YouTube videos fail to load frequently!
CMajor7
Starting with the 28th of March, I'm receiving very frequent reports of users that YouTube videos fail to load in my world. After some testing I concluded that it's other worlds too. To quantify this problem I ran some data and visualized it. Since the 28th, the Error rate of videos in my world increased to around 20%, meaning every 5th video fails to load. This also exactly lines up with when VRChat had the yt-dlp resolver updated for the last time.
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WubTheCaptain
YouTube made some changes, which may result in incompatible/broken sig extraction with older clients. yt-dlp 2026.02.21 and yt-dlp-ejs 0.5.0 have been released to address this.
Feature request: Update yt-dlp to 2026.02.21 to resolve YouTube playback issues
WubTheCaptain
yt-dlp 2026.02.04 and yt-dlp 2026.01.31 have been released.
A feature request which may help avoid YouTube's latest bot detection affecting some users: Update yt-dlp to 2026.02.04 to resolve YouTube playback issues
WubTheCaptain
yt-dlp 2026.01.29 has been released, with a plethora of YouTube playback fixes.
As an experiment, I was personally unable to get stock yt-dlp 2026.01.29 from upstream (read-only attribute set on yt-dlp.exe) to play both YouTube and Twitch videos on AVPro and Unity Video players in VRChat, while VRChat's yt-dlp 2025.11.12 succeeded to play Twitch videos in AVPro/Unity Player and YouTube videos in Unity Video player (but not AVPro) for reasons unknown and unclear from logs. (NB: Using this is strongly discouraged beyond experimental testing, I've reverted to VRChat's yt-dlp for safety.)
Upstream stock yt-dlp 2026.01.29 from command line succeeds to download a video from YouTube on my machine, however. A test URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEAC8eeQWcg
WubTheCaptain
PS C:\Users\linda.LINDALAP\AppData\LocalLow\VRChat\VRChat\Tools> .\yt-dlp.exe --version
2026.01.29
VRChat has released an update to yt-dlp and YouTube playback in AVPro video players is working again.
WubTheCaptain
Based on feedback on VRChat Ask forum, this seems to have resolved YouTube playback issues for several others as well.
StormRel
Merged in a post:
URLs not working
༒ʝɛȶ༒
YouTube URLs seem to no longer work in most worlds and has been like this for almost every player lately.
StormRel
Merged in a post:
Video Players not working... again.
Its Sephy
In every world i go, they are just giving the ''video error'' and ''failed to load video'' messages, it's been more than a week already.
StormRel
Merged in a post:
All video players not working
UviDawg
open vrchat, o to any world ith video player, "playr eror" others see ost error, no matter wht i try to put on. help. its been a month. i just want my music.
"[AVProVideo] Error: Loading failed. File not found, codec not supported, video resolution too high or insufficient system resources."
AndreKangaroo
This error issues literally pisses me off
I can't even watch my own shows and sing my favorite songat any karaoke hangout. THIS JUST FREAKING ABSURD!!!!!!!! 😡😡😡😡
WubTheCaptain
As for recent yt-dlp YouTube playback issues from the past week and uptick in bug reports on VRChat Canny on this issue, there are pull requests & commits at upstream yt-dlp to address YouTube playback issues with .m3u8 playlist downloads, and other issues:
- [ie/youtube] Solve n challenges for manifest formats by bashonly · Pull Request #15602 · yt-dlp/yt-dlp · GitHub https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/15602
- [ie/youtube] Adjust default clients by bashonly · Pull Request #15601 · yt-dlp/yt-dlp · GitHub https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/pull/15601
As of writing this, yt-dlp has not formally released a new version with these patches yet. After the upstream project releases a new version of yt-dlp at some point in the future, it'll also take some time for VRChat Team developers to backport changes to their fork of yt-dlp and include it for VRChat users (unless VRChat decides to cherry-pick and backport those patches earlier into their fork).
Can this issue be closed at the next yt-dlp update in VRChat?
Kizzy
WubTheCaptain bro why do you comment on every single post here acting like a wanna-be janny or member of the developer or community team?
why are you asking for the issue to be closed before it's even acknowledged, let alone fixed?
WubTheCaptain
I don't think this bug report is actionable, as long as VRChat uses the upstream yt-dlp project to download and stream videos. It really isn't even much of a bug report with steps to reproduce and logs, but more of a complaint or a meta-issue for tracking how YouTube does their A/B testing and operates their platform.
I think it'd be better to make actual feature requests if there are specific issues, e.g. "Update yt-dlp to version XXXX.YY.ZZ" or "Backport upstream yt-dlp pull request #XXXX / commit abcdef into VRChat to improve YouTube playback".
VRChat updates its yt-dlp version semi-frequently. As of VRChat 2025.4.2p1 (Build 1769) on Steam (that's live right now), we're on yt-dlp 2025.11.12, which should have included all the YouTube fixes up until that point.
CMajor7 Has the issue in your original post been resolved between April 2025 and December 2025? Do you have more visualized data?
WubTheCaptain
This isn't a bug report, and I was unable to reproduce the issue ("Video Players not working... again." & "In every world").
2026.01.24 00:06:25 Debug - [Video Playback] Attempting to resolve URL 'https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2678273478'
2026.01.24 00:06:25 Debug - NativeProcess.Start: started process id [22628]: C:/Users/linda.LINDALAP/AppData/LocalLow/VRChat/VRChat\Tools/yt-dlp.exe (...)
2026.01.24 00:06:25 Debug - <color=green>[VideoManager]</color> Video ended, resetting subtitles
2026.01.24 00:06:25 Debug - [VRCX] VideoPlay(PopcornPalace) {"videoName":"","videoPos":0,"videoLength":0,"thumbnailUrl":"","displayName":"WubTheCaptain","isPaused":false,"is3D":false,"looping":false}
2026.01.24 00:06:27 Debug - NativeProcess.HasExited: process exited with code 0, took 2239 ms. Command line: C:/Users/linda.LINDALAP/AppData/LocalLow/VRChat/VRChat\Tools/yt-dlp.exe (...)
2026.01.24 00:06:27 Debug - [Video Playback] URL 'https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2678273478' resolved to 'https://d2nvs31859zcd8.cloudfront.net/6746057da23398f39abc_vrchat_35586328269_6059890461/chunked/highlight-2678273478.m3u8'
2026.01.24 00:06:27 Debug - [AVProVideo] Opening https://d2nvs31859zcd8.cloudfront.net/6746057da23398f39abc_vrchat_35586328269_6059890461/chunked/highlight-2678273478.m3u8 (offset 0) with API MediaFoundation
2026.01.24 00:06:29 Debug - [AVProVideo] Using playback path: MF-MediaEngine-Hardware (1920x1080@0.00)
2026.01.24 00:06:29 Debug - [VRCX] VideoPlay(PopcornPalace) {"videoName":"","videoPos":0,"videoLength":0,"thumbnailUrl":"","displayName":"WubTheCaptain","isPaused":false,"is3D":false,"looping":false}
World: Popcorn Palace by spacebaar
It's also a duplicate of this issue: https://feedback.vrchat.com/bug-reports/p/all-video-players-not-working
Its Sephy When creating a bug report, please post the full logs as an attachment and include steps to reproduce the issue.
Possibly related: YouTube videos fail to load frequently!
The upstream yt-dlp project can't change how YouTube operates its platform and its anti-bot measures.
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