youtube-pl

Purpose

youtube-pl plays Youtube videos from the commandline. No download takes place, the video is streamed. Limited seeking and all operations mplayer allows with them - speed up down, brightness contrast adjustment, A/V delay adjustment, fast forward.

Requirements

MPlayer at least 1.0rc2-4.1.2

Download

Download youtube-pl

chmod a+x youtube-pl
./youtube-pl http://www.youtube.com/watch\?v=_vbiqfxTgY4

You should see a video playing. If not, proceed with:

Troubleshooting

cannot seek in stream - mplayer too old. Install mplayer at least 1.0rc2-4.1.2
tee: standard output: Broken pipe and no video - mplayer is not installed. Install mplayer
Video stops and starts - the Internet connection is slow. Try low quality version on youtube or wait until the network is not so congested.
mplayer doesn't play with the options I would like - put them options into ~/.mplayer/config. See man mplayer for the right syntax.
After too much seek mplayer hangs for a while - I don't know how to solve this one. Try to seek carefully. Or use } (2x speedup) to seek forward and then [<-] (backspace) to restore normal speed.
tee: standard output: Broken pipe after quitting mplayer - don't know how to solve this one either. Press CTRL-C
I don't like the default fullscreen - edit youtube-pl search for mplayer and take the -fs out.

Installation

su
cp youtube-pl /usr/bin
chmod 766 /usr/bin/youtube-pl
chown root:root /usr/bin/youtube-pl

History

Twibright Labs made youtube-pl from youtube-dl and released it on March 21, 2009.