diff --git a/brozzler/worker.py b/brozzler/worker.py
index 8805a25..ba93bec 100644
--- a/brozzler/worker.py
+++ b/brozzler/worker.py
@@ -291,8 +291,12 @@ class BrozzlerWorker:
     def _try_youtube_dl(self, ydl, site, page):
         try:
             self.logger.info("trying youtube-dl on {}".format(page))
+
             with brozzler.thread_accept_exceptions():
-                info = ydl.extract_info(page.url)
+                # we do whatwg canonicalization here to avoid "<urlopen error
+                # no host given>" resulting in ProxyError
+                # needs automated test
+                info = ydl.extract_info(urlcanon.whatwg(page.url))
             self._remember_videos(page, ydl.brozzler_spy)
             # logging.info('XXX %s', json.dumps(info))
             if self._using_warcprox(site):
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 3164919..f21dbef 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ def find_package_data(package):
 
 setuptools.setup(
         name='brozzler',
-        version='1.1b12.dev277',
+        version='1.1b12.dev278',
         description='Distributed web crawling with browsers',
         url='https://github.com/internetarchive/brozzler',
         author='Noah Levitt',