yt-dlp/yt-dlp · error · ExtractorError

Webpage type is "{}": only video extraction is supported for

Error message

Webpage type is "{}": only video extraction is supported for Slideshare

What it means

SlideshareIE parses the slideshare_object JSON embedded in the page and supports only slideshows whose slideshow.type is 'video' (SlideShare recordings rendered as video). Any other type — most commonly 'presentation' — raises this expected error stating that only video extraction is supported for Slideshare.

Source

Thrown at yt_dlp/extractor/slideshare.py:33

        'url': 'http://www.slideshare.net/Dataversity/keynote-presentation-managing-scale-and-complexity',
        'info_dict': {
            'id': '25665706',
            'ext': 'mp4',
            'title': 'Managing Scale and Complexity',
            'description': 'This was a keynote presentation at the NoSQL Now! 2013 Conference & Expo (http://www.nosqlnow.com). This presentation was given by Adrian Cockcroft from Netflix.',
        },
    }

    def _real_extract(self, url):
        mobj = self._match_valid_url(url)
        page_title = mobj.group('title')
        webpage = self._download_webpage(url, page_title)
        slideshare_obj = self._search_regex(
            r'\$\.extend\(.*?slideshare_object,\s*(\{.*?\})\);',
            webpage, 'slideshare object')
        info = json.loads(slideshare_obj)
        if info['slideshow']['type'] != 'video':
            raise ExtractorError('Webpage type is "{}": only video extraction is supported for Slideshare'.format(info['slideshow']['type']), expected=True)

        doc = info['doc']
        bucket = info['jsplayer']['video_bucket']
        ext = info['jsplayer']['video_extension']
        video_url = urllib.parse.urljoin(bucket, doc + '-SD.' + ext)
        description = get_element_by_id('slideshow-description-paragraph', webpage) or self._html_search_regex(
            r'(?s)<p[^>]+itemprop="description"[^>]*>(.+?)</p>', webpage,
            'description', fatal=False)

        return {
            '_type': 'video',
            'id': info['slideshow']['id'],
            'title': info['slideshow']['title'],
            'ext': ext,
            'url': video_url,
            'thumbnail': info['slideshow']['pin_image_url'],
            'description': description.strip() if description else None,
        }

View on GitHub (pinned to 81ecd58b13)

Solutions

  1. Confirm on slideshare.net that the item is a video slideshow, not a deck
  2. For presentations, use SlideShare's own (login) download or other document tooling
  3. For recorded talks, locate the actual video source elsewhere
Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

import json, re, urllib.request

def is_video_slideshow(url: str) -> bool:
    page = urllib.request.urlopen(url).read().decode('utf-8', 'replace')
    m = re.search(r'\$\.extend\(.*?slideshare_object,\s*(\{.*?\})\);', page)
    return bool(m) and json.loads(m.group(1))['slideshow']['type'] == 'video'

if not is_video_slideshow(url):
    raise ValueError('not a slideshare video; slide decks are not extractable')

Type guard

def is_slideshow_video(info) -> bool:
    return (
        isinstance(info, dict)
        and isinstance(info.get('slideshow'), dict)
        and info['slideshow'].get('type') == 'video'
    )

Try / catch

from yt_dlp.utils import ExtractorError

try:
    info = ydl.extract_info(url, download=False)
except ExtractorError as e:
    if 'only video extraction is supported' in str(e):
        log.info('%s is a slide deck, not a video; skipping', url)
    else:
        raise

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: The URL points at an ordinary slide deck/document whose slideshare_object.slideshow.type is not 'video' (e.g. 'presentation').

Common situations: Users expecting yt-dlp to download slide PDFs; talks whose slides were uploaded separately from the video recording.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of yt-dlp/yt-dlp@81ecd58b13 (2026-08-22). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0712736684ce3f7e. Report an issue: GitHub.