Help talk:Converting video/archives 2

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How to remove the audio of a video file?

In this help page, you mention to "Consider removing the audio…". I suggest to make this words a link to another page that explains how to do it easily & free of charge without violating the law anywhere on this planet.--Sae1962 (talk) 06:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Something like this with avconv:
avconv -i infile -c copy -an outfile
--AVRS (talk) 13:14, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Better approach to organizing this help page

This help page provides useful technical details on how to contribute videos to Commons. However, the structure of the page is one that organizes the more technical and involved solutions first, while burying some of the more approachable tools further down the page.

To increase clarity with the intent of improving contributions I recommend we list the easier-to-use (especially for beginners and contributors that do not prefer the command line) tools first on the page. Below is a suggested reorganization. I would appreciate feedback before making any changes.

  1. General conversion tips
  2. Online conversion tools
    1. Videoconvert
    2. Video2commons
    3. Internet Archive
    4. Convert-video-online.com
    5. Online-convert.com
  3. Multi-platform command-line conversion tools
    1. ffmpeg
      1. .webm
      2. .ogv
      3. Note on pixel formats
    2. avconv
    3. ffmpeg2theora
    4. Firefogg
    5. MPlayer
    6. OggConvert
    7. VLC media player
    8. XiphQT
  4. Tools for Windows
  5. Tools for Mac OS
  6. Tools for Linux
  7. Multi-platform editing tools
  8. See also
  9. External links

Ckoerner (talk) 15:53, 1 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I made the suggested reorganization. If it's not desired please revert and discuss. Ckoerner (talk) 02:59, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Firefogg outdated

Since Firefox doesn't allow to install unsigned Addons, and only Addons from AMO are signed, you just can't use Firefogg any longer. I wasn't able to install it. The only way to use it - as far as I know - is to use a special developer version of FF or just an fork of it. If I'm not totally wrong Firefogg needs unfortunately to be removed from this help page and from the UploadWizard help-text that pops up when you try to upload an non-fitting video format. --#Reaper (talk) 19:59, 1 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion Wikimedia Foundation sponsor an open source cut/transcode tool

See this idea at meta 'IdeaLab' / 'Inspire'. If you would like WMF to support an open source easy way to cut and transcode video for upload to commons, please consider endorsing the idea or adding your own ideas. Pratyeka (talk) 11:30, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Convert or not convert

Is it necessary to record to a different format first before converting to WebM? Are there tools that can save to WebM directly? Also, what are the best formats to save to before converting to WebM? SharkD  Talk  23:12, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I found a tool called Shotcut that saves directly to WebM. No intermediate format required AFAIK. SharkD  Talk  22:11, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Transcoding errors with files converted from Mp4 to WebM

I got errors with files converted from Mp4 to WebM. The following file resulted in transcoding errors:

The file caused transcoding errors, see section "Transcode status" at the file description pages. Some transcodings worked fine, others caused errors. Multiple "Reset transcode" actions resulted in remaining errors. It's a bit curious:

  • First, transcodings to 160P and 240P resulted with success – 360P, 480P and 720P caused errors.
  • Later, transcodings to 160P, 240P and 360P resulted with success – 480P and 720P caused errors.

My assumption is, the "transcoding machine" at Commons has an operational disruption. Any other ideas? Should I report the supposed bug? Where? Or should I wait, repeat "Reset transcode" actions later, hoping time will solve the problem? Hasenläufer 15:00, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I opened a task at Phabricator: Problems with transcoding at Wikimedia Commons Hasenläufer 16:48, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The above task is now fixed. @Revent and Xenotron: I see many recent transcode resets from you in Special:Log/timedmediahandler. Could you retry? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 01:06, 18 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Zhuyifei1999: Great! I did not expect, this problem could be solved so quickly. Thanks to all who have been involved in this issue and have helped to solve this problem! --Hasenläufer 11:57, 18 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

New top section - "Easiest way for most users"

I find most of this guide to be incomprehensible and unusable. My expectation for a video upload service is that it should work like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, or any of the other popular video hosts. I think that it is reasonable for anyone to use YouTube as a baseline expectation of what is normal, because that is how almost everyone who uploads video experiences the process. I appreciate Wikimedia Commons enthusiasm for free and open software but the mission of Commons is to collect and sort files, and not to advocate for free software in all circumstances. To date, advocacy of free software has been a barrier to simply and concisely explaining how most users should upload their content into Commons.

