Merge pull request #4665 from Li4ick/patch-1

[youtube-dl] / README.md

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index b4afe17d264eb8e1f0664261eaa0eec0a9b99ef4..1df4fe2f19e2304c9d990f51afe5afb29c0dede0 100644 (file)
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -326,7 +326,7 @@ which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like.
 
 # CONFIGURATION
 
-You can configure youtube-dl by placing default arguments (such as `--extract-audio --no-mtime` to always extract the audio and not copy the mtime) into `/etc/youtube-dl.conf` and/or `~/.config/youtube-dl/config`. On Windows, the configuration file locations are `%APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt` and `C:\Users\<Yourname>\youtube-dl.conf`.
+You can configure youtube-dl by placing default arguments (such as `--extract-audio --no-mtime` to always extract the audio and not copy the mtime) into `/etc/youtube-dl.conf` and/or `~/.config/youtube-dl/config`. On Windows, the configuration file locations are `%APPDATA%\youtube-dl\config.txt` and `C:\Users\<user name>\youtube-dl.conf`.
 
 # OUTPUT TEMPLATE
 
@@ -449,6 +449,14 @@ Since June 2012 (#342) youtube-dl is packed as an executable zipfile, simply unz
 
 To run the exe you need to install first the [Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package](http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29).
 
+### How can I detect whether a given URL is supported by youtube-dl?
+
+For one, have a look at the [list of supported sites](docs/supportedsites). Note that it can sometimes happen that the site changes its URL scheme (say, from http://example.com/v/1234567 to http://example.com/v/1234567 ) and youtube-dl reports an URL of a service in that list as unsupported. In that case, simply report a bug.
+
+It is *not* possible to detect whether a URL is supported or not. That's because youtube-dl contains a generic extractor which matches **all** URLs. You may be tempted to disable, exclude, or remove the generic extractor, but the generic extractor not only allows users to extract videos from lots of websites that embed a video from another service, but may also be used to extract video from a service that it's hosting itself. Therefore, we neither recommend nor support disabling, excluding, or removing the generic extractor.
+
+If you want to find out whether a given URL is supported, simply call youtube-dl with it. If you get no videos back, chances are the URL is either not referring to a video or unsupported. You can find out which by examining the output (if you run youtube-dl on the console) or catching an `UnsupportedError` exception if you run it from a Python program.
+
 # DEVELOPER INSTRUCTIONS
 
 Most users do not need to build youtube-dl and can [download the builds](http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html) or get them from their distribution.