Watching Youtube using VLC

[NY]

In the latest (15-28 April 2015) edition of Computer Active magazine there
is an article (page 52) that refers to being able to watch Youtube videos in
VideoLan VLC.

It says (I'm paraphrasing)

1. Copy the URL from Youtube to the clipboard
2. Open VLC
3. Media | Open Network Stream
4. Paste URL into "PLease enter a network URL" field
5. Press Play

VLC even gives an example on the Open Media dialogue of a typical URL
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg64x".

But I always get an error message "VLC is unable to open the MRL
'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2r2HtftC6w'. Check the log for details."
which (for verbosity=2) gives error "open of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2r2HtftC6w failed".

Does anyone know whether it should work? Is it anything to do with Youtube's
change from http to https?

[Roderick Stewart]

Seems an elaborate way of playing Youtube videos, but it works for me.

Rod.

[NY]

"Roderick Stewart" <rj...@escapetime.myzen.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4o3qiapld0tceke2t...@4ax.com...

I agree. I was just trying it because the magazine said it was possible and
I didn't know about that feature.

So I wonder why it works for you and not for me. Win 7 Home Premium, VLC
2.0.5 64 bit, tried a variety of Youtube videos.

On the Youtube forum someone else has had the same problem, but no-one else
has replied to the thread either to say it does or doesn't work for them.

Ah well. I was just trying it out of curioisty - it doesn't matter that it
doesn't work.

The magazine article uses the ability to play videos in VLC to get the Codec
properties and hence the URL of the file itself (as opposed to a link to the
player) so you can do File | Save As. Haven't they heard of Keepvid.com and
other such download-from-Youtube sites? :-)

[UnsteadyKen]

In article: <-9qdnW1-r8TbsrDI...@brightview.co.uk>

NY says...

>
> So I wonder why it works for you and not for me.
>

I tried it this afternoon and it didn't work generating some long
winded error message. Just now I updated VLC to 2.2 from 1.5 and now it
works.

https://youtu.be/G0fBp3nr-7I

--
Ken O'Meara

List of UK hi-fi & audio dealers:
http://unsteadyken.esy.es/

[Johnny B Good]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2015 16:16:32 +0100, NY wrote:

====snip====

> I agree. I was just trying it because the magazine said it was possible
> and I didn't know about that feature.
>
> So I wonder why it works for you and not for me. Win 7 Home Premium, VLC
> 2.0.5 64 bit, tried a variety of Youtube videos.
>
> On the Youtube forum someone else has had the same problem, but no-one
> else has replied to the thread either to say it does or doesn't work for
> them.
>
> Ah well. I was just trying it out of curioisty - it doesn't matter that
> it doesn't work.
>
> The magazine article uses the ability to play videos in VLC to get the
> Codec properties and hence the URL of the file itself (as opposed to a
> link to the player) so you can do File | Save As. Haven't they heard of
> Keepvid.com and other such download-from-Youtube sites? :-)

Like you, I tried it out of curiosity (you never know when such
knowledge might prove useful) and it worked for me using version 2.1.6
under Linux Mint 17.1

--
Johnny B Good

[Andy Burns]

NY wrote:

> In the latest (15-28 April 2015) edition of Computer Active magazine there
> is an article (page 52) that refers to being able to watch Youtube videos in
> VideoLan VLC.

I think youtube changed something and it broke many months ago ...

[NY]

"Andy Burns" <usenet....@adslpipe.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3NGdnaIT0sItGLDI...@brightview.co.uk...

Ah. It seems to be working in V2.2.0 Weatherwax whereas it didn't work in
V2.1.5 Rincewind. Shame the article didn't mention that. I wonder how many
people like me haven't upgraded yet from 2.1 to 2.2.

[JNugent]

On 14/04/2015 21:33, UnsteadyKen wrote:
>
> In article: <-9qdnW1-r8TbsrDI...@brightview.co.uk>
>
> NY says...
>
>>
>> So I wonder why it works for you and not for me.
>>
> I tried it this afternoon and it didn't work generating some long
> winded error message. Just now I updated VLC to 2.2 from 1.5 and now it
> works.
>
> https://youtu.be/G0fBp3nr-7I
>

It works first time if you paste the URL into "Open location from
clipboard".

[Phi]

"JNugent" <jenni...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
news:cpit0j...@mid.individual.net...

Don't forget to keep the 'access network' checkbox ticked on setup.

[Max Demian]

"NY" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:APudnZJg5uDGkbPI...@brightview.co.uk...

Don't do it! I've just found that they've cocked up the Snapshot function.
All snapshots from SD TV are a dumpy 544x576 format, rather than 720 or 1024
across. I've had to uninstall and reinstall 2.1.5. (Downgrading didn't
work.)

--
Max Demian

[NY]

"Max Demian" <max_d...@bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:cpldvp...@mid.individual.net...