When this guide was setup in 2006 it was modest, and by 2012 it was still both complicated and short on info. Here we are in 2017 and I think the guide is as challenging to use as when it was first written, with the exception that mixed in with complicated info there are also some tools which typical uploaders can use if they find them among other options. Wikimedia Commons' competition in video hosting including Google and Facebook have invested several billion US$ over the past 10 years in making video uploads friendly and setting user expectations. In comparison, Wikimedia Commons might have consumed a few million dollars in development, or much less than 0.1% of what the competition has spent. Money is not the answer to everything but eventually enough money and time catches up, and I think we need to adapt with the times and attempt to give content contributors what they should reasonably expect.

I just wrote a new section called "Easiest way for most users" in which I recommend Vimeo as the file host of choice as a channel for getting videos into Commons. We have some software, Commons:video2commons, which works with Vimeo more easily than with any other video service. I would like to set expectations in the Commons community that if a typical user asks about how to get video into Commons, then the pathway from Vimeo through video2commons is the default advice we give for starting the conversation. This is the advice that is more likely to work for more people in more circumstances than anything else anyone has proposed. I would like to deprecate and condense some of the options, as typical uploaders will not use the command line, have Linux, or be able to use software designed for trained professionals. Also, I think that we should not make any conversion tool prominent or recommended unless we know something about its provenance and reliability. Vimeo is a big company with their own reputation and is stable for what they are, and the video2commons tool is the most developed conversion and import tool which has come from the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia community.

Thoughts from others? Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:05, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I worked through this process, uploading my original file to Vimeo and then trying to use video2commons, but I get this error message: Error: An exception occurred: DownloadError: ERROR: This video is protected by a password, use the --video-password option. Not sure why the video is protected by password or how to lift that barrier. The video is set to public and tagged with the proper CC license. JECason (talk) 17:50, 9 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

[This https://keepv.id/30/] site can download videos in webm format from the sites you mentioned.

Shubhrajit Sadhukhan (talk) 10:16, 5 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

problems creating WebM with ffmpeg

I just tried:

Video (with audio):

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec vp9 -acodec libopus output.webm

as suggested on this page. I got:

Unknown encoder 'vp9'

This was using ffmpeg version 3.1.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers under macOS High Sierra v. 10.13.2. I also tried the following:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.webm

This returned the following:

Encoder (codec vp8) not found for output stream #0:0

Any suggestions on how to get past this? E.g., how can I get and install an encoder that will work for this?

This section suggests that Mac users "can use the ffmpegmac binaries)". I'm not eager to try that, because doing so might break something else. A month from now I could get a cryptic error message I don't understand or (worse) a wrong answer without warning.

If someone else tells me that ffmpegmac will likely solve this problem and will not likely break something else, I may try it. Thanks to all those who have helped create this "Help" page. DavidMCEddy (talk) 16:07, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

or .ogv

I also tried to create a .ogv file using the following from this help file:
ffprobe -show_entries stream=codec_name,codec_type:format=format_name,duration -of compact "demo.mp4"
ffmpeg -i "demo.mp4" -c:v libtheora -q:v 7 -c:a libvorbis -q:a 6 "demo.ogv"
ffmpeg -i "demo.mp4" -c:v libtheora -q:v 7 -c:a flac -sample_fmt s16 "demo.ogv"
ffmpeg -i "demo.mp4" -c:v libtheora -q:v 7 -an "demo.ogv"
The ffprobe seemed to work in the sense that it returned some information without an obvious error message. In skimming the output, I did not see anything that I found useful -- other than the absence of an obvious error message.
However, the three "ffmpeg" commands all returned the following error message:
Unknown encoder 'libtheora'
Suggestions? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 16:19, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'm about 11 months late but I'll write this down just in case you or someone else is still having this problem.
The FFmpeg parameters on the VP9 examples were outdated and I'm not sure if they were ever correct. For one, the -vcodec and -acodec parameters were replaced by -c:v and -c:a many years ago, although I believe they're aliased to the correct values automatically so you could still use them. Second, to my knowledge vp9 and vp8 have never been valid codec values in FFmpeg which is why FFmpeg complained they were not found. The correct ones are actually libvpx-vp9 for VP9 and just libvpx for VP8. I fixed the examples on the page to reflect this.
From the Unknown encoder 'libtheora' error you're getting seems to me that your version of FFmpeg doesn't come with libtheora. This would indicate that whoever built your version of FFmpeg thought it unnecessary to include it for whatever reason. To confirm this you can run the ffmpeg command without any switches or inputs; there should be a long list of configuration options your FFmpeg was compiled with. If --enable-libtheora isn't one of them, you need to get a version of FFmpeg that was built with libtheora support.
Unfortunately I know nothing about installing software on Mac. However, there seems to be two sources for Mac builds linked from FFmpeg's download page and at least the first one seems to be built with libtheora. So you could try that. -- Veikk0.ma (talk) 08:19, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Updated the FFmpeg section, testing would be appreciated

