[Bug] Series images sometimes don't download

[giantsfan006]

Not sure why but I'm not getting any series images dowloading. I set up pinchflat for testing and everything went as expected including getting series images. Once I finished testing I deleted everything and set it up again for the long haul but now I'm not getting any of the series images coming through.

Is there a way to force them via command line or something else I can do?

[kieraneglin]

Hey there! Thanks for the report (: - I was out of cell service for the last week and I'm just catching up on what I've missed

This appears to be an outstanding yt-dlp issue that only impacts some users. My hunch is that it's caused by one of the many experiments that YouTube runs for small subsets of its users. This is reinforced by the fact that some users see this issue for a few days and then, without changing anything, the issue goes away. Unfortunately I've never experienced the issue myself which makes troubleshooting WAY harder

That said, I've been seeing more reports of this lately so I'll leave this issue open as a reminder-to-self to track this down. At the end of the day I'm reliant on yt-dlp to fix the underlying issue but I'll check with their team to see what we can come up with!

In the meantime, something that would really help is to attach your logs. In-app you can go to Config > App Info and download them from there

[kieraneglin]

@giantsfan006 I'm trying to track this down - would you mind opening a source that's seeing this issue then clicking "Actions" > "Copy JSON" and posting that here?

[kieraneglin]

(Note for me) This is what's causing this issue: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/10090. This confirms that YouTube is A/B testing responses and it's a matter of waiting for yt-dlp to catch up

[costaht]

I'm not sure if it's related, but here's my json: https://pastebin.com/vVPi8Jjq I thought I wasn't getting my posters either, but I found out what happened. Today I use ytdl-sub and in the process of testing pinchflat, I added one of my sources, but later I noticed that ytdl-sub and pinchflat were saving the files in the same parent folder. To remedy that, I changed my Custom Name on pinchflat to something else. That's when the problem begins. Although the Custom Name is changed, the rest of the metadata remains the same. Pinchflat will only update series_directory, banner_filepath, fanart_filepath e poster_filepath after a Refresh Metadata, and since I'm using {{ source_custom_name }} on my path, pinchflat was still saving the files in the old path. I guess if you trigger a Refresh Metadata everytime a source is edited, that should fix the problem.

[kieraneglin]

Thank you!

Yeah, that's definitely a bit of an issue when it comes to refreshing metadata. The problem is that many users don't want that directory to change automatically if they have a lot of files in that location already. It's hard to know what behaviour the user wants since it changes depending on the circumstance 🤷‍♂️

[kieraneglin]

I've pushed an update so it might be worth seeing if this issue persists!

[Jmanko16]

I've pushed an update so it might be worth seeing if this issue persists!

I'm still getting this issue. I only get banner, otherwise no downloads. I've looks and tried with the date on and with no date and issue persists.

I can provide logs unless you have any other suggestions?

[jx24734]

I am also seeing this issue. When I add a channel, I get the banner and then the videos but no other images (poster, fanart, etc.). I can also provide logs if needed.

[kieraneglin]

Thanks for the patience, all!

I've dug in deeper and I'm certain the issue is a newer manifestation of this older issue: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/10090. YouTube is constantly changing elements of it's UI behind-the-scenes and yt-dlp necessarily takes some time to catch up. I can't reproduce this issue on my end (meaning YouTube isn't testing this batch of changes on me) so I'll need some outside help!

Here's how to assist:

1. Pick a channel (not playlist) that is experiencing this issue and copy its URL
2. Open a console session in the Pinchflat container. This may vary depending on your setup, but if you're using the CLI the command will be something like this: docker exec -it pinchflat bash
3. Inside that new console run this command, subbing out <CHANNEL URL HERE> for the URL copied in step 1:

yt-dlp <CHANNEL URL HERE> --skip-download --convert-thumbnails jpg --output "/tmp/image.%(ext)S" --write-all-thumbnails --playlist-items 0 --print "playlist:%(.{original_url,thumbnails})j"

4. Copy the output of this command and paste it here so I can see it

That's it for now, but this won't tell me the full story! But depending on the result of this command I'll have a followup command to run that should get to the root of the issue.

Thanks for the help!

[brianroberg]

Here's the output I got:

