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Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

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kedaha
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Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#1 Post by kedaha »

Thought I'd try my hand at a little howto based on forum feedback in other posts. Thanks to Serenity for his post in this thread.
This is a way to have an excellent alternative or option to flash using only free software available in the default Squeeze repositories. [Edit: 6 Feb 2011]: The Greasemonkey script doesn't work at the moment but please read replies for other for some alternatives]
You have just installed Squeeze and you find that Gnash does not work very well?
No need for non-free repositories or extra codecs to get Mplayer up and running. Another advantage is that it uses much less CPU and so battery time will be longer on a laptop.
(Please note, this only works on Debian Squeeze. To get it working on Lenny will require a different procedure).
If you don't mind the flashplugin non-free binary blob, i.e., Adobe Flash Player you can also install it and use the "View Flash" Mplayer option. On other sites, flashplugin will just start up and play the video.
Just do this:

1. Open your root terminal and cut and paste the following:

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apt-get install gecko-mediaplayer iceweasel-greasemonkey
you will get this output:

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Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  gnome-mplayer libaudio2 liblzo2-2 mplayer mplayer-skin-blue
  xul-ext-greasemonkey
Suggested packages:
  nas mplayer-doc netselect fping
The following NEW packages will be installed
  gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer iceweasel-greasemonkey libaudio2 liblzo2-2
  mplayer mplayer-skin-blue xul-ext-greasemonkey
0 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 4,272kB of archives.
After this operation, 10.6MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Type in Y
This will install all the new packages you need: gecko-mediaplayer gnome-mplayer iceweasel-greasemonkey libaudio2 liblzo2-2
mplayer mplayer-skin-blue xul-ext-greasemonkey

You will also get an Iceweasel message, if the browser is open saying:
Please restart
Iceweasel, an extension or a plugin has been installed, upgraded or removed by the system.
It is strongly recommended to restart Iceweasel.
Do you want to restart it now?
Say Yes when the terminal process has finished.

2. Now visit this site: Youtube without Flash Auto If the link doesn't work, try later.

You will see a big install button there to install the script.
[EDIT]: Note. If this user script should stop working, it may be necessary to remove it and install the latest version from the above link.
Now you can watch videos on Youtube to your heart's content without Flash! :D

Final notes:
Please also read the information here
There is a
Warning: Only install Userscripts that you trust.
However, reading through the script, there certainly doesn't appear to be anything peculiar about it and it is released under the GPL license:

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// Youtube without Flash Auto
// version 0.8 BETA!
// 2010-04-18
// Copyright (c) 2010, Arne Schneck, Rob Middleton(aka themiddleman), chromeuser8
// Released under the GPL license
// http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Hope you find this useful.
Last edited by kedaha on 2011-02-09 23:03, edited 2 times in total.
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davidh
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#2 Post by davidh »

Thank you :)

It works flawlessly and also works in Google Chrome (at least it does in the beta I`m using).

Before trying this I couldn`t play flash videos fullscreen, or hd flash at all, as cpu was 100% with Adobes player.

With this running, two web browsers open and vlc it still didn`t top eighty percent full screen playing High Definition youtube videos and under fifty percent normal fullscreen.

For me the volume adjustment didn`t work but thanks for pointing out how to get it working (tried it before on Lenny and it never worked). I recommend this over Adobes flash player as it uses a LOT less cpu and memory :)

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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#3 Post by kedaha »

Thanks for your reply; it's nice to know that someone has found it useful! :)
How did you get it to work with Chrome? I suppose it would also work with the Chromium Browser.
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#4 Post by davidh »

I did the steps you describe and tried it in IceWeasel. I know some greasemonkey scripts work on Chrome so I just clicked the install button.