I recently learned that using two-pass with constant quality is the recommended way to use libvpx-vp9 since this gives the best compression efficiency. However, I don't actually have Windows or OS X computers to test the commands on, just a Linux one. So I'd appreciate if someone could verify that the FFmpeg command lines actually work on those platforms.

I'm also considering removing the avconv section entirely since I'm not aware of any significant operating systems / Linux distributions still shipping libav instead of FFmpeg, the exception being Ubuntu 14.04 which will only be supported until the end of April this year. If there are no objections I'll be removing that section at some point. -- Veikk0.ma (talk) 21:39, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for updating these sections! The Windows commands work for me. I don't have access to a Mac right now, but I can't imagine ffmpeg would act any differently than on Linux, especially if it's installed via a package manager like Homebrew, which will also install any necessary dependencies.
I second removing libav, as well. Most VP9 guides, like [1] and [2], use ffmpeg in their examples, and it seems more actively developed than libav. clpo13(talk) 22:26, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for this. The two-pass commands worked fine on OS X. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:57, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Why isn't the Wikimedia Tool listed more prominently?

I find it odd that this article suggests going to Vimeo rather than just using the Wikimedia tool. Is there any good reason for that? - Sdkb (talk) 20:45, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Clpo13 and Hermolaou: per your recent edits, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this. Sdkb (talk) 17:39, 11 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Sdkb: the videoconvert tool you linked doesn't appear to be working. I'm not sure why uploading to Vimeo is presented as the easiest option, though I think that section of the page is quite old and may have made more sense in the past. Vimeo does offer a wide selection of Creative Commons licenses, so that might be part of it, but as far as I know, it doesn't transcode into free formats, which is the biggest barrier to uploading to Commons. The video2commons tool can be used for direct uploads, in addition to transferring from services like Vimeo and YouTube, but direct uploads might not have been an option when that part of the page was written. I have no objection to rewriting the intro to this page to emphasize Wikimedia tools. clpo13(talk) 17:54, 11 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yeah, it's broken for me too. That's lovely haha. I don't have the expertise to know what is really the best tool, but from just a user-design perspective, what I'd want from a page like this is a big button near the top saying effectively "click here to go to the best video conversion tool", with all the other options and technical stuff below included for editors really trying to do something fancy. All the details are fine for that minority, but I think most people who come here just want to do a simple conversion so they can upload their video, and they shouldn't be buried in a page this detailed and complex. Sdkb (talk) 18:06, 11 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Sdkb: I need to do more research and testing of this, and then hopefully, if I get a chance, I'll share my findings some time later. In the meanwhile, one idea that came to mind is going to YouTube instead of Vimeo. YouTube seems to convert to WebM format. Assuming there's nothing wrong with downloading from YouTube, we can use aTube Catcher or other downloaders to download videos in required formats.

