Youtube is broken again

[rvm]

Youtube has made changes and now the code in smplayer to get the signature function is broken. If you have problems to play VEVO videos try this:

- Update the Youtube code (in the Help menu).

- If it still fails, delete the file sig.ini in the smplayer configuration folder.

Update: the problem has been fixed in version r7222.

[newuser101]

rvm:

I like your YouTube extension. I've noticed one thing, though: when a video is not available at the suggested resolution (for example, 720p), the download fails. A check with the YouTube site then reveals that the video WAS available at, say, 480p. Is there any way you could implement an automatic check to see if lower resolution versions of a video are available even though the desired resolution version is not?

Thanks!

[rvm]

smtube already does that, if it can't find a video with the preferred resolution it tries to find another one with lower resolution.

However the 480p and 1080p videos in Youtube are in a different format (DASH) which smtube currently ignores (it adds an extra complexity to support them because the audio and video are in separated streams). But youtube-dl does support DASH so you can configure smtube to call youtube-dl to download the videos.

[newuser101]

Hmmm, I was using youtube.dl when I encountered the problem I mentioned on several videos. Not sure why the downloads failed. Thanks, anyway...

[newuser101]

Okay, rvm, I now see where the downloads are failing. My preferred resolution is 720p, but if that resolution is not available and the only 480p video available is in MP4 format, the download fails. I just tried to download two 720p MP4 videos, but failed. I checked via another program and was able to get the videos, but only at 480p MP4. That's it, then...

[rvm]

Could you put a link to one of those videos that fail?

[newuser101]

Okay, youtube.dl failed at 720p on the following video, but I was able to get a 480p MP4 version of it using another program:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsApomcBfYs

[rvm]

If I download that video with smtube + uget, since the 720p format is not available it downloads the video in 360p.

If I download it with smtube + youtube-dl, yes it fails.

If you copied the configuration from this post then you are probably using the option "-f 22" for youtube-dl.

22 is the code for 720p (mp4 format). If you replace it with "-f best" then youtube-dl would download the video in the best quality it can find (in the case of your link it would be downloaded in 360p as well).

It's also possible to use "-f bestvideo+bestaudio". In that case the video is downloaded with resolution 480p, however it downloads two files: a mp4 with the video only (no sound) and a m4a with the audio.

[newuser101]

Yes, I was using the -f 22 option. I guess the problem with the 480p MP4 is what you referred to in an earlier post, not being able to blend the video and the audio. I might try the -f best option, but I do like to get the best possible resolution available, so I'll continue to use my alternate program when SMTube fails. Thanks for checking into this for me!