Today I needed to download live stream videos from youtube (i.e., that are still live). To do this, I used the command-line utility Streamlink, which extracts streams from various services and pipes them into a video player of choice or a file.
Install Streamlink
To install Streamlink on Debian like systems, we need to execute on terminal:
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Streamlink usage
Now, to use the tool we need to run:
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Here the --hls-live-restart parameter is to skip to the beginning of a live stream, or as far back as possible. The -o parameter is to set the output file, were is indicate in <output file name>. Replacing the <URL> with the video URL (e.g. from youtube),we indicate the source site of the video. Finally, the parameter best is to indicate the stream quality, it also can be 144p (worst), 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p (best).
For example, we can download the NASA TV video stream from youtube. To do this is enouth run in terminal:
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