Hermolaou (talk) 10:49, 14 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would favor making the primary recommendation something based on free software, that does not require interacting with a commercial site that requires an account and data sharing. Between Handbrake and VLC, and perhaps other options, I think by 2020 there are options that are easy enough for a beginner. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 17:22, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

mp4 should be accepted also

I am suggesting that mp4 should be accepted in Wikipedia to enable somebody like me to take part in the unique offer wiki loves Africa is giving to Africa where l come from. Thank you Regina Obilo (talk) 14:31, 17 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Regina Obilo: In 2014 there was a discussion about this at Commons:Requests for comment/MP4 Video. Wiki community said no, because MP4 is proprietary technology and not free and open. However, eventually the patent expires, and I think this may be in 2021. I asked about this at Commons_talk:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video#6_years_later_-_patents_expiring_-_when_is_MP4_free_enough?. I think everyone would want MP4 if it were a free format. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:34, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Free software VLC works well, update the section?

I recently found that VLC worked very well for converting an MP4 from my Android phone. I suspect the section on VLC on this page was written long ago; I think it could use an update. I don't know much about how to minimize lossiness, but the default settings seemed to work pretty well. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 17:19, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

CRF

The help page says: “In general, the higher the video resolution the higher the value [CRF] can be set since VP9 is more efficient at higher resolutions.” However, Google recommends the opposite. —Dexxor (talk) 12:32, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It would be great if the help page here on Commons recommended CRF values for different resolutions and frame rates. People say that those depend on the character of the input video and should be found by trial and error by comparing visual artifacts in the input and the output. I found that ffmpeg washes too much of minor detail out of a 4K video (UHD 3840x1080, 60 FPS) if given -crf 30, but it is comparatively bearable if given -crf 15 instead. I've taken that from the section which you linked above in the recommendations from Google. Thank you!--Роман Рябенко (talk) 18:23, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Commons:Village_pump#We_need_to_talk_about_how_hostile_Commons_is_to_video_uploaders

 You are invited to join the discussion at Commons:Village_pump#We_need_to_talk_about_how_hostile_Commons_is_to_video_uploaders. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:28, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Czech translation proofreading – kontrola českého překladu

Zdravím. Píšu v češtině, neboť cílím především na české překladatele a přispěvatele. Na mé diskusní stránce mého návrhu překladu jsem založil sekci ke kontrole překladu. Samotný návrh by měl přijít na umístění stránky Help:Konverze videa, a na případné korektury či návrhy na zlepšení dávám prostor do konce příštího týdne, v pátek 3. března pak přeložená stránka nápovědy půjde na své místo, kam patří. Pokud se do té doby korektury či návrhy ke zlepšení neobjeví, stránka tam půjde tak, jak je nyní napsaná. Korektury lze pak posléze doplnit, takže to není konec světa. :-)

I wrote this in Czech as this is info for Czech translaters and contributors. -- Polda18 (talk page • contributions) 10:13, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We should be able to delete most of this page

To keep harping on the usability issues I mentioned above, what this page should have to actually be useful to editors is not a gazillion complicated instructions, but just a single button directing editors to the best tool for conversion, which will guide them through the conversion process in an intuitive enough way that it doesn't require extensive documentation. Everything else should ideally be blown up—no one wants to have to dig through a full manual of instructions rather than just converting their video and moving on. Sdkb (talk) 22:01, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sdkb Please could you do that and let me know - because I just want to upload a tiny video I shot on iphone and after a couple of hours trying I still cannot figure out how to do it. I guess lots of other iphone users must be confused too. Thanks in advance. Chidgk1 (talk) 07:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The only issue is that video conversion is a very complex process that a lot of things happen during it. There has to be right settings for quality, right settings for resolution, and of course right codec choice. It's not simple plop it in and let it do its magic. Because if you do the conversion wrong, the resulting video will be in very bad quality or even end up unplayable. But I do agree that people should at least be given an option to do the conversion at least somehow easily, where they just need to specify what format it should be in, what level of quality the video has to be in, and the conversion tool sets the rest of the options according to best possible outcome regarding of the specified parameters. In fact, one of these tools is actually hosted on Toolsforge by Wikimedia. This tool takes most popular formats and converts them to .webm VP9 video codec with Opus audio codec. It doesn't require any kind of settings (although it could be specified), whatever configuration is missing, a default (which is best possible for specified input file) will be used instead. The additional info that is described on the help page is more for technical people who like to experiment. Majority of people will just stop at the first option, which is the Toolsforge converter. Polda18 (talk page • contributions) 09:34, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The preview is a green screen

File:Frescobaldi exemple hauteur notes jaidubontabac macOSX.ogg
Preview with a green screen.

