What causes "Could not find video title" in ytdl-org/youtube-dl?

Update youtube-dl (or migrate to yt-dlp, which has far more current MTV-family maintenance).

ytdl-org/youtube-dl · error · ExtractorError

Could not find video title

Error message

Could not find video title

What it means

Raised by MTV's _get_video_info when the RSS/mrss item doc yields no usable title element: neither the 'urn:mtvn:video_title' category, nor the mrss <title>, nor a plain <title> with non-None text. The final title_el.text being None triggers this unexpected (not expected=True) ExtractorError, which usually indicates a page/schema change rather than a user mistake.

Source

Thrown at youtube_dl/extractor/mtv.py:176

        description = strip_or_none(xpath_text(itemdoc, 'description'))

        timestamp = timeconvert(xpath_text(itemdoc, 'pubDate'))

        title_el = None
        if title_el is None:
            title_el = find_xpath_attr(
                itemdoc, './/{http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/}category',
                'scheme', 'urn:mtvn:video_title')
        if title_el is None:
            title_el = itemdoc.find(compat_xpath('.//{http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/}title'))
        if title_el is None:
            title_el = itemdoc.find(compat_xpath('.//title'))
            if title_el.text is None:
                title_el = None

        title = title_el.text
        if title is None:
            raise ExtractorError('Could not find video title')
        title = title.strip()

        # This a short id that's used in the webpage urls
        mtvn_id = None
        mtvn_id_node = find_xpath_attr(itemdoc, './/{http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/}category',
                                       'scheme', 'urn:mtvn:id')
        if mtvn_id_node is not None:
            mtvn_id = mtvn_id_node.text

        formats = self._extract_video_formats(mediagen_doc, mtvn_id, video_id)

        # Some parts of complete video may be missing (e.g. missing Act 3 in
        # http://www.southpark.de/alle-episoden/s14e01-sexual-healing)
        if not formats:
            return None

        self._sort_formats(formats)

View on GitHub (pinned to 956b8c5855)

Solutions

Update youtube-dl (or migrate to yt-dlp, which has far more current MTV-family maintenance).
If it persists on the latest version, report the URL — the title fallback chain needs a new pattern.
As a workaround for scripting, catch the ExtractorError and supply a manual title with -o metadata if you can still obtain formats another way.

Example fix

pip install -U yt-dlp   # youtube-dl's MTV extractors are stale; yt-dlp is actively maintained

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

except ExtractorError as e:
    if 'Could not find video title' in str(e):
        report_upstream(url, site='mtv')  # parsing bug, not user error
    else:
        raise

Prevention

Use yt-dlp for MTV-family sites — its extractors are actively maintained.
Treat this error as a version problem first: update before debugging.
In pipelines, allow manual title override (-o metadata) if formats still extract elsewhere.

When it happens

Trigger: MTV-family item XML where all three title lookups fail or the fallback <title> element exists with null text, so title_el ends as None and .text access yields None.

Common situations: MTV sub-sites shipping redesigned RSS feeds lacking the mrss title category; extractor versions predating a site redesign; rare feeds that legitimately have empty titles, exposing brittle parsing.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of ytdl-org/youtube-dl@956b8c5855 (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b36100f378825126. Report an issue: GitHub.