Youtube_dl : ERROR : YouTube said: Unable to extract video data

Question

I\'m making a little graphic interface with Python 3 which should download a youtube video with it URL. I use for that the module youtube_dl. This is my code :

Answer 1

Updating youtube-dl helped me: youtube-dl --update

Answer 2

I had the same error on Ubuntu 20.04. I solved it by updating youtube-dl by downloading a .deb from: https://packages.debian.org/sid/all/youtube-dl/download

Though you can also get the update on youtube-dl's official site.

Answer 3

If you are using youtube-dl command line on MacOsx update using this command :

sudo youtube-dl --update

Answer 4

You could try adding a cookie file as some videos are age restricted. Use this plugin Chrome plugin Cookie.txt to download your cookies in a txt file then use these --cookies /path/to/cookies/file.txt flags not forgetting to put the right path to the file of your cookies.txt.

Sample:

youtube-dl -n --cookies ~/Downloads/cookies.txt https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=h7Ii7KKapig

Surce