gtk-youtube-viewer (for lots of pups)

[sindi]

I downloaded the ipw2x00 package on another laptop and moved it via USB flash drive. I had to agree to a license agreement using a confusing sequence of arrow keys. It appears to have installed.
There are a few ipw type modules inserted (libipw ipw2100).

Still no wifi signal found by debiandog wheezy.

The card works in wary 5.5 puppy.

[sindi]

b44 ethernet works automatically on the DELL 1150 but there is still no wifi signal.
I will check again if the card works with wary puppy. I had it marked 'good'.

I can play a 480p video with 99.9% CPU usage and it is not jerky but I can't do much else at the same time.
This laptop tests out as fast as my 2001 Pentium III, which could not even play 240p youtube with browser.

I can therefore find homes for 2003 (or slightly older) laptops with 512MB RAM, for browsing with palemoon and watching
youtube without a browser. Someone who just bought three 2003 desktops ($5 each complete) is interested. But they will
want wifi.

Thanks for explaining how to download debian files without an internet connection on the target computer.
And correcting my typing errors.

[sindi]

I have played mp4 files with mplayer and fbdev.

youtube-player -h has settings for choosing the video player.
It says vlc or mpv are available, but not mplayer.

--videoplayer=s

It also gives a setting for choosing video device for MPlayer.
-vo=s

Fill in fbdev for s.

I experimented but can get only audio in framebuffer mode.

Not using X might let me play at 720p (reduce CPU usage).
It could improve 480p performance.

Any ideas how to use mplayer in fbdev mode for playing the videos
without using youtube-dl first to download them?

[sindi]

Two DELL Inspiron laptops have ipw2100 cards (which do WPA but not WPA2) which work with lupu etc. but not with
debiandog. The same modules get installed but no wireless connection is found.

[fredx181]

Hi sindi, I've made a "cde" package for youtube-viewer, it runs OK for me on Lucid :
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/hmu ... ar.gz?dl=1
It has the complete setup from Wheezy, included:
- youtube-viewer and gtk-youtube-viewer
- mpv
- youtube-dl (updated to latest)
- perl and python (required for youtube-viewer and youtube-dl
- and a lot more required, libraries etc...

Maybe this is better solution than running old DebianDog (specially for youtube-viewer), because this runs (most probably) from any 32-bit Linux OS.
In case you don't know what "cde" is: http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html
It creates sort of a portable "package" which has the complete environment inside that's required for to run a certain program, disadvantage is very large size.
Extracted, this youtube-viewer package is 55MB

Extract yt-viewer.tar.gz somewhere (but MUST be on Linux filesystem, not FAT32 or NTFS)
And run "gtk-youtube-viewer.cde" or "youtube-viewer.cde" from inside yt-viewer folder.

EDIT: About mplayer, I couldn't make it run using mplayer, so only mpv, but as I said earlier, mpv combined with youtube-dl is the best, because there are no exceptions, i.e. all video's (including e.g. Vevo) will play.
(mplayer cannot connect with youtube-dl)

Fred

[sindi]

Many thanks for making a package that should work with all puppy linuxes.
I will check it out soon. Someone put together something similar for puppy linux and palemoon before one of the palemoon linux people (Walter Dnes) offered to compile versions that would work directly with puppy linuxes (which lacked some library versions needed by the standard compiled palemoon). (Also with Pentium III with SSE not SSE2).

I hope it works with Wary because Lupu crashes on my lastest laptop.

With an ethernet cable (since wifi is not working) Youtube-viewer plays well at 480p (too jerky at 720p) on my rather slow 2003 DELL 1150 with DebianDog in X. It would not recognize mplayer2 even in X. Perhaps it was compiled to only use vlc or mpv. The Debian mplayer2 does not support fbdev mode (needed for console mode).

Mplayer works in framebuffer console mode. Can mpv do that?

The 1150 has a cheap 855GM video chip that only works at 8-bit color (256 color) in framebuffer console mode (vga=773). Not ideal for youtube.

DebianDog Wheeze is actually ideal for older laptops because it uses very little memory. Even has a low-ram mode. No extraneous processes.

Can you help me get ipw2100 to not just install but work?
I have that card in three laptops. There was some message about WPA. The card does WPA but not WPA2.

Also what is the Debian equivalent of rc.local - a file that I can use to mount things at startup (such as other partitions, and swap file)?

The updates installer said it downloaded about 11MB, so 100MB is fine for just a few added packages, but how do we enlarge changes.dat if needed?