Haven`t found a greasemonkey script yet that didn`t install as an extension on Chrome so it was worth a try, and it worked :)

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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#5 Post by kedaha »

I tried it with the unstable chromium-browser from SID. By right-clicking and selecting "Open with movie Player", videos play perfectly.
Regarding the pros of Chromium and the cons of Google Chrome, if you have not already read it, see this topic.
If you are running Squeeze and would like to try it this thread is recommended on how to add the required repository the right way.
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#6 Post by mixalis88 »

I have do all the steps but it don't work for me :(. Every time I go to see a youtube video it say that I must install flash player.
I have installed the noscript addon, is that a problem?

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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#7 Post by oswaldkelso »

How to watch youtube clips without flash-gnash etc

Gnash and swdec are to resource heavy and unfortunately not quite there on my PPC machines (but improving greatly). Here a rehash of info on viewing youtube without flash.


I only really need flash for youtube and as it doesn't exist and gnash can be a bit cpu intensive on my old PPC hardware I use clive in terminator. Then I split the screen and run mplayer -ontop name-of-clip, works a treat. (you can leave out the -ontop bit if your feeling lazy)
No need to wait for the download, and you can be adding other clips at the same time.

Depending on your connection speed you can vary how much video to cache. On my poor 1mb connection I give 5% on small clips and 10-15% on larger ones.

In reality by the time you've split the terminator screen and typed mpla (TAB to auto complete) and read and started typing the youtube clip name (clive changes all that gobby gook to a real name) your buffer has loaded.

In debian I use mplayer from debian multimedia repo,(non gui).

as root

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apt-get install clive mplayer



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-KeLxxHkEY



Note: I've switched to two tilda terminals setup with F2 and F3 as hotkeys. One for clive and one for mplayer works lovely and fast and gets hidden quickly.

Or

For a nice gui try Abby it needs clive or cclive to be installed http://code.google.com/p/abby/ I use clive or cclive if I just want to play a single youtube link and abby if I want to select from all the links on the page and down load them all for later in a few clicks.

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Apt-get install abby cclive

Hi I've been playing around with cclive and after read the help things get even easier.

Make sure it's installed

#apt-get install cclive



http://code.google.com/p/cclive/
http://code.google.com/p/cclive/wiki/FA ... from_clive

try adding this to your hidden ~/.ccliverc

filename-format = "%t.%s"
regexp = "/(\w|\pL|\s)/g"
stream-exec = "mplayer -really-quiet %i"


then to view youtube just enter

cclive -s youtude-URL

And mplayer will start the video automatically

Or

apt-get install minitube

Minitube a sort of youtube TV http://freshmeat.net/projects/minitube http://flavio.tordini.org/minitube
now in testing. Works very well the easiest of all solutions.

Or
You could just use the customvid addon for firefox/iceweasel https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12027 (License: Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL 1.1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aahiPQwb5hM

Or

If you run epiphany or iceweasel use a greasemonkey script.
First you need to install greasemonkey from the repos

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apt-get install epiphany-extensions


or

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apt-get install iceweasel-greasemonkey


And then, install this script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771

If you run epiphany the script goes in ./gnome2/epiphany/extentions/data/greasemonkey/50771.user.js
I found it worked well on my better machines but on my low end 333mhz imac clive and mplayer was a better option and much more flexible in that it didn't restrict browser choice, and was faster and seems to use less resources.

or

midori and youtube.html5.beta
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#8 Post by kedaha »

mixalis88 wrote:I have do all the steps but it don't work for me :(. Every time I go to see a youtube video it say that I must install flash player.
I have installed the noscript addon, is that a problem?
Have you enabled the Greasemonkey script under tools or by clicking on the small monkey icon in the botton right-hand corner of Iceweasel?

