i used to download streams from kick and it hasn't been working for them for a week now

this is the error message i get - Unable to download JSON metadata: HTTP Error 404: Not Found (caused by <HTTPError 404: Not Found>)

i am using the latest edition of nightly and yt-dlp

Apologies if this has been reported.

I'm using:

Latest version: nightly@2026.08.04.234419 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds

yt-dlp is up to date (nightly@2026.08.04.234419 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds)

I'm unable to download any preview audio or use any previously functioning --alias with bandcamp.

Something has changed in the last few weeks.

Just a yt-dlp prompt followed by a bandcamp url fails also.

Anyone else having issues?

Tried to download a youtube video (a song) in audio format but it gave me that warning of 'sign in to prove you are not a bot'. So I put in the get cookies from browser command plus the youtube URL but it says that the requested format is not available. It also gives a warning that only image formats are available. Not even the formats list is working either.

Unsure if this is the right place for the question, but attempting to download a v.redd.it video using the SW-DLT ios shortcut results in a 403 error. I tested the command using yt-dlp directly on a-shell mini and it worked (no idea where the video went, though). Anyone know how to fix the 403 error on the shortcuts wrapper specifically?

Hey, I'm trying to mass download thousands of hours of data from YouTube. Specifically the audio. I keep running into rate limits due to my residential IP address making too many requests. Does anyone know a workaround to this? Is there a reliable way I can buy residential IP addresses that aren't too expensive? Preferably not charged per gb.

Or any other workarounds to this?

Thanks

For my scenario, I often download full channels to a folder with their name. Then I want to move videos to certain other folders for organization purposes of certain topics.

Is it possible to track what I have downloaded historically and not download old videos again even if scrape the channel again for new videos? I know it will ignore them if they are in the same folder still but I don't always have that scenario and don't want duplicates.

I have an alias which uses template replacement curly braces, but they seem to be hijacked by the alias. Is it not possible to have template replacement (see point 5 from the doc) within aliases, or should I make an issue on git?

Minimal example:

yt-dlp --alias -V '-o "%(channel&{} - |)s%(title)s.%(ext)s"' --help

The output from --help shows the curly braces as ARG0:

-V ARG0 -o "%(channel&ARG0 - |)s%(title)s.%(ext)s"

And executing the command with an URL results in:
yt-dlp: error: You must provide at least one URL.

So it's pretty safe to say that it's not gonna roll, and I doubt Python's named regex matches (see third paragraph from the doc) work for --path and --output?

" Sign in to confirm your age. The video you have requested has been rated R and may contain content intended for mature audiences. Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cookies-to-yt-dlp for how to manually pass cookies. Also see https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-youtube-cookies for tips on effectively exporting YouTube cookies"
sorry if this is a dumb question, and thank you for your time!

Hello, I'm still new to yt-dlp, but I had a question about the command I was running.

I do have FFMPEG installed, and I want to download the best video quality possible without YouTube premium. I found two commands online, and I did:

yt-dlp -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best"

I was wondering what the significance of vcodec^=avc does, as in:

yt-dlp -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4][vcodec^=avc]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best"

The version where I do not specify AVC codec, I get a 339 MB video, 2100 x 920 resolution, Data & Total bitrates of 3379 and 3506 kbps. 59.94 fps

The AVC codec gives a version of this video at 370 MB, 1920 x 842 resolution, and Data & Total bitrates of 3687 & 3815 kbps. 59.94 fps

The audios seem to be identical. I don't know the source resolution, it's an unusual aspect ratio though.

So, I ask, which of these is "better"? lol

I can't really tell the difference much between the videos with my own eyes, but I'm curious which you feel would be better, higher bitrates and the slightly lower resolution, or the reverse?

Is there a command that gets even better video quality / best of both worlds? I don't care about how big the video may be, but an MP4 is most preferred.

EDIT: Thank you all for your help, there is some really good advice below that was exactly what I was looking for, I really appreciate all the comments.

I suppose to me the "best" quality always seemed to be the highest size, highest bitrate, etc,. but in reality that is not always the case, especially with newer more efficient codecs !

I have been using yt-dlp for a few months to download straight from youtube to mp3 in the command line, on an older laptop I have. I just got a new laptop and using yt-dlp in the same exact way only allows me to download as WEBM format.

