obamawhitehouse YouTube channel download doesn't work

[wayneworkman]

• I'm reporting a broken site support issue
• I've verified that I'm running youtube-dl version 2020.07.28
• I've checked that all provided URLs are alive and playable in a browser
• I've checked that all URLs and arguments with special characters are properly quoted or escaped
• I've searched the bugtracker for similar bug reports including closed ones
• I've read bugs section in FAQ

Command

/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl --verbose -f 'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]' -i --force-ipv4 --user-agent 'Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; SM-A205U) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.111 Mobile Safari/537.36' --cookies /data/cookies.txt --download-archive /data/youtube/The_Obama_White_House/archive.txt --write-info-json --write-description --write-thumbnail --socket-timeout 30 --restrict-filenames -o "/data/youtube/The_Obama_White_House/%(uploader_id)s_%(upload_date)s_%(title)s.%(ext)s" https://www.youtube.com/obamawhitehouse

/data/cookies.txt contents

# Netscape HTTP Cookie File
# This file is generated by youtube-dl.  Do not edit.

.youtube.com	TRUE	/	FALSE	1597250770	GPS	1
.youtube.com	TRUE	/	FALSE	1602433039	PREF	f1=50000000&f6=8&hl=en
.youtube.com	TRUE	/	TRUE	1612799781	VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	XZn8voCBHxc
.youtube.com	TRUE	/	TRUE	0	YSC	GNgX0LqudNU
.youtube.com	TRUE	/	FALSE	0	s_gl	1d69aac621b2f9c0a25dade722d6e24bcwIAAABVUw==

Verbose log

[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'--verbose', u'-f', u'bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]', u'-i', u'--force-ipv4', u'--user-agent', u'${useragent}', u'--cookies', u'/data/cookies.txt', u'--download-archive', u'/data/youtube/The_Obama_White_House/archive.txt', u'--write-info-json', u'--write-description', u'--write-thumbnail', u'--socket-timeout', u'30', u'--restrict-filenames', u'-o', u'/data/youtube/The_Obama_White_House/%(uploader_id)s_%(upload_date)s_%(title)s.%(ext)s', u'https://www.youtube.com/obamawhitehouse']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs UTF-8, out None, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2020.07.28
[debug] Python version 2.7.16 (CPython) - Linux-4.19.0-10-amd64-x86_64-with-debian-10.5
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.1.6-1, ffprobe 4.1.6-1
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube:user] obamawhitehouse: Downloading channel page
WARNING: Unable to download webpage: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
[youtube:user] obamawhitehouse: Downloading page #1
ERROR: Unable to download webpage: HTTP Error 404: Not Found (caused by HTTPError()); please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 627, in _request_webpage
    return self._downloader.urlopen(url_or_request)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 2238, in urlopen
    return self._opener.open(req, timeout=self._socket_timeout)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 435, in open
    response = meth(req, response)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 548, in http_response
    'http', request, response, code, msg, hdrs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 467, in error
    result = self._call_chain(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 407, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 654, in http_error_302
    return self.parent.open(new, timeout=req.timeout)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 435, in open
    response = meth(req, response)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 548, in http_response
    'http', request, response, code, msg, hdrs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 473, in error
    return self._call_chain(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 407, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 556, in http_error_default
    raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), code, msg, hdrs, fp)

Description

"The Obama White House" YouTube channel does not download using the above command. I use this sort of command on many other channels with the same cookies.txt file, works fine on others.
Here's the link to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/obamawhitehouse

[llacb47]

It's not handling some vanity urls correctly.
https://www.youtube.com/obamawhitehouse is not the same as https://www.youtube.com/user/obamawhitehouse but YTDL assumes it is.

Downloading any of these channels fails:

https://www.youtube.com/atlanticrecords
https://www.youtube.com/firefox
https://www.youtube.com/eminem
https://www.youtube.com/smartereveryday

Because YTDL assumes that https://www.youtube.com/channelurl is the same channel as https://www.youtube.com/user/channelurl.

Sometimes they are the same: https://www.youtube.com/jacksfilms redirects to https://www.youtube.com/user/jacksfilms

[wayneworkman]

@llacb47 is this something I'm doing wrong, or is it a bug?

[llacb47]

@wayneworkman I think it's a bug. YTDL should be grabbing the proper channel URL from the HTML code (link itemprop="url")