Does YouTube live streaming support HLS (HTTP Live Streaming)?

Question

I'm a newcomer. I know YouTube live streaming supports RTMP, but I cannot find HLS encoder settings. Does it support HLS? I want to broadcast an HLS streaming via YouTube.

Answer 1

Short answer: Yes

Long answer:

The official page says:

Mobile streaming: Live events will be automatically available on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch & Android 4.0+ mobile devices via m.youtube.com.

This sounds a lot like a HLS fallback.

Using an iPad user-agent and sniffing network traffic I found the following request to a Google server:

HTTP GET

/api/manifest/hls_variant/sparams/gcr,id,ip,ipbits,itag,playlist_type,pmbypass,source,expire/source/yt_live_broadcast/[redacted]/index.m3u8?[redacted]

and response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/vnd.apple.mpegurl

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=380059,CODECS="avc1.4d0015,mp4a.40.5",RESOLUTION=426x240,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE
http://manifest.googlevideo.com/api/manifest/hls_playlist/id/ANM-dq5USTc.1/itag/92/source/yt_live_broadcast/ratebypass/yes/live/1/cmbypass/yes/gir/yes/dg_shard[..]

So yeah, I guess YouTube live supports HLS.