How to download starting from the "current" position in the live TV stream?

[mkanet]

When I visit a live TV youtube URL using my web browser, it starts to playback what's on TV currently.

By default, instead of youtube-dl downloading this TV steam starting from the "current" live TV broadcast position in the feed, youtube-dl will start the download from the very beginning of when the live TV broadcast originally started.

How can I get youtube-dl to start downloading from "what's currently on TV now (when you visit the youtube live TV URL using a web browser.

[mkanet]

I noticed that live TV urls have a current time position setting. It's a dynamic value based on when you visit the liveTV URL.

i.e.,
#t=138576s
#t=138576s
#t=139067s

Is there any way to get the above value at the time youtube-dl starts to download? Surely, I can't be the first person to try to download/watch live TV via youtube-dl..

[fkiller]

I would also raise my hand for the issue, but little different. The point of the issue is to enable capture "from when". There is a "begin" param in "videoplayback", but it seems that Youtube recently changed their interface. Now, what I know is "range" param, which indicates "[start byte]-[end byte]". However, it still couldn't have millisecond param on it. Do you have any plan to support it?

[fkiller]

In addition to that, I also found that browser send a request xxx.youtube.com/player_204?xxx with p-time param, which is a millisecond to start video from.

I put some infomation on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14365272/is-begin-param-dead-in-youtubes-c-youtube-com-videoplayback as well, FYI.

[mkanet]

This might be way over my head; and, please don't laugh if it's not relevant... but, I did see that there is support for the below function in the current youtube api:

player.getCurrentTime():Number
"Returns the elapsed time in seconds since the video started playing."

[FiloSottile]

Linking to #622
(@mkanet unfortunately that is a JS API that is not related to what we can use as a client)

Actually studying what happens in the browser for a TV show could lead to a solution for #622

[mkanet]

I'm really hoping the developer(s) of youtube-dl will have a command-line switch to do this; or maybe even automatically do this for live TV streams as the default.

Since it looks like youtube-dl doesnt really support live-TV streams in a useful way, I was hoping someone knew how to at least figure out a way to do this using a different method. If I use the long, unfriendly URL I get using a packet sniffer (or other hacks), I can use wget to download the live TV stream.. but then after a few tries, unfortunately I get a HTTP error 403 Forbidden error message.

All I need is a way to do this for a few live TV streams.

[mkanet]

For those of you who have Windows. There is a brand new command-line youtube downloader (.NET based) that can handle live TV streams correctly in respect to this issue. I actually prefer this tool for my youtube downloads needs.

(Edit by @phihag: Cut down unrelated advertisement for a closed-source application)

[phihag]

What I'm missing from this issue is a single demo URL. I'm aware that live-streams are short-lived, but surely there must be someone who broadcasts a view of the Big Ben (or any other clock) 24/7, isn't there?

Also, @mkanet, the program you linked actually computes its download URL just like youtube-dl does (actually, they miss virtually all of the edge cases we have handled).