What causes "%s said: %s" in ytdl-org/youtube-dl?

Read the forwarded message text — it is the site's own error explanation and dictates the fix.

ytdl-org/youtube-dl · error · ExtractorError

%s said: %s

Error message

%s said: %s

What it means

Raised by the Vuclip extractor when the downloaded page contains a <p class="message"> element. The site uses this element to report errors (e.g. video unavailable, region locked) on its ad-wrapped pages, and the extractor forwards the text verbatim prefixed with the extractor name.

Source

Thrown at youtube_dl/extractor/vuclip.py:45

    }

    def _real_extract(self, url):
        video_id = self._match_id(url)
        webpage = self._download_webpage(url, video_id)

        ad_m = re.search(
            r'''value="No.*?" onClick="location.href='([^"']+)'"''', webpage)
        if ad_m:
            urlr = compat_urllib_parse_urlparse(url)
            adfree_url = urlr.scheme + '://' + urlr.netloc + ad_m.group(1)
            webpage = self._download_webpage(
                adfree_url, video_id, note='Download post-ad page')

        error_msg = self._html_search_regex(
            r'<p class="message">(.*?)</p>', webpage, 'error message',
            default=None)
        if error_msg:
            raise ExtractorError(
                '%s said: %s' % (self.IE_NAME, error_msg), expected=True)

        # These clowns alternate between two page types
        video_url = self._search_regex(
            r'<a[^>]+href="([^"]+)"[^>]*><img[^>]+src="[^"]*/play\.gif',
            webpage, 'video URL', default=None)
        if video_url:
            formats = [{
                'url': video_url,
            }]
        else:
            formats = self._parse_html5_media_entries(url, webpage, video_id)[0]['formats']

        title = remove_end(self._html_search_regex(
            r'<title>(.*?)-\s*Vuclip</title>', webpage, 'title').strip(), ' - Video')

        duration = parse_duration(self._html_search_regex(
            r'[(>]([0-9]+:[0-9]+)(?:<span|\))', webpage, 'duration', fatal=False))

View on GitHub (pinned to 956b8c5855)

Solutions

Read the forwarded message text — it is the site's own error explanation and dictates the fix.
If the video is gone or region-locked, obtain the content from another source.
Retry with a different Vuclip host/mirror URL if the error is transient.
If the message text looks like normal page content, the regex is stale — update the extractor or report the bug upstream.

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

try:
    info = ydl.extract_info(url)
except ExtractorError as e:
    if str(e).startswith('Vuclip said:'):
        handle_site_message(url, str(e))
    else:
        raise

Prevention

Prefer canonical Vuclip URLs over deep mobile links when possible.
Snapshot page availability before batching large link sets.
Report upstream if the captured message is clearly not a site error (stale regex).

When it happens

Trigger: Downloading a Vuclip video whose page (after the optional post-ad page fetch) matches r'<p class="message">(.*?)</p>'; any non-empty match triggers the error before video URL parsing.

Common situations: Video removed or expired on Vuclip; regional restrictions on mobile-focused video mirrors; site redesigns changing the error markup so the regex captures unrelated text.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of ytdl-org/youtube-dl@956b8c5855 (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/05efe5965871f113. Report an issue: GitHub.