> "NY" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message

I wonder how many
>> people like me haven't upgraded yet from 2.1 to 2.2.
>
> Don't do it! I've just found that they've cocked up the Snapshot function.
> All snapshots from SD TV are a dumpy 544x576 format, rather than 720 or
> 1024 across. I've had to uninstall and reinstall 2.1.5. (Downgrading
> didn't work.)

I've found and reported a bug with 2.2.0 and 2.2.1 which causes major
picture corruption when playing DVR-MS (Windows Media Centre for Vista)
files, although WTV, TS and MPG files are fine.

I did notice when I was grabbing comparison snapshots for this bug that the
picture for 2.2.1 was 720x576 whereas the one for 2.1.5 was 1024x576 for the
same file. I wonder if this is a variant of what you've found. I'll
investigate a bit more with various files and then report it as a bug if
that's not been done already.

Looks as if the regression testing on 2.2.0 / 2.2.1 wasn't very thorough!

[Jon]

[Phi]

"Jon" <j...@no-email.org> wrote in message news:mh51je$k00$1...@dont-email.me...

> On 14/04/2015 01:25 pm, NY wrote:
>
>> VLC even gives an example on the Open Media dialogue of a typical URL
>> "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg64x".

Spartan says this video does not exist

>>
>> But I always get an error message "VLC is unable to open the MRL
>> 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2r2HtftC6w'. Check the log for
>> details." which (for verbosity=2) gives error "open of
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2r2HtftC6w failed".
>>
>> Does anyone know whether it should work? Is it anything to do with
>> Youtube's change from http to https?
>

It seems to work ok on vlc2.2.0 x64 on Windows 10 Evaluation Copy build
10051

[Max Demian]

"NY" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message

news:86edndz9YevnmavI...@brightview.co.uk...

What format was the video? I found that both 4:3 and 16:9 videos get
squashed to 544x576. There are complaints on various forums about this
issue - search for VLC 2.2.1 snapshot, e.g.
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=124490

VideoLAN's bug reporting site http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ has some reports
of problems but they are couched technically and hard to relate to user
experience.

--
Max Demian

[NY]

"Max Demian" <max_d...@bigfoot.com> wrote in message

news:cpmmg5...@mid.individual.net...

> "NY" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> news:86edndz9YevnmavI...@brightview.co.uk...
>> "Max Demian" <max_d...@bigfoot.com> wrote in message
>> news:cpldvp...@mid.individual.net...
>>> "NY" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
>> I wonder how many
>>>> people like me haven't upgraded yet from 2.1 to 2.2.
>>>
>>> Don't do it! I've just found that they've cocked up the Snapshot
>>> function. All snapshots from SD TV are a dumpy 544x576 format, rather
>>> than 720 or 1024 across. I've had to uninstall and reinstall 2.1.5.
>>> (Downgrading didn't work.)
>>
>> I've found and reported a bug with 2.2.0 and 2.2.1 which causes major
>> picture corruption when playing DVR-MS (Windows Media Centre for Vista)
>> files, although WTV, TS and MPG files are fine.
>>
>> I did notice when I was grabbing comparison snapshots for this bug that
>> the picture for 2.2.1 was 720x576 whereas the one for 2.1.5 was 1024x576
>> for the same file. I wonder if this is a variant of what you've found.
>> I'll investigate a bit more with various files and then report it as a
>> bug if that's not been done already.
>
> What format was the video? I found that both 4:3 and 16:9 videos get
> squashed to 544x576.

As far as I can tell from testing with various source files (mostly DVR-MS
or WTV, with the occasional MPG) it seems that the still that is grabbed is
always the resolution of the source video, irrespective of aspect ratio.

544x576 video in 4:3 or 16:9 gives 544x576 still whereas 2.1.5 would have
scaled it to 768x576 or 1024x576.

704x576 in either aspect ratio gives width of 704 instead of 768 or 1024;
likewise 720x576 always gives 720 instead of 768 or 1024.

I've not found any examples of a higher resolution video file producing a
lower resolution still (eg 704x576 producing 544x576 still).

Looks as if older versions of VLC automatically scaled the width to give a
still of the correct aspect ratio based on the height, whereas 2.2.x gives
you the native resolution of the source, with no scaling.

The issue has been reported on TRAC so hopefully it will be fixed one day -
but I won't hold my breath because a bug that I raised well over a year ago
(subtitles not displayed for WTV files, only for TS files produced from the
WTV) has still not been fixed and the TRAC report seems to have stalled with
speculation about the possible cause but still no firm investigation and
plan to resolve. I bumped the thread a month or so ago but there's been no
response so it's probably never going to be fixed.

Let's hope they fix the three regressions that I'm aware of:

- lack of scaling of stills
- corrupted timestamp in filename of still
- severely corrupted picture playback of DVR-MS (but not WTV or MPG) files

All these have been introduced since 2.1.5.