sporadic error: Unable to extract yt initial data

Checklist

• I’m reporting a broken site support
• I’ve verified that I’m running youtube-dl version 2021.03.31
• I’ve checked that all provided URLs are alive and playable in a browser
• I’ve checked that all URLs and arguments with special characters are properly quoted or escaped
• I’ve searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones

Similar to #28585 – I’m in Europe (Germany) too.

Verbose log

$ youtube-dl -v --playlist-end 2 https://www.youtube.com/c/ClashOfClans/videos
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: ['-v', '--playlist-end', '2', 'https://www.youtube.com/c/ClashOfClans/videos']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out utf-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2021.03.31
[debug] Python version 3.9.2 (CPython) - Linux-5.11.10-arch1-1-x86_64-with-glibc2.33
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.3.2, ffprobe 4.3.2, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube:tab] ClashOfClans: Downloading webpage
ERROR: Unable to extract yt initial data; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see  https://yt-dl.org/update  on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 806, in wrapper
    return func(self, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 827, in __extract_info
    ie_result = ie.extract(url)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 534, in extract
    ie_result = self._real_extract(url)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 2694, in _real_extract
    data = self._extract_yt_initial_data(item_id, webpage)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 284, in _extract_yt_initial_data
    self._search_regex(
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 1012, in _search_regex
    raise RegexNotFoundError('Unable to extract %s' % _name)
youtube_dl.utils.RegexNotFoundError: Unable to extract yt initial data; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see  https://yt-dl.org/update  on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.

Description

In about every second/third try, the above command fails as shown above. So in order to download successfully, I have to execute this command a few times. It doesn’t seem to matter which playlist is given – it happens with a lot of them.

This looks like #28585: I’m in Europe (Germany) too. But that one is closed already – too early IMHO.

[remitamine]

passing any value for the Cookie header causes the extraction to work as expected:

youtube-dl --add-header 'Cookie:' https://www.youtube.com/c/ClashOfClans/videos
[youtube:tab] ClashOfClans: Downloading webpage
[download] Downloading playlist: Clash of Clans - Videos
[youtube:tab] Downloading page 1
[youtube:tab] Downloading page 2
[youtube:tab] Downloading page 3
...

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/c/ClashOfClans/videos
[youtube:tab] ClashOfClans: Downloading webpage
ERROR: Unable to extract yt initial data; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see  https://yt-dl.org/update  on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.

[dstftw]

@dstftw Why are you closing this bug?

Today it failed for me in 95% of the tries. After editing the cookie file (passed with the --cookies option) to include this line

.youtube.com TRUE / FALSE 2145916800 CONSENT YES+DE.de

… it worked for me again. This workaround could be added to youtube-dl, couldn’t it?

It’s already fixed. Bothet to check releases.