-o "%(duration>%H:%M:%S)s" is sanitized to 01_16_58 while -o "%(duration>%H: %M: %S)s" is sanitized to 01： 16： 58

[DavidPesticcio]

EDIT: see #9964 (comment)

DO NOT REMOVE OR SKIP THE ISSUE TEMPLATE

• I understand that I will be blocked if I intentionally remove or skip any mandatory* field

Checklist

• I'm asking a question and not reporting a bug or requesting a feature
• I've looked through the README
• I've verified that I have updated yt-dlp to nightly or master (update instructions)
• I've searched known issues and the bugtracker for similar questions including closed ones. DO NOT post duplicates
• I've read the guidelines for opening an issue

Please make sure the question is worded well enough to be understood

My question: Is this expected behaviour, or a bug?

If I put a space or other character before, or after, the colon : then I get a colon in the filename, otherwise I either get an underscore _ or NA depending on whether I use duration or duration_string respectively... 😿

Provide verbose output that clearly demonstrates the problem

• Run your yt-dlp command with -vU flag added (yt-dlp -vU <your command line>)
• If using API, add 'verbose': True to YoutubeDL params instead
• Copy the WHOLE output (starting with [debug] Command-line config) and insert it below

Complete Verbose Output

Even after updating the behaviour still exists.

$ yt-dlp -vU
[debug] Command-line config: ['-vU']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, pref UTF-8, out utf-8, error utf-8, screen utf-8
[debug] yt-dlp version stable@2024.03.10 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp [615a84447] (zip)
[debug] Python 3.10.12 (CPython x86_64 64bit) - Linux-5.15.0-106-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.35 (OpenSSL 3.0.2 15 Mar 2022, glibc 2.35)
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.4.2 (setts), ffprobe 4.4.2
[debug] Optional libraries: Cryptodome-3.11.0, brotli-1.0.9, certifi-2020.06.20, mutagen-1.45.1, requests-2.25.1, secretstorage-3.3.1, sqlite3-3.37.2, urllib3-1.26.5
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[debug] Request Handlers: urllib
[debug] Loaded 1803 extractors
[debug] Fetching release info: https://api.github.com/repos/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest
[debug] Downloading _update_spec from https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/_update_spec
[debug] Downloading SHA2-256SUMS from https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/download/2024.04.09/SHA2-256SUMS
Current version: stable@2024.03.10 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp
Latest version: stable@2024.04.09 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp
Current Build Hash: 5576348930e44102add235c0a032e766f416a507db1dd2c75da833ff21e9fb6c
Updating to stable@2024.04.09 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp ...
[debug] Downloading yt-dlp from https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/download/2024.04.09/yt-dlp
Updated yt-dlp to stable@2024.04.09 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp

[bashonly]

duration is a numeric value (seconds) that can be interpreted by Python as a represenation of time and therefore formatted with a string template. duration_string has already been formatted with a string template. If duration_string is present in the metadata, then duration will be too, so why not just use duration?

[DavidPesticcio]

Okay, so I've just gone through what I thought I had already done earlier and see that applying >%H:%M:%S to duration_string is indeed wrong and only works as I need for duration

My confusion was that while duration_string contains colons, I need it zero padded, which I presume is not an option, and certainly not possible by applying a format.

Using %(duration>%H:%M:%S)s is giving the desired zero padded output.

Although, while investigating with --print it all looks fine, but as soon as I use -o for constructing the filename, and use --print to show me the result, I get underscore _ instead of a colon : in the filename - for the same formatting. 🫤

Here's a stripped down version of my yt-dlp options that highlights what I mean.

Is this expected behaviour? Or am I going crazy! 😄

$ yt-dlp --print "%(upload_date>%Y-%m-%d)s [%(duration>%H:%M:%S)s] - filename %(filename)s" -o "%(upload_date>%Y-%m-%d)s [%(duration>%H:%M:%S)s]" https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0vfts4VzfNjQOM9VClyL5R0LeuTxlAR3
WARNING: [youtube:tab] Incomplete data received. Retrying (1/3)...
WARNING: [youtube:tab] Incomplete data received. Retrying (2/3)...
WARNING: [youtube:tab] Incomplete data received. Retrying (3/3)...
WARNING: [youtube:tab] Incomplete data received. Giving up after 3 retries
WARNING: [youtube] Skipping player responses from android clients (got player responses for video "aQvGIIdgFDM" instead of "rIrNIzy6U_g")
2024-03-12 [00:08:28] - filename 2024-03-12 [00_08_28]
WARNING: [youtube] Skipping player responses from android clients (got player responses for video "aQvGIIdgFDM" instead of "r5NQecwZs1A")
2023-08-26 [00:08:25] - filename 2023-08-26 [00_08_25]
WARNING: [youtube] Skipping player responses from android clients (got player responses for video "aQvGIIdgFDM" instead of "lkIFF4maKMU")
^C
ERROR: Interrupted by user

[bashonly]

On Windows, filenames cannot contain :, so yt-dlp sanitizes the filename by converting : to _. You could use a unicode full-width colon, e.g. "%(duration>%H：%M：%S)s"

[DavidPesticcio]

I'm doing all this on Linux, and if I put a space either side of the colon, or any other regular character, including another colon, in the -o I get a unicode full-width colon in the filename by the look of it - but not if it's flanked by %H and co directly... 🤷

Seems like that might be a bug... 🫤

$ yt-dlp --print "%(upload_date>%Y-%m-%d)s [%(duration>%H:%M:%S)s] - filename %(filename)s" --playlist-reverse --embed-thumbnail --add-metadata -o "%(upload_date>%Y-%m-%d)s [%(duration>%H:%Hx:%M :%S: %S::)s]" https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0vfts4VzfNjQOM9VClyL5R0LeuTxlAR3
WARNING: [youtube:tab] Incomplete data received. Retrying (1/3)...
WARNING: [youtube:tab] Incomplete data received. Retrying (2/3)...
WARNING: [youtube:tab] Incomplete data received. Retrying (3/3)...
WARNING: [youtube:tab] Incomplete data received. Giving up after 3 retries
WARNING: [youtube] Skipping player responses from android clients (got player responses for video "aQvGIIdgFDM" instead of "rIrNIzy6U_g")
2024-03-12 [00:08:28] - filename 2024-03-12 [00_00x：08 ：28： 28：：]
WARNING: [youtube] Skipping player responses from android clients (got player responses for video "aQvGIIdgFDM" instead of "r5NQecwZs1A")
2023-08-26 [00:08:25] - filename 2023-08-26 [00_00x：08 ：25： 25：：]
WARNING: [youtube] Skipping player responses from android clients (got player responses for video "aQvGIIdgFDM" instead of "lkIFF4maKMU")
^C
ERROR: Interrupted by user

[DavidPesticcio]

Additionally, as a workaround to get the desired format, I am using the following -o template to get a normal colon in the filename. Please don't break that, that's exactly what I need/want... 😄 lol

"[%(duration>%H)s:%(duration>%M)s:%(duration>%S)s]"

So it seems like the issue is isolated to whatever is used to parse %() sections.

Any presence of a colon elsewhere, for me, like the "%(title)", does seem to get converted to a unicode full-width colon. Which for Linux isn't strictly necessary.

[bashonly]

Which for Linux isn't strictly necessary.

see #9591 for that