youtube-dl: ERROR: WARNING: unable to obtain file audio codec with ffprobe

Command that I ran : youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format m4a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMG9wlhc84 --verbose

Output :

[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: ['--extract-audio', '--audio-format', 'm4a', 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMG9wlhc84', '--verbose']
[debug] Encodings: locale cp1252, fs mbcs, out cp437, pref cp1252
[debug] youtube-dl version 2017.03.02
[debug] Python version 3.4.4 - Windows-10-10.0.10586
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg N-82178-g60178e7, ffprobe N-82178-g60178e7
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube] jwMG9wlhc84: Downloading webpage
[youtube] jwMG9wlhc84: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] jwMG9wlhc84: Extracting video information
[youtube] {22} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {43} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {18} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {36} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {17} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {136} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {247} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {135} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {244} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {134} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {243} signature length 40.38, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] jwMG9wlhc84: Downloading player https://www.youtube.com/yts/jsbin/player-en_US-vflDQGgxm/base.js
[youtube] {133} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {242} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {160} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {278} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {140} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {171} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {249} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {250} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[youtube] {251} signature length 40.40, html5 player en_US-vflDQGgxm
[debug] Invoking downloader on 'https://r6---sn-gwpa-a3v6.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?beids=%5B9452306%5D&initcwndbps=227500&mime=audio%2Fwebm&upn=_UbEyK8re00&keepalive=yes&requiressl=yes&ipbits=0&sparams=clen%2Cdur%2Cei%2Cgir%2Cid%2Cinitcwndbps%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Ckeepalive%2Clmt%2Cmime%2Cmm%2Cmn%2Cms%2Cmv%2Cpl%2Crequiressl%2Csource%2Cupn%2Cexpire&ms=au&mt=1488727945&mv=m&source=youtube&lmt=1449598508278953&key=yt6&ip=2405%3A204%3Aa580%3A1ff9%3A84f4%3A162f%3Ac45b%3A1a72&dur=293.461&id=o-AALHyg3tjhhxht1mOOfvErTV0Ve1OuikrcRJY5hvT7Vm&mn=sn-gwpa-a3v6&mm=31&gir=yes&itag=251&clen=5060136&ei=6C-8WKSMMpaqoAP4xqDIBA&expire=1488749641&pl=36&signature=B9AB3FC232E28E947FED0A2AD49D596D6776AF7C.159C4CE5B6921CD6A9A5B8D77C895759D39BB7AF&ratebypass=yes'
[download] Hans Zimmer - Time ft. Satellite Empire (The Machinist Remix)-jwMG9wlhc84.webm has already been downloaded
[download] 100% of 4.83MiB
[debug] ffmpeg command line: ffprobe -show_streams 'file:Hans Zimmer - Time ft. Satellite Empire (The Machinist Remix)-jwMG9wlhc84.webm'
ERROR: WARNING: unable to obtain file audio codec with ffprobe
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\dst\AppData\Roaming\Build archive\youtube-dl\rg3\tmpbcda0ng_\build\youtube_dl\YoutubeDL.py", line 1929, in post_process
  File "C:\Users\dst\AppData\Roaming\Build archive\youtube-dl\rg3\tmpbcda0ng_\build\youtube_dl\postprocessor\ffmpeg.py", line 231, in run
youtube_dl.utils.PostProcessingError: WARNING: unable to obtain file audio codec with ffprobe

I have ffprobe.exe in Windows PATH

screenshot 1

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 7 years ago
Comments: 21

Most upvoted comments

Solved by brew upgrade ffmpeg

~ » youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 "https://youtu.be/xxx"                                                                                                            stasbar@stasbar
[youtube] eT3at25Kits: Downloading webpage
[youtube] eT3at25Kits: Downloading video info webpage
[download] Destination: xxx.webm
[download] 100% of 2.32MiB in 00:00
ERROR: WARNING: unable to obtain file audio codec with ffprobe
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
~ » ffmpeg -v                                                                                                                                                                          stasbar@stasbar
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/x265/lib/libx265.165.dylib
  Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg
  Reason: image not found
[1]    31817 abort      ffmpeg -v
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
~ » brew upgrade ffmpeg
...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
~ » youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 "https://youtu.be/xxx"                                                                                                            stasbar@stasbar
[youtube] eT3at25Kits: Downloading webpage
[youtube] eT3at25Kits: Downloading video info webpage
[download] xxx.webm has already been downloaded
[download] 100% of 2.32MiB
[ffmpeg] Destination: xxx.mp3
Deleting original file Mr. xxx.webm (pass -k to keep)

+21

stanbar on Aug 27, 2019

I may be inaccurate. I mean something like this: (assume youtube-dl.exe is in PATH)

C:\Windows\System32>youtube-dl.exe ...

The reason for this error is that Windows changes the working directory for 32-bit applications (youtube-dl.exe in this case) under the hood. [1] It’s difficult to fix it, so the suggestion is: don’t run youtube-dl.exe in C:\Windows\System32.

[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384187(VS.85).aspx

yan12125 on Mar 5, 2017

I also had this issue.

First I did: brew upgrade youtube-dl for a different issue

the update went through but then I got this error

the fix for me was to try brew upgrade ffmpeg

but it didn’t want to do that because it was pinned. So I did brew unpin ffmpeg

and then brew upgrade ffmpeg

and that fixed my issues

I don’t know if unpinning it is a problem or not, but it works now

rc1717 on Aug 23, 2021

For me (Ubuntu 18 and now 20) the solution to this problem is to operate in the home directory (/home/username/). If I use another one, I get the error.

filipsPL on Dec 18, 2020

Encountered this symptom with up-to-date ffmpeg and youtube-dl. A recent update to libffi renamed a required library:

ffprobe -show_streams xxx.webm
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/libffi/lib/libffi.6.dylib
  Referenced from: /usr/local/opt/p11-kit/lib/libp11-kit.0.dylib
  Reason: image not found
Abort trap: 6

The libffi dylib is now located at /usr/local/opt/libffi/lib/libffi.7.dylib.

Workarounds include downgrading libffi or linking/copying the new library location to the old path. See https://github.com/platformio/platform-lattice_ice40/issues/7

oznogon on Apr 27, 2020

I’m getting the same using: youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 https://youtu.be/r0TG60cjq3g

webdude21 on Apr 5, 2019

By the way, it’s usually a bad idea to run youtube-dl.exe as Administrator. It handles data from the Internet. If there’s a bug in youtube-dl or Python, your device can be hacked. A previous example can be found in #8227.

yan12125 on Mar 5, 2017