You can either enable/disable sites like youtube using the Noscript icon or go to Options, Whitelist and then enter http://www.youtube.com in the web site address bar and then click Allow.
Last edited by kedaha on 2010-06-25 18:30, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#9 Post by kedaha »

oswaldkelso wrote:How to watch youtube clips without flash-gnash etc

Gnash and swdec are to resource heavy and unfortunately not quite there on my PPC machines (but improving greatly). Here a rehash of info on viewing youtube without flash....
Thank you oswaldkelso for adding this useful info.
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#10 Post by mixalis88 »

kedaha wrote:
mixalis88 wrote:I have do all the steps but it don't work for me :(. Every time I go to see a youtube video it say that I must install flash player.
I have installed the noscript addon, is that a problem?
Have you enabled the Greasemonkey script under tools or by clicking on the small monkey icon in the botton right-hand corner of Iceweasel?

You can either enable/disable sites like youtube using the Noscript icon or go to Options, Whitelist and then enter http://www.youtube.com in the web site address bar and then click Allow.
Greasemonkey is enabled and I have add youtube.com to white list on noscript addon but it does not working.
Never mind. I have very slow internet connection to watch youtube videos. I only tried it to see if works for me :mrgreen:.

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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#11 Post by kedaha »

mixalis88 wrote:
kedaha wrote:
mixalis88 wrote: Never mind. I have very slow internet connection to watch youtube videos. I only tried it to see if works for me :mrgreen:.
Thanks for your reply. Of course, a slow connection does not help. Maybe you could post your connection speed under this thread?
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#12 Post by canci »

Very good howto, thanks! :) Pitty it doesn't work on other sites.

I've noticed that the package iceweasel-greasemonkey is now just a transitional dummy package for xul-ext-greasemonkey, at least in Squeeze.
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#13 Post by x111 »

kedaha wrote:
(Please note, this only works on Debian Squeeze. To get it working on Lenny will require a different procedure).

Hope you find this useful.
So glad to see such a useful howto. But how about that 'different procedure' for users of Lenny like me ?

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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#14 Post by craigevil »

x111 wrote:
kedaha wrote:
(Please note, this only works on Debian Squeeze. To get it working on Lenny will require a different procedure).

Hope you find this useful.
So glad to see such a useful howto. But how about that 'different procedure' for users of Lenny like me ?
Install mozilla-mplayer, mplayer , the Firefox extension greasemonkey and the script Youtube without Flash Auto for Greasemonkey : http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771

The script also works in Chrome/Chromium.
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#15 Post by kedaha »

craigevil wrote:
x111 wrote:
kedaha wrote:
(Please note, this only works on Debian Squeeze. To get it working on Lenny will require a different procedure).

Hope you find this useful.
So glad to see such a useful howto. But how about that 'different procedure' for users of Lenny like me ?
Install mozilla-mplayer, mplayer , the Firefox extension greasemonkey and the script Youtube without Flash Auto for Greasemonkey : http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771

The script also works in Chrome/Chromium.
Thanks craigevil; I'll edit to update the Howto later; now that I have Stable on one of my machines again, I can confirm that it works flawlessly in Lenny too.
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#16 Post by Coco »

Thanks, this seems to work a lot better than Gnash.
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#17 Post by kedaha »

Coco wrote:Thanks, this seems to work a lot better than Gnash.
I've never been able to get Gnash working properly, and even when it does work, it eats up a lot of CPU.
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#18 Post by Coco »

kedaha wrote:
Coco wrote:Thanks, this seems to work a lot better than Gnash.
I've never been able to get Gnash working properly, and even when it does work, it eats up a lot of CPU.
Yeah I have the same problem. My Laptop sounds like its going to explode when I watch youtube videos with Gnash.
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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#19 Post by luvva_cuppa »

Minitube? Available in the Squeeze repositories:

"Minitube is a native YouTube client. With it you can watch YouTube videos in
a new way: you type a keyword, Minitube gives you an endless video stream.

Minitube does not require the Flash Player.

Minitube is not about cloning the original YouTube web interface, it aims to
create a new TV-like experience."

From my own experience it works well.

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Re: Howto watch YouTube with only free software in Debian

#20 Post by kedaha »

Works very very well and only uses about 15% CPU. Recommended!
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