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I have been using youtube-dl to download videos from YouTube, but suddenly it stopped working:

youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wglrcytdE9Y&feature=related"

[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] wglrcytdE9Y: Downloading video webpage
[youtube] wglrcytdE9Y: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] wglrcytdE9Y: Extracting video information

ERROR: unable to download video

youtube-dl --version
2012.02.27
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3 Answers

up vote 12 down vote accepted

I'm getting this with every video, even videos that have previously worked. The URL that youtube-dl attempts to download from is returning a 403 error, so I suspect Youtube changed something internally that broke the script (not for the first time).

There's been quite a bit of youtube-dl development activity today, and the latest version in github works, so you should probably pull that. youtube-dl can do this automatically with the -U flag:

$ youtube-dl -U
Updating to latest version...
Updated youtube-dl. Restart youtube-dl to use the new version.
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Works! Didn't know about the -U flag - is that the same as upgrading with aptitude? (I use sid.) – Emanuel Berg Sep 27 '12 at 19:30
1  
@EmanuelBerg No, it downloads the latest version from github directly. Most likely the version in your package manager is still too old – Michael Mrozek♦ Sep 27 '12 at 19:51
up vote 3 down vote

Check this fix:

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl.git
sudo apt-get install zip
nano youtube_dl/InfoExtractors.py (modify line 405)
make compile
./youtube-dl
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up vote -4 down vote

A common mistake is not escaping the &. Putting the URL in quotes should solve this problem:

$ youtube-dl -t "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHlDtZ6Oc3s&feature=channel_video_title"
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Its quoted in OP's question. – derobert Sep 27 '12 at 19:47
Besides it already being correct in the question, this mistake wouldn't cause the error he got – Michael Mrozek♦ Sep 27 '12 at 19:55

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