YouTube - Treat YouTube URLs of the format `/[user/]<username>/live` as live videos and not playlists if the channel is live

[scottywz]

YouTube URLs of the format https://www.youtube.com/user/<username>/live or https://www.youtube.com/<username>/live should be treated as live videos instead of playlists if the channel is streaming live. Currently, these URLs are being treated as playlists regardless of whether the channel is streaming live. These URLs are useful for referencing the channel's current live stream without having to manually find the video ID for the live stream, which changes each time the channel starts a new live stream.

The page returned by YouTube when the channel is live appears to be identical to the page returned with the watch?v=... URL for the same live content; in fact, the latter URL is the value of the page's canonical meta tag. When the channel is not live, I've seen the page returned be either the channel's home page or a video page saying that the stream is offline. In all cases, there is no redirect except for minor fixups like adding user/ if it's missing.

Example URLs:

• https://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks/live (live almost 24/7)
• https://www.youtube.com/user/TVman1981/live (never live, shows profile page)
• https://www.youtube.com/user/tytlive/live (usually live M–F between 3–5 PM U.S. Pacific; shows stream offline message when offline)

$ ./youtube-dl -v -F 'https://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks/live'
[debug] System config: [u'--prefer-free-formats']
[debug] User config: [u'--hls-use-mpegts']
[debug] Command-line args: [u'-v', u'-F', u'https://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks/live']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs UTF-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2016.03.18
[debug] Python version 2.7.10 - Linux-4.3.3-301.fc23.x86_64-x86_64-with-fedora-23-Twenty_Three
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 2.8.5, ffprobe 2.8.5, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube:user] TheYoungTurks: Downloading channel page
[youtube:playlist] UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ: Downloading webpage
[download] Downloading playlist: Uploads from The Young Turks
[youtube:playlist] UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ: Downloading page #1
[youtube:playlist] UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ: Downloading page #2
[youtube:playlist] UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ: Downloading page #3
[youtube:playlist] UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ: Downloading page #4
[youtube:playlist] UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ: Downloading page #5
[youtube:playlist] UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ: Downloading page #6
^C
ERROR: Interrupted by user

[scottywz]

It still doesn't cover URLs that omit the user/ or channel/ part. It would be nice to see those covered in order to reduce the amount of typing necessary.