Slow download Youtube-dl. WHY ?

[Strychu69]

Please follow the guide below

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Make sure you are using the latest version: run youtube-dl --version and ensure your version is 2018.01.21. If it's not, read this FAQ entry and update. Issues with outdated version will be rejected.

• I've verified and I assure that I'm running youtube-dl 2018.01.21

Before submitting an issue make sure you have:

• At least skimmed through the README, most notably the FAQ and BUGS sections
• Searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones

What is the purpose of your issue?

• Bug report (encountered problems with youtube-dl)
• Site support request (request for adding support for a new site)
• Feature request (request for a new functionality)
• Question
• Other

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The following sections concretize particular purposed issues, you can erase any section (the contents between triple ---) not applicable to your issue

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If the purpose of this issue is a bug report, site support request or you are not completely sure provide the full verbose output as follows:

Add the -v flag to your command line you run youtube-dl with (youtube-dl -v <your command line>), copy the whole output and insert it here. It should look similar to one below (replace it with your log inserted between triple ```):

[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKcj']
[debug] Encodings: locale cp1251, fs mbcs, out cp866, pref cp1251
[debug] youtube-dl version 2018.01.21
[debug] Python version 2.7.11 - Windows-2003Server-5.2.3790-SP2
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-75573-g1d0487f, ffprobe N-75573-g1d0487f, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
...
<end of log>

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If the purpose of this issue is a site support request please provide all kinds of example URLs support for which should be included (replace following example URLs by yours):

• Single video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaW_jenozKc
• Single video: https://youtu.be/BaW_jenozKc
• Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4lCao7KL_QFVb7Iudeipvc2BCavECqzc

Note that youtube-dl does not support sites dedicated to copyright infringement. In order for site support request to be accepted all provided example URLs should not violate any copyrights.

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Description of your issue, suggested solution and other information

Explanation of your issue in arbitrary form goes here. Please make sure the description is worded well enough to be understood. Provide as much context and examples as possible.
If work on your issue requires account credentials please provide them or explain how one can obtain them.

[Hrxn]

Because it's limited by YouTube itself.
Please use the search first and close this issue.

[mrfade]

you can use aria2 downloader. it can download files with multiple connections. downloads can 16x faster than before with this code because it will download from 16 connections
--external-downloader aria2c --external-downloader-args "-x 16 -s 16 -k 1M"

[Strychu69]

Where i past this?

[james3126]

I have been miffed by this issue as it's really bad. I have been testing with both the windows and Linux versions of youtube-dl.

With Linux (installed through apt-get):
Command:
youtube-dl -o '~/Red-DiscordBot/mp3storage/test.%(ext)s' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6120QOlsfU

Result:
[download] 20.0% of 14.32MiB at 241.94KiB/s ETA 00:48
With Windows (installed through PIP):
Command:
youtube-dl -o "C:\Users\james\test.%(ext)s" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6120QOlsfU

Result:
[download] 100% of 24.77MiB in 00:05

SAME VIDEO
SAME COMMAND (Apart from file save location)
SAME VERSION
DIFFERENT OS
DIFFERENT DOWNLOAD SPEEDS

[dstftw]

14.32MiB
24.77MiB

You are downloading two different files one of them falls under Youtube throttling.

[isabelcoolaf]

What exactly do you mean "falls under Youtube throttling"
what is the criteria for it to fall under that?

edit: sorry for posting on a closed issue

[stefanos82]

I came here to report this, because I saw the first report, like 8 days ago and they closed it with the excuse of being YouTube's problem.

I have tried aria2c as well as my external downloader and the issue was the same.

I have downloaded my files with JDownloader2 without a fuss.

What's the catch here?

Cheers.

[Hrxn]

I have downloaded my files with JDownloader2 without a fuss.

Very likely different formats, i.e. similar to youtube-dl with -f best.
(Which is not actually the best, but this is all in youtube-dl's Readme.md)

[rudolphos]

@TRNAME

Can I do this somehow by using Ubuntu (Store app version) on Windows?
I usually have a .bat file which I open and input the URL to download videos, but can I somehow link the .bat script to Ubuntu subsystem?

The easiest way I figured is to download aria2 for windows and put it in the same folder where .bat is, I did that, but aria2c.exe is not launching somehow.

I use this script to download subtitles:

@echo off
cls
:start
echo
set /p input="Input URL: "
youtube-dl --external-downloader /aria2c/aria2c.exe --external-downloader-args "-x 16 -s 16 -k 1M"-ci --no-check-certificate --convert-subs srt --write-auto-sub  --skip-download  -w --download-archive /Subtitles/file.txt -o "/Subtitles/%%(title)s (%%(id)s).%%(ext)s" %input%
goto start

Also another problem is having is with .vtt subtitles download from youtube, they are not being converted to SRT.

[dstftw]

2018.02.03 introduces a new experimental option --http-chunk-size for chunk-based downloading. In particular it allows to speed up downloading of DASH formats on Youtube. According to my observations optimal chunk size for Youtube is <=10MiB (apparently that's where throttling starts): --http-chunk-size 10M.
Enforced in 2018.02.04.

[ofekp]

Sorry for pooping this up again, is there a way to use this --http-chunk-size with python, meaning the options available when you create a new object youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(options).
The list of options is describe in the following link, but I could not find the aforementioned setting there:
https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/3e4cedf9e8cd3157df2457df7274d0c842421945/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py#L137-L312

[dstftw]

It's described in downloader since it's a downloader option.

[ofekp]

Thanks for replying, not sure I understand, though.
Just saw this:
ba51538#diff-28d2a60e59d5c0e2b113f2863e935e16R354

so I guess I need to use it like so http_chunk_size, am I right?

I am using the following options, and still getting very slow speeds after about 10 seconds:

    options = {
        'writethumbnail': True,
        'outtmpl': yt_song_structure['playlist_path'] + '/' + yt_song_structure['title'] + '.%(ext)s',
        #'force-ipv4': True,
        'extractaudio': True,
        'noplaylist': True,
        'http_chunk_size': 2097152,
        #'max_downloads': 1,
        'progress_hooks': [youtubeDlHook],
        'format': 'bestaudio/best',
        'format': 'webm',
        #'ignoreerrors': True,
        'postprocessors': [
          {
            'key': 'FFmpegExtractAudio',
            'preferredcodec': 'mp3',
            #'preferredquality': '192',
          },
          {'key': 'FFmpegMetadata'},
          {'key': 'EmbedThumbnail'},
        ]
    }

[dstftw]

Simply don't touch it. It's enabled by default. Most likely your version is outdated.

[ofekp]

Don't think this is a version issue:

$ youtube-dl --version
2018.02.11

[dstftw]

Well, I'm not a telepathist. If you believe there is a bug open a new issue with properly filled issue template.