Cannot stream videos

[mottoman216]

hey i just downloaded the latest version of SMplayer and im having problems getting it to play Youtube Urls or any streamed videos....when i enter the url and hit enter it shows it downloading for a quick second then stops and the screen stays black. please help!

[zackcloud]

i have the same problem help please

[rvm]

If you just enter a youtube url, this isn't going to work, because you are telling mplayer to play a web page, not a video.

[mottoman216]

okay, then how do i get it to play youtube videos and streamed videos since apparently this player can do this type of stuff?

[rvm]

To play youtube videos you have to dowload them first.

It can play stream videos but you have to pass the real url of the video, not the url of the page where the video is.

[zackcloud]

how can see the real url?

[pultzy]

Lets not be so cryptic and just tell us how this application is supposed to view streaming media. I too downloaded this software because it was advertised to do all things and better than its competitors.

[Surkow]

rvm explained it very well in my opinion. The url of a youtube page is not a streaming media url. The only way to watch flv/mp4 videos from youtube is to first download them to your harddrive. Youtube does not allow you to see the real url of the video. If you are using Firefox you can use extension for example. In Linux videos are downloaded to /tmp by Flash and can be easily played from there.

[stevee]

There are also some Greasemonkey scripts for Firefox that let you watch Youtube's mp4 files in an external player such as SMPlayer...though I can't put my figer on them at the moment.

[burf]

Most websites, these days, obfuscate their URLs making them difficult to figure out.
There are programs like orbit downloader, url snooper & url helper (to name 3), that can decipher the urls, so you can download them from most websites.
Also, this add-on for Firefox works great on Youtube...