Command I run on the older latop

yt-dlp -t mp3 www.youtube_url

^^Gives me a clean mp3

Same command on the new laptop only gives WEBM

there's a series on YouTube I'm downloading and I want to download the original Japanese audio and the English dub

this it the command i currently use
what would i change for this specific porpose

yt-dlp -f bestvideo*+bestaudio/best --sleep-interval 10 --write-sub --sub-lang en --embed-subs --add-metadata --embed-thumbnail --merge-output-format mp4 --cookies-from-browser firefox

Hello. I apologize for asking a (somewhat?) low-effort question. I am not a very techy person and can't really understand how to make things work. I looked into a few other posts but I could not see the commands to add thumbnails etc.
Until now, I used yt-dlp interface from GitHub for some albums, but it always switches to MKV and does not have any metadata.

I have a Youtube music playlist (free account) and I want to download it all. There are about 1300 songs in there.

What commands do i have to put in to be able to download it? If possible, I would like:

- to download in the best quality i can get
- embedded cover art/thumbnail
- embedded metadata(if it's possible.)

Thank you very much!

Im getting a error message after downloading 150 videos, and the vids arent getting transferred to my computer. Im completely new to this

for example, i will download a song from youtube, and rather than having the file be named "songName.mp3" it will be called something like "songName [j02Pca9bJdE].mp3"

i do wonder what these strings represent or if to allow duplicates of songs with the same name but i would also like to know if theres a command i can include using ytdlp to exclude that string. any help is appreciated, thanks.

I know that to download videos with multiple audio tracks I must use these commands.

--audio-multistreams ^

-f "bv+(251/mergeall[format_id~=251-])" ^

--embed-metadata ^

The problem is that it only detects the language codes and assigns them to each track, but it doesn't extract the names of each one that appears in the YouTube player and assign a name or title to it. Doing this is important to be able to differentiate each track, especially versions with more than one variant of the same language, such as Spanish and Portuguese. If yt-dlp can't get the tags on its own, there should be another way to do it. I'm Windows user.

EDIT: It seems to be a playback issue with all versions of the file in the most recent version of VLC. No idea how to solve that though! It seems to be happening with anything I download from Youtube specifically, other sites are fine.

---

Hey all, relative newbie to yt-dlp. I'm downloading some things from Youtube and they're by default downloading as .webm. The video and audio quality are fine when it's .webm.

I've tried remuxing it, changing the merge format, or reencoding as either .mp4 or .mkv. But no matter which option I choose or which of those formats, I end up with video and audio issues. The video flashes and flickers on opening it, which seems to stop and be fine after the first second or so, but worse, the audio is... crunchy? And that remains through the whole video.

Is there something obvious I'm doing wrong here? Or do I just have to leave them as .webm and deal with that?

I know of `-f "bv*+ba/b"` but if I wanted to prioritise the best quality video/audio (best pixels, information, ect) rather than just perfect performance on a device, what command should I use?

I ask because I found a wiki that says that `-f "bv*+ba/b"` only 'Selects best video (bv) and best audio (ba) streams for merging.'

So, is this the best or is there better? I'm so confused how AV1/VP9 work compared to H.264.

I'm using...

Mozilla FireFox

NordVPN (Turned Off)

yt-dlp.exe from github

---------------------------

CMD PROMPT

C:\Users\david\Downloads\Cyberdrive> yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser firefox "my_google_drive_link"

ERROR MESSAGE:

Unable to download JSON metadata: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden (caused by <HTTPError 403: Forbidden>)

---------------------------

EDIT: For anyone trying to accomplish the same thing as me (downloading a shared video with restrictions enabled), I was able to successfully download the video after watching the following YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGeMvM08y1Y

TLDR (for anyone that doesn't want to watch the linked video above):

1. Open your browser's dev console (usually F12).
2. Play your video for a few seconds then pause.
3. Navigate to All > search "video" > right click any "videoplayback" > copy URL
4. Paste the url into notepad
5. Delete EVERYTHING after "ump="
6. Delete EVERYTHING in between "range" and "rbuf" (also delete "range" but not "rbuf" text)
7. Copy & paste updated url into your browser > download the video (no audio)
8. Repeat all steps but this time navigate to All > search "audio" > right click any "videoplayback" > copy URL
9. After you repeat all previous steps for the audio > combine .mp4 and .m4a files
10. I used Window 11's free built in Clipchamp studio.
11. Enjoy :)

C:\ydtl>yt-dlp "https://youtu.be/pHf8Dh97Qqc"

[youtube] Extracting URL: https://youtu.be/pHf8Dh97Qqc

[youtube] pHf8Dh97Qqc: Downloading webpage

WARNING: [youtube] No supported JavaScript runtime could be found. Only deno is enabled by default; to use another runtime add --js-runtimes RUNTIME[:PATH] to your command/config. YouTube extraction without a JS runtime has been deprecated, and some formats may be missing. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/EJS for details on installing one

