Video URL is now unsupported contrary to earlier release…

[faxotherapy]

I sincerely confirm I have…

• verified and I assure that I'm running youtube-dl 2016.07.16
• At least skimmed through README and most notably FAQ and BUGS sections
• Searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones

The purpose of my issue is…

• Bug report (encountered problems with youtube-dl)
• Site support request (request for adding support for a new site)
• Feature request (request for a new functionality)
• Question
• Other

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Example of Problematic URL

http://www.rtl.be/info/video/589263.aspx?CategoryID=288

I acknowledged this site is not officially supported by youtube-dl, but it used to be until release 2016.06.19.1. I wonder why then latest youtube-dl release does no longer support this site.

The latest release to support the above video URL is 2016.06.19.1. I have to revert back to this version if I want to download the video. From version 2016.07.03.1 onwards, it's no longer supported as I get now the Unsupported URL error message.

$ youtube-dl -v -f best http://www.rtl.be/info/video/589263.aspx\?CategoryID\=288
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: [u'--proxy', u'127.0.0.1:8118', u'--no-check-certificate', u'--youtube-skip-dash-manifest', u'--autonumber-size', u'2', u'--add-metadata', u'--xattrs']
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'-f', u'best', u'http://www.rtl.be/info/video/589263.aspx?CategoryID=288']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2016.07.13
[debug] Python version 2.7.12 - Darwin-15.3.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 3.1.1, ffprobe 3.1.1
[debug] Proxy map: {u'http': u'127.0.0.1:8118', u'https': u'127.0.0.1:8118'}
[generic] 589263: Requesting header
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
[generic] 589263: Downloading webpage
[generic] 589263: Extracting information
[generic] 640: Requesting header
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
[generic] 640: Downloading webpage
[generic] 640: Extracting information
ERROR: Unsupported URL: https://www.rtl.be/videos/page/rtl-video-en-embed/640.aspx?VideoID=589263
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/generic.py", line 1565, in _real_extract
    doc = compat_etree_fromstring(webpage.encode('utf-8'))
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/compat.py", line 2525, in compat_etree_fromstring
    doc = _XML(text, parser=etree.XMLParser(target=_TreeBuilder(element_factory=_element_factory)))
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/compat.py", line 2514, in _XML
    parser.feed(text)
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.12/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 1653, in feed
    self._raiseerror(v)
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.12/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 1517, in _raiseerror
    raise err
ParseError: syntax error: line 1, column 62
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 681, in extract_info
    ie_result = ie.extract(url)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 347, in extract
    return self._real_extract(url)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/generic.py", line 2282, in _real_extract
    raise UnsupportedError(url)
UnsupportedError: Unsupported URL: https://www.rtl.be/videos/page/rtl-video-en-embed/640.aspx?VideoID=589263

Here's now the log of a successful download with same link using version 2016.06.19.1:

[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: [u'--proxy', u'127.0.0.1:8118', u'--no-check-certificate', u'--youtube-skip-dash-manifest', u'--autonumber-size', u'2', u'--add-metadata', u'--xattrs']
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'-f', u'best', u'http://www.rtl.be/info/video/589263.aspx?CategoryID=288']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2016.06.19.1
[debug] Python version 2.7.12 - Darwin-15.3.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 3.1.1, ffprobe 3.1.1
[debug] Proxy map: {u'http': u'127.0.0.1:8118', u'https': u'127.0.0.1:8118'}
[generic] 589263: Requesting header
WARNING: Falling back on generic information extractor.
[generic] 589263: Downloading webpage
[generic] 589263: Extracting information
[generic] master: Downloading m3u8 information
[debug] Invoking downloader on u'http://vpl.rtl.be/i/2016/01/CA00001088402_,400,600,800,1200,1800,.mp4.csmil/index_4_av.m3u8'
[download] Destination: Une nouvelle espèce de dinosaure découverte en Argentine-master.mp4
[debug] ffmpeg command line: ffmpeg -y -headers 'Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0) Gecko/20150101 Firefox/47.0 (Chrome)
' -i http://vpl.rtl.be/i/2016/01/CA00001088402_,400,600,800,1200,1800,.mp4.csmil/index_4_av.m3u8 -c copy -f mp4 -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc 'file:Une nouvelle espèce de dinosaure découverte en Argentine-master.mp4.part'
ffmpeg version 3.1.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple LLVM version 7.3.0 (clang-703.0.31)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/3.1.1 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-hardcoded-tables --enable-avresample --cc=clang --host-cflags= --host-ldflags= --enable-opencl --enable-libx264 --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libxvid --enable-libx265 --disable-lzma --enable-vda
  libavutil      55. 28.100 / 55. 28.100
  libavcodec     57. 48.101 / 57. 48.101
  libavformat    57. 41.100 / 57. 41.100
  libavdevice    57.  0.101 / 57.  0.101
  libavfilter     6. 47.100 /  6. 47.100
  libavresample   3.  0.  0 /  3.  0.  0
  libswscale      4.  1.100 /  4.  1.100
  libswresample   2.  1.100 /  2.  1.100
  libpostproc    54.  0.100 / 54.  0.100
Input #0, hls,applehttp, from 'http://vpl.rtl.be/i/2016/01/CA00001088402_,400,600,800,1200,1800,.mp4.csmil/index_4_av.m3u8':
  Duration: 00:02:09.32, start: 0.100667, bitrate: 0 kb/s
  Program 0 
    Metadata:
      variant_bitrate : 0
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (Constrained Baseline) ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), yuv420p, 960x540 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 50 tbc
    Stream #0:1: Audio: aac (LC) ([15][0][0][0] / 0x000F), 48000 Hz, mono, fltp, 81 kb/s
[mp4 @ 0x7fb1d48bd200] Using AVStream.codec to pass codec parameters to muxers is deprecated, use AVStream.codecpar instead.
    Last message repeated 1 times
Output #0, mp4, to 'file:Une nouvelle espèce de dinosaure découverte en Argentine-master.mp4.part':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf57.41.100
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 ([33][0][0][0] / 0x0021), yuv420p, 960x540 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], q=2-31, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc
    Stream #0:1: Audio: aac (LC) ([64][0][0][0] / 0x0040), 48000 Hz, mono, 81 kb/s
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (copy)
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (copy)
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
frame= 3233 fps=109 q=-1.0 Lsize=   30229kB time=00:02:09.30 bitrate=1915.2kbits/s speed=4.34x    
video:28895kB audio:1305kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.093484%
[ffmpeg] Downloaded 30954149 bytes
[download] 100% of 29.52MiB
[ffmpeg] Adding metadata to 'Une nouvelle espèce de dinosaure découverte en Argentine-master.mp4'
[debug] ffmpeg command line: ffmpeg -y -i 'file:Une nouvelle espèce de dinosaure découverte en Argentine-master.mp4' -c copy -metadata 'purl=http://www.rtl.be/info/video/589263.aspx?CategoryID=288' -metadata artist=www.rtl.be -metadata 'title=Une nouvelle espèce de dinosaure découverte en Argentine' 'file:Une nouvelle espèce de dinosaure découverte en Argentine-master.temp.mp4'
[metadata] Writing metadata to file's xattrs