[free-software-melb] Viewing YouTube videos with free software

Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 16:20:56 +1100 From: Ben Finney To: free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au Subject: [free-software-melb] Viewing YouTube videos with free software (was: Tor onion services: more useful than you think) Message-ID: <851t8zfxs7.fsf@benfinney.id.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Andri Effendi writes:

...

To watch [a video at a YouTube URL] with exclusively Free Software, you can use VLC Media Player.

Another option, which I make use of, is the ‘youtube-dl’ program URL:https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ which simply parses the page, finds the video, and downloads it with an appropriate file name.

Packaged in many systems; in Debian it is ‘youtube-dl’.

One caveat: the program essentially is a clever web scraper, so it is vulnerable to the site changing how its pages are put together. YouTube itself is notorious for changing frequently such that scrapers break. You need to keep a program like ‘youtube-dl’ up to date to ensure you can continue to download videos.

Another option for viewing YouTube with Free Software is Minitube which provides a GUI frontend for YouTube without the need for a browser. Homepage here: http://flavio.tordini.org/minitube Git Repo here: https://github.com/flaviotordini/minitube Review here: https://linuxluddites.com/shows/episode-54/ Tim -- Vote NO in referenda.