[fredx181]

With an ethernet cable (since wifi is not working) Youtube-viewer plays well at 480p (too jerky at 720p) on my rather slow 2003 DELL 1150 with DebianDog in X. It would not recognize mplayer2 even in X. Perhaps it was compiled to only use vlc or mpv. The Debian mplayer2 does not support fbdev mode (needed for console mode).

Could be that it doesn't recognize it because of the uncommon path of mplayer (/opt/bin/mplayer)
But also I tested a lot if included version of mplayer can load youtube url's, it just can't, so looks like limitation of the mplayer included in debdog Wheezy.
(I've tested gtk-youtube-viewer in D-Pup-Stretch and it works with mplayer for most video's)

Mplayer works in framebuffer console mode. Can mpv do that?

That I don't know.

Can you help me get ipw2100 to not just install but work?

Sorry, can't test that.

Also what is the Debian equivalent of rc.local

It's /etc/rc.local

Made another package with cde, this time used Debian Jessie and has newest youtube-viewer, 3.3.3, tested on Lupu, works fine also (but is even bigger: 75MB).
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/j58 ... ar.gz?dl=1

EDIT: Just tested both cde packages on Wary, works fine for me.
EDIT2:

The updates installer said it downloaded about 11MB, so 100MB is fine for just a few added packages, but how do we enlarge changes.dat if needed?

From Menu > Utility > Resize Save File, but it should be done without the savefile being in use, so boot DebianDog without save (remove changes=... from kernel line) and then run Resize Save.

Fred

[dancytron]

Mplayer works in framebuffer console mode. Can mpv do that?

That I don't know.

I don't have a definitive answer, but I tried to make make mpv open video files from the console in Debian Dog Stretch and I was unable to do so. It would open mp3 audio files.

[sindi]

On DELL Inspiron 600M from 2004 (PC2700, FSB 333).

The wary mplayer has lots more video modes including fbdev.

I unpackaged the first (older) CDE package, which contains mpv,
and it works, but only in X. In a terminal, xterm complains of no display.

I specified mplayer --videoplayer=mplayer -vo fbdev but it used mpv.
(As shown by top).

I then symlinked mplayer to the directory where I found mpv, which made no difference.

I wrote a script yt4 (youtube-viewer 480p)

cd /mnt/home/yt-viewer
./youtube-viewer.cde -4

A couple of problems:

In DebianDog I could type
youtube-viewer subject -4 (or --res=480p)

The CDE version just starts youtube-viewer at what I think is original youtube resolution, and I have to specify subject line after it starts.
No big problem.

It overfills the screen. I see only the middle of the video unless I hit F, which shrinks it to fit the screen. I think I am viewing 720p on my 1.5GHz 2004 laptop, with 80% cpu usage and some jerkiness.
If I exited palemoon, 720p might work okay, but I am posting to the forum with palemoon. (And 720p did not work so well in DebianDog on some test videos, but maybe Wary uses less cpu?).

In 2004, the 600M 'ships with ATI's fastest video chip'.

My year-older DELL Inspiron 1150 (FSB 266) tests out about 12-15% slower CPU (and it has a really cheap 855GM video chip with little memory.) It definitely will not do 720p. 480p worked on it with Debiandog and ethernet.


gtk-youtube-viewer usually does not play any videos. It starts up then stops, in both original and CDE versions. Would the version in the later package work better? This version would be simpler for non-geeks to learn. I gave a lot of old laptops to neighbor kids with the old gtk-youtube-viewer on them and they figured it out.

I would love to use youtube-viewer at 480p with wifi.

Wifi in Debian looks complicated. Does it normally require downloading firmware and driver modules, and setting things up manually? It is not working even with no encryption.

Wary wifi works. Can you correctly choose resolution with wary and the cde viewer?

[fredx181]

The wary mplayer has lots more video modes including fbdev.

I unpackaged the first (older) CDE package, which contains mpv,
and it works, but only in X. In a terminal, xterm complains of no display.

I specified mplayer --videoplayer=mplayer -vo fbdev but it used mpv.
(As shown by top).

I then symlinked mplayer to the directory where I found mpv, which made no difference.

I wrote a script yt4 (youtube-viewer 480p)

cd /mnt/home/yt-viewer
./youtube-viewer.cde -4

A couple of problems:

In DebianDog I could type
youtube-viewer subject -4 (or --res=480p)

You can edit the script "youtube-viewer.cde" by adding e.g. resolution:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
HERE="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "${0}")")"
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
cd "$HERE/cde-root" && ../cde-exec uxterm -e youtube-viewer --res=480p

But maybe better to leave out "uxterm -e" , but then this script needs to be run from terminal:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
HERE="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "${0}")")"
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
cd "$HERE/cde-root" && ../cde-exec youtube-viewer --res=480p

(i added the uxterm for convenience, to be able to just click on it and uxterm appears, but probably that's not how you want it)

Wifi in Debian looks complicated. Does it normally require downloading firmware and driver modules, and setting things up manually? It is not working even with no encryption.

