[BUG]Crawling a single video comment reports an error

[jinsaijin]

from ytfetcher import YTFetcher

fetcher = YTFetcher.from_video_ids(
video_ids=['OUmh3hCgXnY']
)

comments_data = fetcher.fetch_youtube_data()
print(comments_data)

Execution returned error:
ERROR: [youtube] OUmh3hCgXnY: Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot. Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cookies-to-yt-dlp for how to manually pass cookies. Also see https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-youtube-cookies for tips on effectively exporting YouTube cookies

[kaya70875]

Hi @jinsaijin, thanks for reporting this.

I wasn’t able to reproduce the issue on my side with the same video ID, so it may be environment-specific.

The error message you’re seeing is coming from yt-dlp, which is used internally by this package. To help isolate whether this is related to ytfetcher or the underlying tool, could you try running the following command directly ?

yt-dlp --skip-download --print "%(title)s" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUmh3hCgXnY

If this produces a similar error, it would indicate the issue is occurring at the yt-dlp/YouTube level rather than within this package.

If possible, could you also share:

• your OS and Python version
• ytfetcher version
• whether you are using a VPN or proxy

That will help narrow it down further.

[jinsaijin]

Hi @jinsaijin, thanks for reporting this.

I wasn’t able to reproduce the issue on my side with the same video ID, so it may be environment-specific.

The error message you’re seeing is coming from yt-dlp, which is used internally by this package. To help isolate whether this is related to ytfetcher or the underlying tool, could you try running the following command directly ?

yt-dlp --skip-download --print "%(title)s" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUmh3hCgXnY
If this produces a similar error, it would indicate the issue is occurring at the yt-dlp/YouTube level rather than within this package.

If possible, could you also share:

• your OS and Python version
• ytfetcher version
• whether you are using a VPN or proxy

That will help narrow it down further.

I used this in Chinese Mainland to capture all the comments on the video without logging into YouTube. I confirmed that the error message was from yt dlp. Can you optimize your program to capture all comments on videos without logging in.

Here is my computer usage environment:

1. Operating System: Windows 10 Professional Edition
2. Python version: Python 3.11.9
3. Ytfetcher version: 2.2
4. Used VPN proxy: Yes

[jinsaijin]

Hi @jinsaijin, thanks for reporting this.

I wasn’t able to reproduce the issue on my side with the same video ID, so it may be environment-specific.

The error message you’re seeing is coming from yt-dlp, which is used internally by this package. To help isolate whether this is related to ytfetcher or the underlying tool, could you try running the following command directly ?

yt-dlp --skip-download --print "%(title)s" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUmh3hCgXnY
If this produces a similar error, it would indicate the issue is occurring at the yt-dlp/YouTube level rather than within this package.

If possible, could you also share:

• your OS and Python version
• ytfetcher version
• whether you are using a VPN or proxy

That will help narrow it down further.

[kaya70875]

Thanks for sharing information @jinsaijin

Using a VPN or proxy (especially shared or datacenter IPs) can trigger YouTube’s anti-bot checks. When that happens, YouTube requires authentication, and yt-dlp surfaces this as:
“Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot”

Unfortunately, this is controlled by YouTube and cannot be fully bypassed at the library level.

But there is some things you could try:

• I realized your yt-dlp version is old, update yt-dlp to the latest version since older versions may trigger this more often
• Try running without a VPN/proxy, or switch to a different network

Also you could try to use cookies for authentication with adding --cookies-from-browser parameter;

yt-dlp --skip-download --print "%(title)s" --cookies-from-browser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUmh3hCgXnY

If this specific parameter works for you, we can add an option to add this into ytfetcher internals.

Let me know if you’re able to test with a different network or with cookies, that would help confirm this further.