CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonsubprocessyoutube-dl
ZackT
ZackT

Reputation: 61

youtube-dl, calling as subprocess, link not recognized

So, I'm writing a basic python script to use youtube-dl to download a highquality thumbnail from a video. With the command line youtube-dl, you can run "youtube-dl --list-thumbnails [LINK]" and it will output a list of different quality links to the thumbnail images. Usually the highest resolution one has 'maxresdefault' in its link. I want to be able to download this image from the command line with wget. This is the code I have so far to achieve it. I'm not familiar with regex, but according to this site: regexr.com, it should have a match in the link with 'maxresdefault'.

import subprocess
import sys
import re
youtubeoutput = subprocess.call(['youtube-dl', '--list-thumbnails', 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2U2mUtTnzY'], shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
print(str(youtubeoutput))
imgurl = re.search("/maxresdefault/g", str(youtubeoutput)).group(0)
print(imgurl)
subprocess.run('wget', str(imgurl))

I put the print statements in there to see what the outputs were. When I run the code, I can see the youtube-dl doesn't recognize a link being in there. youtube-dl: error: You must provide at least one url. Since there's no links in the output, the re.search becomes a NoneType and it gives me an error. I don't know why youtube-dl won't recognize the link. I'm not even sure it recognizes the --list-thumnails. Could anyone help?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 536

Answers (1)

Wander Nauta
Wander Nauta

Reputation: 19695

You've asked subprocess to use a shell (shell=True), so you would usually pass an entire command to call, like so:

youtubeoutput = subprocess.call("youtube-dl --list-thumbnails https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2U2mUtTnzY", shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

But really, you may not need a shell. Try something like:

youtubeoutput = subprocess.check_output(['youtube-dl', '--list-thumbnails', 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2U2mUtTnzY'])

Note that call does not actually return the program's standard output; check_output does.

Reference

Upvotes: 2

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