The colon in the second sed pattern below should be replaced by the variable $separator.
I'm not sure the affect of setting the separator value to '#' so I am suggesting to do it in the vlc|vlc.exe) branch

sed 's/https\\:/https:/g; s/:\([^\/]\)/#\1/g'
sed 's/https\:/https:/g; s/:([^\/])/#\1/g'
---------------------------^