I t shouldn't be complicated, but just to keep the ISO small there's very little included.
If you do a search in Synaptic for "firmware", you'll find a lot, no idea why iwp2100 doesn't work for you.

Can you correctly choose resolution with wary and the cde viewer?

Yes, I can, in gtk-youtube-viewer, changing resolution at the bottom right works, and also above for youtube-viewer (--res=480p)

EDIT: Should work also if you make the script (untested EDIT tested now and works fine):

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
HERE="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "${0}")")"
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
cd "$HERE/cde-root" && ../cde-exec youtube-viewer "$@"

And then can run it like :

Code: Select all

./youtube-viewer.cde --res=480p

EDIT2: Finally found a way with a working mplayer, but this cde package is HUGE (127MB extracted):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/zqt ... ar.gz?dl=1
I guess this mplayer included (stock Debian Stretch version) is compiled with https support and... it can work together with youtube-dl
youtube-viewer version is 3.3.1
Tested only on Wary and works fine for me.
EDIT3: Oh boy, just found that seeking is problematic, on 360p and 720p it's OK but not on 480p, mplayer crashes for me with 480p and trying to seek.

Fred

[sindi]

Tested via CLI not a script, in X in a urxvt terminal.

cd /mnt/home/yt-viewer
./cde-exec uxterm -e youtube-viewer --res=480p

urxvt instead of uxterm segfaults.
the package has both xterm and uxterm. Both work.

I chose a recent video probably 1080p and it still overfills the screen.
I see the central part of it on my 1024x768 monitor.

f shrinks it to 720p (full width of my screen).


The mplayer2 from (I think) Tahr ppm streams URLs (older mplayers do not) and I think also does fbdev.
How do I substitute it for mpv? (Probably won't work in wary though).

Got to run - more later. Immense thanks for all your efforts.

[fredx181]

Tested via CLI not a script, in X in a urxvt terminal.

cd /mnt/home/yt-viewer
./cde-exec uxterm -e youtube-viewer --res=480p

On wary ?
Anyway I tried on wary and didn't have segfault.
Maybe try without uxterm, just:

Code: Select all

./cde-exec youtube-viewer --res=480p

Or better like I wrote in previous post:

EDIT: Should work also if you make the script (untested EDIT tested now and works fine):
Code:
#!/bin/sh
HERE="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "${0}")")"
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
cd "$HERE/cde-root" && ../cde-exec youtube-viewer "$@"

And then can run it like :
Code:
./youtube-viewer.cde --res=480p

The mplayer2 from (I think) Tahr ppm streams URLs (older mplayers do not) and I think also does fbdev.
How do I substitute it for mpv? (Probably won't work in wary though).

Didn't test, but I'm almost sure that only a very recent mplayer can possibly work with youtube-viewer.
(tested a lot with different mplayer/mplayer2 versions last days)

Immense thanks for all your efforts.

You are welcome, interesting stuff for me also to discover

Fred

[sindi]

Wifi is working on one laptop with ipw2100. Maybe I just needed to reboot.
(Puppy wifi works without rebooting). The resolution is correct too.

With the CDE package many videos are too large for the screen.

In Wary I can run youtube-viewer with or without uxterm/xterm plus exec.
(u)rxvt segfaults

On a 2004 1.5GHz Inspiron 600M:

At 480p mpv uses 52% of CPU, and at 720p it uses 63-69%, while Xorg uses 36%.
Some parts of videos are okay at 720p.

An mplayer2 that streams video with fbdev would help.

youtube-viewer can simply download files to play later with non-streaming mplayer
in wary.

[sindi]

works fine with tahr (and no xterm), and resolution seems more stable.

I installed the Tahr (Ubuntu 14) mplayer2, and edited youtube-viewer.conf to use it as the viewer, but it did not play.

I think I had it streaming video as it was downloading with youtube-dl last year.

In Tahr, 480p, mpv uses 53% of cpu, cde-exe 6%, X 3%, and palemoon browser 17% doing nothing..

With youtube, at 360p, palemoon uses 71% of CPU (more than mpv at 480p).

[sindi]

vlc supposedly plays in framebuffer console but I cannot figure out how.
Someone complained that vlc plays slower than mplayer and with wrong colors.

the youtube-viewer .conf file is set to --fullscreen, which may explain why videos play properly at 480p in DebianDog but in Puppies with the CDE package they play 'fullscreen' meaning 1080p on a screen smaller than that unti I hit F to make them 480p. This may be adjustable in the .conf (config) file.

