Struggling with the new WebP thumbnail format on YouTube? The improved YouTube2Audiobook has all you need! Readily available on GitHub.

An Abundance of Audiobooks

When it comes to great audiobooks, YouTube really can be an abundant source. A fair amount of the (un)read books on My Reading List are actually available on the platform.

From millennia-old classics to modern works, there is an ever growing guild of like-minded enthusiasts recording these works as audiobooks and providing them to the world, free of charge. As of 2020-10-08, the great LibriVox Audiobooks channel alone already features over 17,600+ complete audiobooks and 1,300+ playlists.

The YouTube2Audiobook app allows me to tap into this vast resource, scale out my reading, and expand my horizon. The recently introduced playlist support for YouTube2Audiobook accelerates this even further.

I can now download every video in the above “Author: Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE playlist” from the LibriVox Audiobooks channel as an audiobook by simply typing

$ yt2ab -u "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ-bKJtH3G7BKcrVgIZfVNIAZTtsnIJg-"

into a terminal of my choice (it’s iTerm2, in case you’re curious). And the Sherlock Holmes audiobooks will appear one after another. Slowly. But steadily. In order to not get throttled or blocked by the platform.

A New Thumbnail Image Format

However, that’s not entirely true. Unfortunately. When issuing the above yt2ab command, the actual output is the much rather disappointing

$ yt2ab -u "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ-bKJtH3G7BKcrVgIZfVNIAZTtsnIJg-"
Processing https://youtu.be/UzzubzBE3kg: 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE read by Various | Full Audio Book'...
[youtube] UzzubzBE3kg: Downloading webpage
[youtube] UzzubzBE3kg: Downloading thumbnail ...
[youtube] UzzubzBE3kg: Writing thumbnail to: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE read by Various _ Full Audio Book-UzzubzBE3kg.mp4.webp
[youtube] UzzubzBE3kg: Downloading webpage
[download] Destination: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE read by Various _ Full Audio Book-UzzubzBE3kg.mp4-youtube-audio.mp3
[download] 100% of 420.69MiB in 00:51
[ffmpeg] Correcting container in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE read by Various _ Full Audio Book-UzzubzBE3kg.mp4-youtube-audio.mp3"
[ffmpeg] Post-process file The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE read by Various _ Full Audio Book-UzzubzBE3kg.mp4-youtube-audio.mp3 exists, skipping
ffmpeg version 4.3.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2020 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple clang version 11.0.0 (clang-1100.0.33.17)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/4.3.1 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-version3 --enable-avresample --cc=clang --host-cflags= --host-ldflags= --enable-ffplay --enable-gnutls --enable-gpl --enable-libaom --enable-libbluray --enable-libdav1d --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-librav1e --enable-librubberband --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsrt --enable-libtesseract --enable-libtheora --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-lzma --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-frei0r --enable-libass --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-librtmp --enable-libspeex --enable-libsoxr --enable-videotoolbox --disable-libjack --disable-indev=jack
  libavutil      56. 51.100 / 56. 51.100
  libavcodec     58. 91.100 / 58. 91.100
  libavformat    58. 45.100 / 58. 45.100
  libavdevice    58. 10.100 / 58. 10.100
  libavfilter     7. 85.100 /  7. 85.100
  libavresample   4.  0.  0 /  4.  0.  0
  libswscale      5.  7.100 /  5.  7.100
  libswresample   3.  7.100 /  3.  7.100
  libpostproc    55.  7.100 / 55.  7.100
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE read by Various _ Full Audio Book-UzzubzBE3kg.mp4-youtube-audio.mp3':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2mp41
    encoder         : Lavf58.45.100
  Duration: 10:18:08.05, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 94 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, mono, fltp, 93 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      handler_name    : SoundHandler
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE read by Various _ Full Audio Book-UzzubzBE3kg.mp4.jpg: No such file or directory

So, YouTube2Audiobook is failing at the FFmpeg stage where it is converting the downloaded audio to an Mp3 file while at the same time also adding the previously downloaded thumbnail.

And therein lies the problem. In the above case, there is no thumbnail by the (expected) name The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE read by Various _ Full Audio Book-UzzubzBE3kg.mp4.jpg. How come…?!

