[FFmpeg-user] How to check if a youtube URL is valid before starting download?

[Rob Hallam]

On Wed, 7 Jul 2021 at 16:49, Bo Berglund <bo.berglund at gmail.com> wrote:
> So ffmpeg must accept the -i argument as an on-line stream somehow...

Please see my other reply to your other message- ffmpeg does not (to
my knowledge) operate on web pages, as opposed to multimedia files.

Cheers,
Rob

PS It may be worth checking to see that no-one else has done what you
are trying to do so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel- it
seems possible that someone has created a utility / wrapper / library
for interacting with livestreams which gracefully handles errors (eg
something similar to livestreamer
[https://docs.livestreamer.io/index.html], which may not be suitable
for your case but gives you an idea of what is out there)