube-dl still uses `-f best` format selection in order to start content delivery immediately to your player and not to wait until `bestvideo` and `bestaudio` are downloaded and muxed.
If you want to preserve the old format selection behavior (prior to youtube-dl 2015.04.26), i.e. you want to download the best available quality media served as a single file, you should explicitly specify your choice with `-f best`. You may want to add it to the [configuration file](#configuration) in order not to type it every time you run youtube-dl.
This section introduces a guide lines for writing idiomatic, robust and future-proof extractor code.
-Extractors are very fragile by nature since they depend on the layout of the source data provided by 3rd party media hoster out of your control and this layout tend to change. As an extractor implementer your task is not only to write code that will extract media links and metadata correctly but also to minimize code dependency on source's layout changes and even to make the code foresee potential future changes and be ready for that. This is important because it will allow extractor not to break on minor layout changes thus keeping old youtube-dl versions working. Even though this breakage issue is easily fixed by emitting a new version of youtube-dl with fix incorporated all the previous version become broken in all repositories and distros' packages that may not be so prompt in fetching the update from us. Needless to say some may never receive an update at all that is possible for non rolling release distros.
+Extractors are very fragile by nature since they depend on the layout of the source data provided by 3rd party media hosters out of your control and this layout tends to change. As an extractor implementer your task is not only to write code that will extract media links and metadata correctly but also to minimize dependency on the source's layout and even to make the code foresee potential future changes and be ready for that. This is important because it will allow the extractor not to break on minor layout changes thus keeping old youtube-dl versions working. Even though this breakage issue is easily fixed by emitting a new version of youtube-dl with a fix incorporated, all the previous versions become broken in all repositories and distros' packages that may not be so prompt in fetching the update from us. Needless to say, some non rolling release distros may never receive an update at all.
### Mandatory and optional metafields
-For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor extracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by [information dictionary](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L75-L257) or simply *info dict*. Only the following meta fields in *info dict* are considered mandatory for successful extraction process by youtube-dl:
+For extraction to work youtube-dl relies on metadata your extractor extracts and provides to youtube-dl expressed by an [information dictionary](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L75-L257) or simply *info dict*. Only the following meta fields in the *info dict* are considered mandatory for a successful extraction process by youtube-dl:
- `id` (media identifier)
- `title` (media title)
- `url` (media download URL) or `formats`
-In fact only the last option is technically mandatory (i.e. if you can't figure out the download location of the media the extraction does not make any sense). But by convention youtube-dl also treats `id` and `title` to be mandatory. Thus aforementioned metafields are the critical data the extraction does not make any sense without and if any of them fail to be extracted then extractor is considered completely broken.
+In fact only the last option is technically mandatory (i.e. if you can't figure out the download location of the media the extraction does not make any sense). But by convention youtube-dl also treats `id` and `title` as mandatory. Thus the aforementioned metafields are the critical data that the extraction does not make any sense without and if any of them fail to be extracted then the extractor is considered completely broken.
-[Any field](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L149-L257) apart from the aforementioned ones are considered **optional**. That means that extraction should be **tolerate** to situations when sources for these fields can potentially be unavailable (even if they are always available at the moment) and **future-proof** in order not to break the extraction of general purpose mandatory fields.
+[Any field](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py#L149-L257) apart from the aforementioned ones are considered **optional**. That means that extraction should be **tolerant** to situations when sources for these fields can potentially be unavailable (even if they are always available at the moment) and **future-proof** in order not to break the extraction of general purpose mandatory fields.
#### Example
}
```
-Assume you want to extract `summary` and put into resulting info dict as `description`. Since `description` is optional metafield you should be ready that this key may be missing from the `meta` dict, so that you should extract it like:
+Assume you want to extract `summary` and put it into the resulting info dict as `description`. Since `description` is an optional metafield you should be ready that this key may be missing from the `meta` dict, so that you should extract it like:
```python
description = meta.get('summary') # correct
description = meta['summary'] # incorrect
```
-The latter will break extraction process with `KeyError` if `summary` disappears from `meta` at some time later but with former approach extraction will just go ahead with `description` set to `None` that is perfectly fine (remember `None` is equivalent for absence of data).
