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Some thoughts about the support for Youtube

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Some thoughts about the support for Youtube

Postby rvm » Sat Jul 02, 2016 12:23 am

Last week the support for Youtube in smplayer (and smtube) got broken due to changes in the Youtube site. I fixed it. 2 days ago I released a new version of smtube (16.7.0). I was going to release also a new version of smplayer today but I realized that the support for Youtube got broken again...

I fixed it, and I've just released a new version of smtube (16.7.2). Maybe tomorrow I'll release another version of smplayer. Hopefully the Youtube guys won't change anything on weekend...

But this made me think about the current support for Youtube in smplayer. Maybe it would better to drop it and just use youtube-dl (with mpv).

Some pros:
* I wouldn't have to care anymore about the support for Youtube. The developers of youtube-dl fix it very fast when it stops working.
* mpv + youtube-dl support higher resolutions (1080p and even 4k) and subtitles.

Cons:
* It would require to use mpv. It won't work with mplayer.
* It's necessary to install youtube-dl and keep it updated.
* Calling youtube-dl is slow, mpv + youtube-dl takes a little more to start to play the video.
* It wouldn't be easy to update youtube-dl within smplayer. On Linux the user must update it. On Windows currently it's necessary to reinstall smplayer to update youtube-dl.

Right now it's already possible to build smplayer without the internal support for Youtube. Just comment the line "DEFINES += YOUTUBE_SUPPORT" in smplayer.pro. With that change the Youtube videos are opened with mpv + youtube-dl.

About smtube. I'm also thinking about re-writing it again, made it more simple. Not using the webkit. It would be a native application again (not a web app). It would open the links with smplayer only, not other players. No download functions (although it could be added a 'download' button that would open the link in a web site like keepvid or something). It won't be an independent application, it would be just a component of smplayer.

What do you think?
rvm
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