Hello all,

I uploaded an .ogg file (screenshot by Quicktime Player 10.3, converted by VLC 3.0.14, under OS X 10.9.5) here: File:Frescobaldi exemple hauteur notes jaidubontabac macOSX.ogg.

You can see that the preview is a green screen instead of a picture from the movie.

Did I do something wrong and is there anything I can do to solve this?

Regards

Cdang (talk) 19:44, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not quite sure what actually happened, but it could be the MediaWiki software being confused with the file extension as .ogg is usually used for audio only files (Vorbis or Opus), whereas for the OGG video format Theora, extension .ogv is used instead. However, it is recommended to use .webm with VP9 encoding instead nowadays. It may be possible that the encoding of the video format itself is bad or corrupted. It may work on your machine, but MediaWiki software is confused by the format. Try different settings, experiment a little bit, and you'll see. Polda18 (talk page • contributions) 10:17, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanx for your answer Polda18. Regards
Cdang (talk) 13:20, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How to blur parts of the screen?

Hello,

one of my video contains logos and icons that are not free. I'd like to blur them (they are at fixed placed, this is a screenshot video) but don't know how to process. Any hint?

Cdang (talk) 13:22, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think the best solution is to use some sort of advanced video editing tool. I'd suggest using Shotcut, which is free and open source, and supports variety of different output formats. For Commons, you need to export the video into .webm or .ogv format (VP9 or Theora). WebM video is recommended (VP9), so I'd stick with that.
To edit some particular part of the video and blur it, I'd suggest dragging the video to it, duplicate it over an additional video layer (must be placed above the base layer), and applying crop mask filter and blur filter. Blur is going to be fixed, but if it's a video taken by camera or it's a moving screen capture, the masked part is probably going to move, so you'll need keyframe tracking for the mask movement. You can always mask out a little bit larger area to be blured and you don't need to key every single frame, so you can add a simple movement animation. Just make sure that there is as much of the logo blurred as possible. If it's a basic static screenshot, then you only have to blur the logos without any movement animation. Another solution would be simply edit the original screenshot, blur the logos and icons in the screenshot itself and save as a new version (new file), then render a new version of the video (into a new file), which will be the file that is going to be uploaded. To edit the screenshot, you need an image editor that is capable of applying filters. Try GIMP, which is free and open source. Polda18 (discussion • contributions) 14:16, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot Polda18, I'll try that.
Regards
Cdang (talk) 09:08, 3 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

regarding # 1.1 ffmpeg2theora

  • It didn't work for me while using version 0.16 on Windows XP:

"ffmpeg2theora file.avi".

  • I needed to type "ffmpeg2theora-0.16.exe file.avi".

(unsigned, by Logictheo)

How to Convert MP4 Video to WEBM?

Recently, I've been struggling with how to convert MP4 to WEBM files without loss. Fortunately, my friend recommended a good third-party software--Dumpmedia video converter. It can support many video file formats, such as MP4, MOV, WMV, AVI, MKV, FLV, 3GP, MPEG and other regular video formats are available. I want to share it with you. To convert MP4 video to M4A using DumpMedia, follow these steps:

Step 1: Launch the DumpMedia application. For Windows users: Step 1a: Go to the Search icon (magnifying glass) beside the Windows icon in your computer’s Task Bar. Step 1b: Type DumpMedia in the text field. Step 1c: Click on the DumpMedia application on the search results.

For macOS users: Step 1a: Click on the Launchpad icon in your computer’s Dock. The launchpad icon is a gray circle with a darker gray rocket at the center. Step 1b: Type DumpMedia on the Search bar at the topmost part Step 1c: Hit the Return button on your keyboard to launch the application. Step 2: Click the Add Files button located at the top-left section of the interface. Step 3: Browse and select the files you want to convert. Step 4: Click the Profile button located at the bottom. Step 5: Select the WEBM format. Step 6: Browse your computer to the desired destination folder of the converted files. Step 7: Click on the Convert button to start the conversion of your video. Step 8: Wait for the conversion to complete. Step 9: Click the Download button to start downloading your converted MP4 video. Step 10: Sit back and relax while waiting for your WEBM video to finish downloading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Henny11 (talk • contribs) 08:16, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You forgot to mention that DumpMedia is paid. It allows you to install the app for free, but any other action that includes converting, exporting, etc. COSTS MONEY. It is important to say this. Cheers --– El Mono 🐒 (talk - es.wiki) 09:20, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Translated to Czech / Přeloženo do češtiny

Hello. I just wanted to let you know I added a Czech translation of this page (Help:Konverze videa). I've left it sitting in my Sandbox for a little bit too long, completely forgot about it as I was quite busy.

