[Question] CBS - No video formats found, only impacts some videos.

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Question

Hello, I figured I would ask this as a question and rather than a ‘Broken site support’ as I am not sure if the site is really broken or if something else is going on. I am using the latest 2021.04.11 release of yt-dlp.

As an example I’m looking at two videos from the cbs.com website one video is working and one video is providing an error that “No video formats found”. Both videos work fine in the browser and do not require an account. Looking at the .mpd files (attached below) I can’t seem to identify something that is drastically different between the two files as I’m trying to understand why one works and one does not.

What seems to be happening is that when a video is first posted to cbs.com (regardless of show) yt-dlp gives the error “No video formats found”, but then after a week or two, the video seems to be able to be downloaded with yt-dlp without issue. I am not sure if CBS changes something on their end after a period of time.

If this is DRM related totally understand and I’m not looking for how to bypass, it just seemed odd to me that DRM would only be applied for a short period of time and then removed. What I would like to understand is if it is DRM related, how does one identify that DRM is actually the issue?

Below are the verbose logs: Working

yt-dlp -v -s "https://www.cbs.com/shows/the-neighborhood/video/xqDR2B_ysdrUkqnTDu7pUktg9U_yBlN1/the-neighborhood-welcome-to-the-treehouse/"
[debug] Command-line config: ['-v', '-s', 'https://www.cbs.com/shows/the-neighborhood/video/xqDR2B_ysdrUkqnTDu7pUktg9U_yBlN1/the-neighborhood-welcome-to-the-treehouse/']
[debug] Loading archive file None
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out utf-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] yt-dlp version 2021.04.11
[debug] Python version 3.9.4 (CPython 64bit) - macOS-11.2.3-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.3.2, ffprobe 4.3.2
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[CBS] xqDR2B_ysdrUkqnTDu7pUktg9U_yBlN1: Downloading XML
[CBS] xqDR2B_ysdrUkqnTDu7pUktg9U_yBlN1: Downloading StreamPack SMIL data
[CBS] xqDR2B_ysdrUkqnTDu7pUktg9U_yBlN1: Downloading m3u8 information
[debug] Formats sorted by: hasvid, ie_pref, lang, quality, res, fps, vcodec:vp9.2(10), acodec, filesize, fs_approx, tbr, vbr, abr, asr, proto, vext, aext, hasaud, source, id
[CBS] xqDR2B_ysdrUkqnTDu7pUktg9U_yBlN1: Downloading JSON metadata
[debug] Default format spec: bestvideo*+bestaudio/best
[info] Downloading format(s) hls-4550

Not Working

yt-dlp -v -s "https://www.cbs.com/shows/the-neighborhood/video/CIjLEg0RBLnXWQy_Dt_nuJR3sjqnrSWq/the-neighborhood-welcome-to-the-art-class/"
[debug] Command-line config: ['-v', '-s', 'https://www.cbs.com/shows/the-neighborhood/video/CIjLEg0RBLnXWQy_Dt_nuJR3sjqnrSWq/the-neighborhood-welcome-to-the-art-class/']
[debug] Loading archive file None
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out utf-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] yt-dlp version 2021.04.11
[debug] Python version 3.9.4 (CPython 64bit) - macOS-11.2.3-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.3.2, ffprobe 4.3.2
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[CBS] CIjLEg0RBLnXWQy_Dt_nuJR3sjqnrSWq: Downloading XML
ERROR: No video formats found; please report this issue on https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp . Make sure you are using the latest version; see  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp  on how to update. Be sure to call yt-dlp with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py", line 1037, in wrapper
    return func(self, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py", line 1058, in __extract_info
    ie_result = ie.extract(url)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractor/common.py", line 558, in extract
    ie_result = self._real_extract(url)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractor/cbs.py", line 115, in _real_extract
    return self._extract_video_info(content_id)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractor/cbs.py", line 97, in _extract_video_info
    self._sort_formats(formats)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractor/common.py", line 1673, in _sort_formats
    raise ExtractorError('No video formats found')
yt_dlp.utils.ExtractorError: No video formats found; please report this issue on https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp . Make sure you are using the latest version; see  https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp  on how to update. Be sure to call yt-dlp with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.

Here are the MDP files: Working Working MPD.txt Not Working Not Working MPD.txt

There are similar issues that have been bought up on the youtube-dl, but many have been closed or tagged DRM, but I’m not sure that’s really it. Examples noted below for reference. Again I am not looking to bypass DRM, just better understand what is going on and try to learn more about how yt-dlp is working.

References: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/27028 and https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/26993 and https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/28662

Thank you.

[pukkandan]

Its geo-blocked for me. I wil test manually with the given mpd when I have time.

What I would like to understand is if it is DRM related, how does one identify that DRM is actually the issue?

Try: yt-dlp --allow-unplayable-formats -F URL. If it shows you the formats, the issue is DRM

[pukkandan]

BOTH mpds you provided have DRM. See the part that says xmlns:mspr=“urn:microsoft:playready” and the <ContentProtection/> tags. This indicates that it has playready protection. However, youtube-dl does not download these MPDs for the links that you provided. The first URL downloads from an m3u8 manifest, not from an mpd, and youtube-dl can’t find an m3u8 for the second link

CBS seems to me implementing a system like ABC & NBC where you wait a week to see many shows with no TV Provider. It’s more like NBC where episodes are on the website immediately but not mobile. ABC locks everything.

It does seem like only the DRM mpds are available for the first week; then the unencrypted m3u8 becomes available

I am closing this since the original question has been answered. If you can find an m3u8 that exists from the start, then this can be reopened