Don't create console for subprocesses on Windows (#1261)

Closes #1251

yt_dlp/utils.py

@@ -2272,6 +2272,20 @@ def process_communicate_or_kill(p, *args, **kwargs):
         raise
 
 
+class Popen(subprocess.Popen):
+    if sys.platform == 'win32':
+        _startupinfo = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
+        _startupinfo.dwFlags |= subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
+    else:
+        _startupinfo = None
+
+    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
+        super(Popen, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs, startupinfo=self._startupinfo)
+
+    def communicate_or_kill(self, *args, **kwargs):
+        return process_communicate_or_kill(self, *args, **kwargs)
+
+
 def get_subprocess_encoding():
     if sys.platform == 'win32' and sys.getwindowsversion()[0] >= 5:
         # For subprocess calls, encode with locale encoding
@@ -3977,8 +3991,7 @@ def check_executable(exe, args=[]):
     """ Checks if the given binary is installed somewhere in PATH, and returns its name.
     args can be a list of arguments for a short output (like -version) """
     try:
-        process_communicate_or_kill(subprocess.Popen(
-            [exe] + args, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE))
+        Popen([exe] + args, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE).communicate_or_kill()
     except OSError:
         return False
     return exe
@@ -3992,10 +4005,9 @@ def get_exe_version(exe, args=['--version'],
         # STDIN should be redirected too. On UNIX-like systems, ffmpeg triggers
         # SIGTTOU if yt-dlp is run in the background.
         # See https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/955#issuecomment-209789656
-        out, _ = process_communicate_or_kill(subprocess.Popen(
-            [encodeArgument(exe)] + args,
-            stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
-            stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT))
+        out, _ = Popen(
+            [encodeArgument(exe)] + args, stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
+            stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT).communicate_or_kill()
     except OSError:
         return False
     if isinstance(out, bytes):  # Python 2.x
@@ -6155,11 +6167,11 @@ def write_xattr(path, key, value):
                        + [encodeFilename(path, True)])
 
                 try:
-                    p = subprocess.Popen(
+                    p = Popen(
                         cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
                 except EnvironmentError as e:
                     raise XAttrMetadataError(e.errno, e.strerror)
-                stdout, stderr = process_communicate_or_kill(p)
+                stdout, stderr = p.communicate_or_kill()
                 stderr = stderr.decode('utf-8', 'replace')
                 if p.returncode != 0:
                     raise XAttrMetadataError(p.returncode, stderr)