youtube-dl: What does "Unable to extract uploader id" mean, and how do I update YouTube-dl?

Verbose output is as follows:

[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: ['-v', 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=booR7hzZg2Y', '-o', 'We apologise for the difficulties....']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2021.12.17
[debug] Python version 3.6.8 (CPython) - Darwin-17.7.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.3.1, ffprobe 4.3.1, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube] booR7hzZg2Y: Downloading webpage
[youtube] booR7hzZg2Y: Downloading MPD manifest
ERROR: Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see  https://yt-dl.org/update  on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 815, in wrapper
    return func(self, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 836, in __extract_info
    ie_result = ie.extract(url)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 534, in extract
    ie_result = self._real_extract(url)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 1794, in _real_extract
    'uploader_id': self._search_regex(r'/(?:channel|user)/([^/?&#]+)', owner_profile_url, 'uploader id') if owner_profile_url else None,
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 1012, in _search_regex
    raise RegexNotFoundError('Unable to extract %s' % _name)
youtube_dl.utils.RegexNotFoundError: Unable to extract uploader id; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see  https://yt-dl.org/update  on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.

When I try to update YouTube-dl with youtube-dl -U, it gives me this:

It looks like you installed youtube-dl with a package manager, pip, setup.py or a tarball. Please use that to update.

How do I solve this?

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created a year ago
Reactions: 2
Comments: 17

Most upvoted comments

@FlaminHat Also to answer your second question about updating youtube-dl, a new version isn’t out (hopefully there will be - #31585). If you need it fixed ASAP, try cloning the repository like @j-sea did in this comment, or switching to yt-dlp like I mentioned last comment.

@j-sea AFAIK it’s a warning message that got marked as fatal, when the extractor could’ve continued anyway without much problems.

comicsansgreenki on Mar 15, 2023

To anyone and everyone with the same problem ERROR: Unable to extract uploader id;: Please see #31530 instead of this one. If you need an immediate solution, you can switch to yt-dlp, a fork of this project, as a drop-in replacement while you wait for a backport/patch to the YT extractor. @FlaminHat An issue is already up for this extractor error. You might check #30839 if you haven’t read it already.

Thanks u o>o ❤️ comicsansg (not a collaborator)

comicsansgreenki on Feb 22, 2023

@comicsansgreenki Cloning it works, just suggested it here as well: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/31645#issuecomment-1439491615

ananay on Feb 22, 2023