Retry when connection disconnect not working

Question

I am using youtube-dl for downloading the videos from YouTube. But in my office the internet will disconnect every 20Mb of download. [Error: Connection forcibly closed by remote server].

I have to type the URL again to resume the download and again it will disconnect after '20Mb' I want youtube-dl to reconnect and retry to download the file.

I tried using --retries switch but it is not retrying once disconnected.

Is there any inbuild method or Work around for this?

Amie

Answer 1

Educated guess

My best guess would be to specify a cache directory, and use the -c flag to force it to continue downloads if possible.

Source: youtube-dl man page

--cache-dir DIR
              Location  in  the  filesystem  where  youtube-dl  can  store  some  downloaded  information  permanently.   By  default
              $XDG_CACHE_HOME  /youtube-dl or ~/.cache/youtube-dl .  At the moment, only YouTube player files (for videos with obfus‐
              cated signatures) are cached, but that may change.

-c, --continue
              Force resume of partially downloaded files.  By default, youtube-dl will resume downloads if possible.

Alternative solution

If you want to give python a try, this script should do what you need with some minor tweaking.

import sys
import youtube_dl

def download_no_matter_what(url):
    try:
        youtube_dl.YoutubeDL(options).download([url])
    except OSError:
        download_no_matter_what(url)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        sys.exit()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    # Read the URL from the command line
    url = sys.argv[1]

    # Specify extra command line options here
    options = {} 

    # GET THAT VIDEO! 
    download_no_matter_what(url)

Reference for the youtube_dl API: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/README.md#readme

Moxley

No. this is about the partial downloaded file, not about connection reconnect.. Resuming is happening but I have to type URL manually for it to resume.. – Amie

Gotcha, sorry. What system are you on? Also, are you comfortable running/editing python? – Moxley

Check out my edit. With some minor tweaking, it should do what you want. Cheers! – Moxley

In Python the recursion limit is 1000. So after exactly 1000 retries this script would crash. – Aureus

Answer 2

Get a bash , either via steve's win-bash, the new windows10/Ubuntu thing or cygwin

Call youtube-dl like this:

while ! youtube-dl <video_uri> -c --socket-timeout 5; do echo DISCONNECTED; done

You may want to add some sleep time between retries.

while ! youtube-dl <video_uri> -c --socket-timeout 5; do echo DISCONNECTED; sleep 5; done

There should be a power shell equivalent, or an ugly batch while loop checking ERRORLEVEL

Diablerie

This works nice and simple. Helps when on an unstable connection and the bandwidth slips away without YT-DL calling it quits. Or even if Youtube-DL itself errors out. – Protomorphic

works well with a text file of videos to download while ! youtube-dl -a TextFile.txt -c --socket-timeout 5; do echo DISCONNECTED; sleep 5; done – Prem

Answer 3

powershell equivalant:

Do { youtube-dl.exe <video_uri> -c } until ($?)

Malaspina

Answer 4

Try retry-cli. You will need to install Node.js (with npm) first

npm install --global retry-cli
retry youtube-dl <URL>

Nonpayment

Answer 5

Batch equivalent:

for /L %%? in (0,0,1) do @(youtube-dl <video_uri> -c --socket-timeout 5 && break)

This includes a 5 second sleep:

for /L %%? in (0,0,1) do @(youtube-dl <video_uri> -c --socket-timeout 5 && break || timeout /t 5 >NUL)

Fredericton