Well. Historically, thumbnails were predominantly served by the platform as JPEG files. Until, in 2014, YouTube announced its move to the more efficient WebP format for it’s highest resolution thumbnails.

The effect of this move can actually be observed for the very first video in the above playlist (the one you see in the embedded YouTube player). When requesting a list of all corresponding thumbnails for the first video, it actually returns five of them.

$ youtube-dl --list-thumbnails https://youtu.be/UzzubzBE3kg
[youtube] UzzubzBE3kg: Downloading webpage
[info] Thumbnails for UzzubzBE3kg:
ID  width  height URL
0   168    94     https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UzzubzBE3kg/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEYCKgBEF5IVfKriqkDCwgBFQAAiEIYAXAB&rs=AOn4CLDti8Hb-liUchAf-MU0Xr9HAPCxJw
1   196    110    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UzzubzBE3kg/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEYCMQBEG5IVfKriqkDCwgBFQAAiEIYAXAB&rs=AOn4CLAFktUb_j_TvUWRLCwGOIX8pKUM2A
2   246    138    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UzzubzBE3kg/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEZCPYBEIoBSFXyq4qpAwsIARUAAIhCGAFwAQ==&rs=AOn4CLAEXWWhCRiC4Xkm8J5AmBnHEZkG0A
3   336    188    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UzzubzBE3kg/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEZCNACELwBSFXyq4qpAwsIARUAAIhCGAFwAQ==&rs=AOn4CLB7QJOLD80Y2J7wCMONRutgMQBPWQ
4   1920   1080   https://i.ytimg.com/vi_webp/UzzubzBE3kg/maxresdefault.webp

Here, the largest thumbnail is indeed a WebP file, hopefully correctly displayed by your browser below (click here if you want to open it in a separate window).

The above image should match the image you see in the embedded YouTube player above; it’s what it uses under the covers.

An Unpredictable File Name

So, why does this matter exactly? Well, the underlying youtube-dl open source project has a quirky behaviour when it comes to writing thumbnail files.

As of 2020-10-08, when told to write the thumbnail to file cover.jpg, via optional parameters, the output may actually be written to file cover.webpin case YouTube returns a WebP file; this can also be seen in below output

$ youtube-dl --write-thumbnail --skip-download -o cover.jpg https://youtu.be/UzzubzBE3kg
[youtube] UzzubzBE3kg: Downloading webpage
[youtube] UzzubzBE3kg: Downloading thumbnail ...
[youtube] UzzubzBE3kg: Writing thumbnail to: cover.webp

So, the name of the thumbnail file basically isn’t fixed (which it should be, in my humble opinion) but rather depends on what YouTube returns it on that specific day.

Moreover, I am not aware of a reliable way of extracting the name of the downloaded thumbnail file via the return values provided by youtube-dl. Please feel free to send me an email, in case I have missed something.

Asking for Forgiveness

However, this can be dealt with. Rather than checking for the last modified file, which can introduce race conditions and eventually prohibits scaling, it’s possible to work with the reality of the YouTube ecosystem.

As most thumbnails on YouTube for a video with title title are still in JPEG format, it’s a sensible guess to request to save the thumbnail to file title.jpg. If that’s the case, youtube-dl will write the file as intended. If the thumbnail is not in JPEG format, then youtube-dl will save it to title.EXTENSION where EXTENSION is the extension returned by the sever. In the latter case bet on it being a WebP file saved to file title.webp. In all other cases ask for forgiveness, as the thumbnail is in an unknown file format.

This solution has been fully integrated into the latest version of YouTube2Audiobook. This closes bug “Add WebP Thumbnail Support” and was addressed in commit 3215586.

So, How do You Handle WebP Images?!

While the above Worx for Me!™ when it comes to handling WebP video thumbnails in YouTube2Audiobook, you may have an alternative or better way.

Feel free to leave a comment or contribute to the GitHub repository, so we can make things better for everyone! A big thank you to everyone who did already contribute! Think this is all rubbish, incomplete, massively overcomplicated, or simply the wrong tool for the job?! Reach out to me on LinkedIn and teach me something new!

As always, prove me wrong and I’ll buy you a pint!