diff --git a/test/test_utils.py b/test/test_utils.py
index f3fbff042c..e9e590e749 100644
--- a/test/test_utils.py
+++ b/test/test_utils.py
@@ -24,6 +24,8 @@ from youtube_dl.utils import (
     xpath_with_ns,
     smuggle_url,
     unsmuggle_url,
+    shell_quote,
+    encodeFilename,
 )
 
 if sys.version_info < (3, 0):
@@ -170,6 +172,10 @@ class TestUtil(unittest.TestCase):
         self.assertEqual(res_url, url)
         self.assertEqual(res_data, None)
 
+    def test_shell_quote(self):
+        args = ['ffmpeg', '-i', encodeFilename(u'ñ€ß\'.mp4')]
+        self.assertEqual(shell_quote(args), u"""ffmpeg -i 'ñ€ß'"'"'.mp4'""")
+
 
 if __name__ == '__main__':
     unittest.main()
diff --git a/youtube_dl/utils.py b/youtube_dl/utils.py
index b50c8166fc..0720fe9ebb 100644
--- a/youtube_dl/utils.py
+++ b/youtube_dl/utils.py
@@ -951,7 +951,16 @@ class locked_file(object):
 
 
 def shell_quote(args):
-    return ' '.join(map(pipes.quote, args))
+    quoted_args = []
+    encoding = sys.getfilesystemencoding()
+    if encoding is None:
+        encoding = 'utf-8'
+    for a in args:
+        if isinstance(a, bytes):
+            # We may get a filename encoded with 'encodeFilename'
+            a = a.decode(encoding)
+        quoted_args.append(pipes.quote(a))
+    return u' '.join(quoted_args)
 
 
 def takewhile_inclusive(pred, seq):