Zdravím. Jen jsem vám chtěl oznámit, že jsem přidal český překlad této stránky (odkaz výše). Nechal jsem ho ve svém Pískovišti příliš dlouho, úplně jsem na to zapomněl, jak jsem měl frmol. Diskutovat můžete v češtině na příslušné diskusní stránce Help talk:Konverze videa. Polda18 (discussion • contributions) 09:22, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

youtube-dl doesn't work anymore

The video download example from YouTube doesn't work anymore, YouTube clearly did some changes that prevents the tool from fetching video data. This is what it says now instead: 

$ youtube-dl -F dPZTh2NKTm4
[youtube] dPZTh2NKTm4: Downloading webpage
ERROR: dPZTh2NKTm4: YouTube said: Unable to extract video data

I've accessed the video page itself directly and guess what? Plays perfectly fine. But there's no download button, and the video is indeed Creative Commons licensed. I don't get it why YouTube lets creators use the CC license, but fails to provide a way to download these videos for everyone. Instead they flat out block downloaders that may even check if the video in question is CC and if not, it doesn't proceed further. They block ways to download any video, unless you're the video owner, then you can download it from the YT Studio. I don't know why YT does provide an option to use CC license on videos published on YT, but doesn't provide a way to download CC videos for anyone. Polda18 (discussion • contributions) 13:21, 29 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Polda18 It works for me. Please verify with youtube-dl --version that you are using the latest version 2021.12.17. Dexxor (talk) 09:25, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Dexxor: Even despite running sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade youtube-dl, I still am running version 2020.03.24. Guess what?
$ youtube-dl -F dPZTh2NKTm4
[youtube] dPZTh2NKTm4: Downloading webpage
ERROR: dPZTh2NKTm4: YouTube said: Unable to extract video data
Still doesn't work. And I can't upgrade to latest version for some reason. Polda18 (discussion • contributions) 10:02, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If your distribution is Debian, you should try the version from Debian backports. youtube-dl updates often to catch up with Google changing YouTube. At the very moment, I cannot download anything because something changed again but I expect it to be fixed soon because it appears to be already reported and someone will look into it. Роман Рябенко (talk) 08:02, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for reply after a year when I completely forgot about this issue (unresolved, btw). It seems like Debian and Debian-based distros (like Ubuntu) have parts of their repositories outdated for some reason. I'll try to look into it. By the time between my issue report and your reply, I had my laptop in service being fixed as it failed to boot, which required fresh install of Windows on a new SSD, and then restoring lost data from the old SSD (which I still have in my laptop). The reason it couldn't boot was that Optane memory died, and it was in Raid with my SSD drive. So I recently installed WSL again, but not Linux yet. I'm thinking of switching from Ubuntu to another distro. I'll look into this and tell you if it works or not. Polda18 D C 11:03, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
>It seems like Debian and Debian-based distros (like Ubuntu) have parts of their repositories outdated for some reason.
That's most of the repositories, because that's how Debian's repository model works. With a few exceptions, software in the Debian repos only really gets patches for security issue, there are no feature updates. Which means that the software in the repos is stable in the sense that there are no new bugs introduced with updates, but this model isn't good for software that gets broken regularly due to external factors, like websites changing in the case of youtube-dl.
Besides which, the youtube-dl project seems to have completely stopped making releases, as there hasn't even been one in for over a year. I've been using a youtube-dl fork called yt-dlp for quite a while now, and they put out releases fairly regularly. The best way to install (and keep it up to date) is using pip. Re-running the installation command will install the latest version. I've aliased it to "ytdlpupdate" in my .bashrc file to make it easy to update when I notice something's broken. --Veikk0.ma (talk) 04:26, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That makes sense. I might update the help page to accomodate for the change. Polda18 D C 06:17, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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