ytdl-org/youtube-dl · error · ExtractorError

No media found

Error message

No media found

What it means

Raised by the Reddit extractor when the JSON API response for a reddit link resolves to another URL that is the same reddit thread (the extracted video_url contains 'reddit.com/' and '/<video_id>/'). It is a recursion guard: reddit posts frequently just wrap another link to themselves (self-referencing media), so there is no playable media to extract. Marked expected=True, so youtube-dl reports it as an expected extraction failure rather than a bug.

Source

Thrown at youtube_dl/extractor/reddit.py:113

        # reddit video @ nm reddit
        'url': 'https://nm.reddit.com/r/Cricket/comments/8idvby/lousy_cameraman_finds_himself_in_cairns_line_of/',
        'only_matching': True,
    }]

    def _real_extract(self, url):
        mobj = re.match(self._VALID_URL, url)
        url, video_id = mobj.group('url', 'id')

        video_id = self._match_id(url)

        data = self._download_json(
            url + '/.json', video_id)[0]['data']['children'][0]['data']

        video_url = data['url']

        # Avoid recursing into the same reddit URL
        if 'reddit.com/' in video_url and '/%s/' % video_id in video_url:
            raise ExtractorError('No media found', expected=True)

        over_18 = data.get('over_18')
        if over_18 is True:
            age_limit = 18
        elif over_18 is False:
            age_limit = 0
        else:
            age_limit = None

        thumbnails = []

        def add_thumbnail(src):
            if not isinstance(src, dict):
                return
            thumbnail_url = url_or_none(src.get('url'))
            if not thumbnail_url:
                return
            thumbnails.append({

View on GitHub (pinned to 956b8c5855)

Solutions

  1. Verify the reddit post actually contains media (open it in a browser); self posts and removed posts have no video.
  2. Pass the direct media URL (the imgur/streamable/youtube link inside the post) instead of the reddit comments URL.
  3. If you must extract from reddit, resolve the post's 'url_overridden_by_dest' field yourself before handing it to youtube-dl.
  4. If this happens for posts that do contain media, the reddit JSON layout changed - update youtube-dl (or the extractor) and report the regression.

Example fix

# before
youtube_dl: download https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/abc123/some_self_post/
# after
# inspect the post JSON and pass the real media link
curl -s https://www.reddit.com/abc123/.json | jq '.[0].data.children[0].data.url'
# then: youtube-dl <that url>
Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

import json, urllib.request
def reddit_has_media(url):
    with urllib.request.urlopen(url.rstrip('/') + '/.json', timeout=10) as r:
        data = json.load(r)[0]['data']['children'][0]['data']
    vurl = data.get('url', '')
    vid = url.rstrip('/').split('/')[-3]  # .../comments/<id>/<slug>/ -> id
    return not ('reddit.com/' in vurl and '/%s/' % vid in vurl)

Try / catch

try:
    ydl.extract_info(url)
except ExtractorError as e:
    if 'No media found' in str(e):
        pass  # self-referencing post: skip, not an outage
    else:
        raise

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Calling youtube-dl on a reddit URL (comments/thread page) whose 'url' field in the .json API response points back to the same thread (e.g. a self post or a crosspost whose target is itself, or a URL param variant like ?ref=... on the same id). The check 'reddit.com/' in video_url and '/<video_id>/' in video_url both match.

Common situations: Users pass a reddit permalink that is a text/self post, a deleted media post redirecting to the thread, or a URL whose video_id appears in the redirect URL by coincidence. Also occurs when reddit changes its JSON shape so that data['url'] no longer holds the real media target.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of ytdl-org/youtube-dl@956b8c5855 (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/3522f00e76929b41. Report an issue: GitHub.