It is late. This is addictive.

[fredx181]

I installed the Tahr (Ubuntu 14) mplayer2, and edited youtube-viewer.conf to use it as the viewer, but it did not play.

I'm not sure how cde works exactly, but I think it can "look" outside of the cde-root (for e.g. mplayer), but the dependencies need to be present inside.
Also I think mplayer2 cannot work with youtube-viewer, I only had success with latest mplayer from Stretch.

the youtube-viewer .conf file is set to --fullscreen, which may explain why videos play properly at 480p in DebianDog but in Puppies with the CDE package they play 'fullscreen' meaning

Don't really know why the --fullscreen is in the config file, anyway for me it doesn't play fullscreen (if I configure 480p, it works as expected)
What's in the config file is the resolution of my laptop, indeed maybe try to change according to your resolution, e.g:

Code: Select all

mainw_size                          =>  "1024x768"

Fred

[sindi]

2004 DELL Inspiron 1150 with 855GM integrated Intel video. In Wary linux.
(Lupu crashes with old intel driver, and sulu1 and later do not do fbcon).
512MB RAM PC2100. Can also use PC2700 but I don't have extra 512MB SODIMMs of either.

CPU tests out about as fast as a 2001 DELL 8100 but the video chip is faster.

ipw2100B internal mini-PCMCIA card downloading at 1/2 of 11Mpbs or 5.4Mbps.

Comparison of youtube in a browser (html5) and with youtube-viewer.
Palemoon playing directly at youtube.com.
Youtube set it to auto 144p then 240p after a while then 360p (very jerky).

At 240p VSZ% 110% for palemoon and 30% for X. Plus 97% of CPU.
Looks okay despite the VSZ value. Would probably be jerky with a lot of action.

youtube-viewer in X works much better.

480p plays with 32-42% CPU for mpv and 10% for cde.exe.
VSZ% 75% mpv and 28% X which adds to 103%.

720p 85% cpu for mpv, 9% for cde-exec, 2% for X.
VSZ% 34% mpv, 29% X.

Another video:
CPU mpv 84-88% cde-exe 7% X 2%
VSZ% 29% mpv, 29% X, about 20% rxvt bash sh jwm etc.

720p overfills the screen until I hit F and takes longer to buffer than 480p (at 5.4Mbps).

This laptop only does 8-bit color in console framebuffer mode (allocates 1MB of onboard RAM to framebuffer).
No point in playing in framebuffer console (at 8-bit color) and besides it can handle 720p in X (better than
a DELL 600M also 2004 but with different graphics).

gtk-youtube-viewer worked on the first video I tried.
Set to 720p, it played 480p at over 100% VSZ% and 61% CPU.
Does not play any other videos including the same one a second time.

If I restart gtk-youtube-viewer it still won't play anything.
After which youtube-viewer still plays videos.

[sindi]

1.4GHz CPU, nvidia, plays youtube in palemoon at 240p with 53% of CPU used by palemoon, 40%by X, and the rest by other things. Theater mode is impossible.

Youtube-viewer plays full-screen (720p) with 39% CPU mpv, 7% cde-exe, and 48% X. No jerkiness. With fbdev even slower cpus would work at 720p (without X using half the CPU power). I should try my P3 Inspiron 8100 in X.

The Toshiba has a gorgeous non-glare wide screen and Harmon Kardon speakers, and was not usable with Youtube until now. I upgraded to 768MB and may try again to use vlc in Tahr.

It was $1450 new after rebates 15 years ago and is like new again!

My dyslexic partner learned to click on rxvt and type yt then choose subject. No need for uxterm or (buggy) gtk-youtube-viewer.

[greengeek]

Hi Fred - thanks for youtube-viewer - it is working well on Slacko 5.6

I cannot figure out if this downloading the video file or just streaming it. Is there an easy way to replay the video once it has been viewed? Or does it have to be selected and streamed again?

Just thinking that it would be nice (and a bandwidth saving) if the file existed in memory after the first viewing, so that it could be replayed.

cheers!

[fredx181]

Hi greengeek,

I cannot figure out if this downloading the video file or just streaming it

Just streaming, normally used, but (as you might know) there's also option to download video's.

Is there an easy way to replay the video once it has been viewed? Or does it have to be selected and streamed again?

You mean from "cache" or something ? I don't think so, but not sure.
EDIT: Sorry, misunderstood, you just mean replay, again not sure, but I think it needs selected and streamed again.

Fred