+The latter will break extraction process with `KeyError` if `summary` disappears from `meta` at some later time but with the former approach extraction will just go ahead with `description` set to `None` which is perfectly fine (remember `None` is equivalent to the absence of data).
Similarly, you should pass `fatal=False` when extracting optional data from a webpage with `_search_regex`, `_html_search_regex` or similar methods, for instance:
webpage, 'description', default=None)
```
-On failure this code will silently continue the extraction with `description` set to `None`. That is useful for metafields that are known to may or may not be present.
+On failure this code will silently continue the extraction with `description` set to `None`. That is useful for metafields that may or may not be present.
### Provide fallbacks
-When extracting metadata try to provide several scenarios for that. For example if `title` is present in several places/sources try extracting from at least some of them. This would make it more future-proof in case some of the sources became unavailable.
+When extracting metadata try to do so from multiple sources. For example if `title` is present in several places, try extracting from at least some of them. This makes it more future-proof in case some of the sources become unavailable.
#### Example
-Say `meta` from previous example has a `title` and you are about to extract it. Since `title` is mandatory meta field you should end up with something like:
+Say `meta` from the previous example has a `title` and you are about to extract it. Since `title` is a mandatory meta field you should end up with something like:
```python
title = meta['title']
```
-If `title` disappeares from `meta` in future due to some changes on hoster's side the extraction would fail since `title` is mandatory. That's expected.
+If `title` disappeares from `meta` in future due to some changes on the hoster's side the extraction would fail since `title` is mandatory. That's expected.
Assume that you have some another source you can extract `title` from, for example `og:title` HTML meta of a `webpage`. In this case you can provide a fallback scenario:
webpage, 'title', group='title')
```
-Note how you tolerate potential changes in `style` attribute's value or switch from using double quotes to single for `class` attribute:
+Note how you tolerate potential changes in the `style` attribute's value or switch from using double quotes to single for `class` attribute:
The code definitely should not look like:
# BUGS
-Bugs and suggestions should be reported at: <https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues>. Unless you were prompted so or there is another pertinent reason (e.g. GitHub fails to accept the bug report), please do not send bug reports via personal email. For discussions, join us in the IRC channel [#youtube-dl](irc://chat.freenode.net/#youtube-dl) on freenode ([webchat](http://webchat.freenode.net/?randomnick=1&channels=youtube-dl)).
+Bugs and suggestions should be reported at: <https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues>. Unless you were prompted to or there is another pertinent reason (e.g. GitHub fails to accept the bug report), please do not send bug reports via personal email. For discussions, join us in the IRC channel [#youtube-dl](irc://chat.freenode.net/#youtube-dl) on freenode ([webchat](http://webchat.freenode.net/?randomnick=1&channels=youtube-dl)).
**Please include the full output of youtube-dl when run with `-v`**, i.e. **add** `-v` flag to **your command line**, copy the **whole** output and post it in the issue body wrapped in \`\`\` for better formatting. It should look similar to this:
```
[debug] Proxy map: {}
...
```
-**Do not post screenshots of verbose log only plain text is acceptable.**
+**Do not post screenshots of verbose logs; only plain text is acceptable.**
The output (including the first lines) contains important debugging information. Issues without the full output are often not reproducible and therefore do not get solved in short order, if ever.
### Is your question about youtube-dl?
-It may sound strange, but some bug reports we receive are completely unrelated to youtube-dl and relate to a different or even the reporter's own application. Please make sure that you are actually using youtube-dl. If you are using a UI for youtube-dl, report the bug to the maintainer of the actual application providing the UI. On the other hand, if your UI for youtube-dl fails in some way you believe is related to youtube-dl, by all means, go ahead and report the bug.
+It may sound strange, but some bug reports we receive are completely unrelated to youtube-dl and relate to a different, or even the reporter's own, application. Please make sure that you are actually using youtube-dl. If you are using a UI for youtube-dl, report the bug to the maintainer of the actual application providing the UI. On the other hand, if your UI for youtube-dl fails in some way you believe is related to youtube-dl, by all means, go ahead and report the bug.
# COPYRIGHT
projects / youtube-dl / commitdiff