{"original_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@NetworkChuck", "thumbnails": [{"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/6TsuYML3OSXSVVFkRGfPfq1qhEiG0tkKj-UV6XPfifmDDAuV8QTF4wna5maptTBMhikcjaAWcg=w1060-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 175, "width": 1060, "preference": -10, "id": "0", "resolution": "1060x175", "filepath": "/tmp/image.0.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/6TsuYML3OSXSVVFkRGfPfq1qhEiG0tkKj-UV6XPfifmDDAuV8QTF4wna5maptTBMhikcjaAWcg=w1138-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 188, "width": 1138, "preference": -10, "id": "1", "resolution": "1138x188", "filepath": "/tmp/image.1.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/6TsuYML3OSXSVVFkRGfPfq1qhEiG0tkKj-UV6XPfifmDDAuV8QTF4wna5maptTBMhikcjaAWcg=w1707-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 283, "width": 1707, "preference": -10, "id": "2", "resolution": "1707x283", "filepath": "/tmp/image.2.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/6TsuYML3OSXSVVFkRGfPfq1qhEiG0tkKj-UV6XPfifmDDAuV8QTF4wna5maptTBMhikcjaAWcg=w2120-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 351, "width": 2120, "preference": -10, "id": "3", "resolution": "2120x351", "filepath": "/tmp/image.3.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/6TsuYML3OSXSVVFkRGfPfq1qhEiG0tkKj-UV6XPfifmDDAuV8QTF4wna5maptTBMhikcjaAWcg=w2276-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 377, "width": 2276, "preference": -10, "id": "4", "resolution": "2276x377", "filepath": "/tmp/image.4.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/6TsuYML3OSXSVVFkRGfPfq1qhEiG0tkKj-UV6XPfifmDDAuV8QTF4wna5maptTBMhikcjaAWcg=w2560-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 424, "width": 2560, "preference": -10, "id": "5", "resolution": "2560x424", "filepath": "/tmp/image.5.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/6TsuYML3OSXSVVFkRGfPfq1qhEiG0tkKj-UV6XPfifmDDAuV8QTF4wna5maptTBMhikcjaAWcg=s0", "id": "banner_uncropped", "preference": -5, "filepath": "/tmp/image.banner_uncropped.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/ytc/AIdro_k01-_GpvVZW8w4ULtaQaa55ls8aMf2a5dXhIe56pjMvG0=s900-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj", "height": 900, "width": 900, "id": "7", "resolution": "900x900", "filepath": "/tmp/image.7.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/ytc/AIdro_k01-_GpvVZW8w4ULtaQaa55ls8aMf2a5dXhIe56pjMvG0=s0", "id": "avatar_uncropped", "preference": 1, "filepath": "/tmp/image.avatar_uncropped.jpg"}]}

FWIW, I'm not seeing quite the same behavior others have described. When I add a channel, I'm not getting a banner image, or any other channel images. I just get thumbnails that go with the individual videos.

[kieraneglin]

@brianroberg thank you! Unfortunately, that didn't tell me anything about this specific issue since I suspect your problem is unrelated. This would probably be best to put in a new issue as to not clutter up this one, but my hunch is that your source couldn't determine a series_directory. Since downloading channel images only works for media organized into seasons, the common culprit here is that the Media Profile's output template needs to be updated to include a season directory.

Anyway, if you're still seeing this problem then please open a new issue and we should be able to get it sorted!

[kieraneglin]

Troubleshooting output from @thimplicity here: https://github.com/kieraneglin/pinchflat/issues/467#issuecomment-2471359266

[eeble]

Here's some more output {"original_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@MangoJellySolutions", "thumbnails": [{"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/TIFvRTLyTysm6mwmv87CSFJWAcFbjQ9K_qf77EjTp68AT0zvA8EBMQQVGb7UN2XGwW-VOiF_=w1060-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 175, "width": 1060, "preference": -10, "id": "0", "resolution": "1060x175", "filepath": "/tmp/image.0.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/TIFvRTLyTysm6mwmv87CSFJWAcFbjQ9K_qf77EjTp68AT0zvA8EBMQQVGb7UN2XGwW-VOiF_=w1138-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 188, "width": 1138, "preference": -10, "id": "1", "resolution": "1138x188", "filepath": "/tmp/image.1.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/TIFvRTLyTysm6mwmv87CSFJWAcFbjQ9K_qf77EjTp68AT0zvA8EBMQQVGb7UN2XGwW-VOiF_=w1707-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 283, "width": 1707, "preference": -10, "id": "2", "resolution": "1707x283", "filepath": "/tmp/image.2.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/TIFvRTLyTysm6mwmv87CSFJWAcFbjQ9K_qf77EjTp68AT0zvA8EBMQQVGb7UN2XGwW-VOiF_=w2120-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 351, "width": 2120, "preference": -10, "id": "3", "resolution": "2120x351", "filepath": "/tmp/image.3.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/TIFvRTLyTysm6mwmv87CSFJWAcFbjQ9K_qf77EjTp68AT0zvA8EBMQQVGb7UN2XGwW-VOiF_=w2276-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 377, "width": 2276, "preference": -10, "id": "4", "resolution": "2276x377", "filepath": "/tmp/image.4.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/TIFvRTLyTysm6mwmv87CSFJWAcFbjQ9K_qf77EjTp68AT0zvA8EBMQQVGb7UN2XGwW-VOiF_=w2560-fcrop64=1,00005a57ffffa5a8-k-c0xffffffff-no-nd-rj", "height": 424, "width": 2560, "preference": -10, "id": "5", "resolution": "2560x424", "filepath": "/tmp/image.5.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/TIFvRTLyTysm6mwmv87CSFJWAcFbjQ9K_qf77EjTp68AT0zvA8EBMQQVGb7UN2XGwW-VOiF_=s0", "id": "banner_uncropped", "preference": -5, "filepath": "/tmp/image.banner_uncropped.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/pW1BvdtObNuRhXDX96oi5KoH7caiqCs-lzxNvxZmMRrkUqAQ9cqbCrRLoX9-qQ4N2PJSuYgQx74=s900-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj", "height": 900, "width": 900, "id": "7", "resolution": "900x900", "filepath": "/tmp/image.7.jpg"}, {"url": "https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/pW1BvdtObNuRhXDX96oi5KoH7caiqCs-lzxNvxZmMRrkUqAQ9cqbCrRLoX9-qQ4N2PJSuYgQx74=s0", "id": "avatar_uncropped", "preference": 1, "filepath": "/tmp/image.avatar_uncropped.jpg"}]}