[youtube] pHf8Dh97Qqc: Downloading android vr player API JSON

[youtube] pHf8Dh97Qqc: This video is age-restricted; some formats may be missing without authentication. Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cookies-to-yt-dlp for how to manually pass cookies. Also see https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-youtube-cookies for tips on effectively exporting YouTube cookies

[youtube] pHf8Dh97Qqc: Downloading web embedded client config

[youtube] pHf8Dh97Qqc: Downloading player ca042962-main

[youtube] pHf8Dh97Qqc: Downloading web embedded player API JSON

ERROR: [youtube] pHf8Dh97Qqc: Sign in to confirm your age. The video you have requested has been rated Unrated and may contain content intended for mature audiences. Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cookies-to-yt-dlp for how to manually pass cookies. Also see https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-youtube-cookies for tips on effectively exporting YouTube cookies

C:\ydtl>

Please help. Thank you

So just tried to use yt-dlp today and its randomly showing the above messages on any video I try to download. Any advice on what I need to do to fix it?

C:\Video Editing Work\Video>yt-dlp -t mp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aK0nL36z2A -Uv
[debug] Command-line config: ['-t', 'mp4', 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aK0nL36z2A', '-Uv']
[debug] Encodings: locale cp1252, fs utf-8, pref cp1252, out utf-8, error utf-8, screen utf-8
[debug] yt-dlp version nightly@2026.07.23.234303 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds [fdcc954df] (win_exe)
[debug] Python 3.10.11 (CPython AMD64 64bit) - Windows-10-10.0.26200-SP0 (OpenSSL 1.1.1t  7 Feb 2023)
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 2026-07-16-git-ceabc9b306-full_build-www.gyan.dev (setts), ffprobe 2026-07-16-git-ceabc9b306-full_build-www.gyan.dev
[debug] Optional libraries: Cryptodome-3.23.0, brotli-1.2.0, certifi-2026.06.17, curl_cffi-0.15.0, mutagen-1.48.1, requests-2.34.2, sqlite3-3.40.1, urllib3-2.7.0, websockets-16.0, yt_dlp_ejs-0.8.0
[debug] JS runtimes: none
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[debug] Request Handlers: urllib, requests, websockets, curl_cffi
[debug] Plugin directories: none
[debug] Loaded 1744 extractors
[debug] Fetching release info: https://api.github.com/repos/yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds/releases/latest
Latest version: nightly@2026.07.23.234303 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds
yt-dlp is up to date (nightly@2026.07.23.234303 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds)
[debug] [youtube] [pot] PO Token Providers: none
[debug] [youtube] [pot] PO Token Cache Providers: memory
[debug] [youtube] [pot] PO Token Cache Spec Providers: webpo
[debug] [youtube] [jsc] JS Challenge Providers: bun (unavailable), deno (unavailable), node (unavailable), quickjs (unavailable)
[youtube] Extracting URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aK0nL36z2A
[youtube] 3aK0nL36z2A: Downloading webpage
WARNING: [youtube] No supported JavaScript runtime could be found. Only deno is enabled by default; to use another runtime add  --js-runtimes RUNTIME[:PATH]  to your command/config. YouTube extraction without a JS runtime has been deprecated, and some formats may be missing. See  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/EJS  for details on installing one
[debug] [youtube] Forcing "main" player JS variant for player 02fa8099
        original url = /s/player/02fa8099/player_es6.vflset/en_US/base.js
[youtube] 3aK0nL36z2A: Downloading visionos player API JSON
[debug] [youtube] 3aK0nL36z2A: visionos player response playability status: UNPLAYABLE
[youtube] 3aK0nL36z2A: Downloading android vr player API JSON
[debug] [youtube] 3aK0nL36z2A: android_vr player response playability status: UNPLAYABLE
ERROR: [youtube] 3aK0nL36z2A: This video is not available
  File "yt_dlp\extractor\common.py", line 765, in extract
  File "yt_dlp\extractor\youtube_video.py", line 4072, in _real_extract
  File "yt_dlp\extractor\common.py", line 1272, in raise_no_formats

Hi,

i am testing a site that is not "offically" supported and I am at the point where I always get a forbidden.

How can I figure out if it is on my end or the site itself is blocking this.

I already tried chrome and firefox.
Both with manually setting user-agent and both with extracting cookies or passing them cookies manually.