Confirming no youtube vids are playing starting today

[Chrisi22]

As mentioned in another recent post viewtopic.php?f=14&t=111650&p=378198&hi ... be#p378198

I can confirm that no youtube vids (music vids) are playing in VLC 2.0.6 / 2.0.7 - starting today. I was able to play them in 2.0.6 portable on Thur. 6/20/13, but not today, in the same portable version I was using on Thurs. SMPlayer's dev reports on their forum that youtube "changed something" & SMPlayer also stopped playing youtube vids (for me, since just last Thurs).

No point in uploading log files or file samples. If VLC devs aren't aware of this, should be now. Probably should post a notice in the forum.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

It works for me on 2.1.0-pre1 but maybe it blocked only some videos, not all of them.

[Chrisi22]

OK. Don't know if the dev versions are available in portable. I might sometimes install dev / pre versions. Usually not - some physical limitations - quicker to extract / delete portables, as "pre" builds are usually replaced very quickly.

Youtube / google is obviously constantly changing things to try & FORCE using flash player or HTML5 in browsers. Guessing they can gather more data that way, than if played in other media players.

[Chrisi22]

I tried vlc-2.1.0-pre1-20130623-0403-win64 portable in Vista x64. Tried quite a few music vids - none worked. They were flash content.
Everything I tried was http, not https. VLC doesn't do anything or give errors, after entering URL, then play.

Not sure why some vids work for you & not for me, unless there's a difference in portable and / or 64 bit vs. 32 bit installer.

[Lotesdelere]

x64 builds of VLC are still experimental.
You should stick to an x86 build for a regular daily use.

[Chrisi22]

OK, will give 32 bit nightlies a try to see if fix problem of playing youtube vids.

EDIT: did try the latest 2.1pre1 (6/24/2013) win32. In Vista, still won't even attempt to play youtube vids. When enter the URL (ctrl + N), it blinks something in lower L of UI (maybe about caching? - too fast to read) - then quietly does nothing. It happens in an instant. Tried several vids. Now, if there's some prefs that need changing from default, I could try - if anyone has suggestions.

Is anyone actually able to play youtube vids - TODAY - in Windows (Vista) using which nightly? Using portable or installer packages?

[Chrisi22]

Is the latest Win 32 pre version playing youtube vids just fine for others & I'm the only one w/ problems?

Any special settings to change that makes it work? When I enter URLs, not even a flicker. Using http for URLs - not https.

[Ludrax]

I can't confirm that on x64 build

[Chrisi22]

Ludrax - I'm unclear as to which statement by whom that you can't confirm. You can / can't play youtube vids on (which) x64 stable version / nightly build?

Also, to both Jean-Baptiste Kempf & Ludrax (or any others) : Can you provide a few youtube links that DO play - as of now; and which specific version / build (and platform - 32 or 64 bit) you're using?

Respectfully, if it's working fairly well for others, saying "works for me" isn't any help. If it only works on SWF v7 - or only earlier than that - but not on later ones, that's really of little use.
I included a debug log in another post - about interpreting the debug log.

Should I file a bug on this, or are the correct devs fully aware of this problem?
Thanks.

[JSLover]

I can confirm that no youtube vids (music vids) are playing...

...it's not that "no youtube vids are playing"...perhaps all the ones you tried were failing, but it wasn't ALL of them. It was really only the VEVO ones or the ones YouTube wanted to protect more. I can confirm the failing of SOME videos on VLC 2.0.5, so it's NOT related to any particular VLC version or x86 vs x64...it was simply a problem with YouTube & youtube.lua.

Should I file a bug on this, or are the correct devs fully aware of this problem?

...I just wish I could Search the Bug Reports...but alas, you aren't even allowed to do that without an account (intentional or oversight?).

In any case, I'm about to make you VERY happy...I've edited youtube.lua, made it work & released it on this forum!...

• youtube.lua -- Updated

I plan more updates, but it works as-is right now, on the videos I tested on. Please report in that topic anytime it, or the official youtube.lua, stops working.

[Chrisi22]

Thanks User124985 for your contribution. As soon as those w/ more coding knowledge than me have a look at it & give it the "OK," or better yet, implement the changes, I'll try it.

Point of Distinction: For one to make a statement (explicit or implied) that NO youtube vids play, would require them to try every vid; or at least every one of similar age, of all flash versions & all other differentiating factors.

Great that you seem to have found a fix. I wonder why VLC devs didn't - at least not in the nightlies I tried w/ numerous vids. It working on "some vids" is kind of pointless, if it doesn't play ones (out of many tried) a given user wants to see.

I tried vids that generally had been posted a long time; from 1 to several yrs; had hundreds of 1000's to millions of views. Avg users won't try 100 or 1000 vids that fail, before abandoning a player (for that purpose) or if interested in helping improve the project, post their unscientific findings.

Not a jabb, here - just point of fact: it took another open source player's devs all of ~ 1.5 days to adjust to the latest changes that google made, to (I assume) make it harder for 3rd party players to stream the vids. Maybe that player's code is much simpler to change. Either way, it's an ongoing battle that likely will never end, because google has unlimited resources to defeat the little guys. Again, google isn't hosting millions of vids out of the goodness of their heart.

[JSLover]

Point of Distinction: For one to make a statement (explicit or implied) that NO youtube vids play, would require them to try every vid...

...I understand that, but you are the one that posted that Subject saying "no youtube vids are playing", you made the claim -- I was just clarifying, that it wasn't actually all vids not working. I didn't expect you to have actually tried all of them.

It working on "some vids" is kind of pointless...

...this wasn't VLC's fault. YouTube changed their code to make it harder to get the real/working stream URL...someone (or several people) in the open source community found a fix & I implemented it in VLC's youtube.lua. I Googled enough to find an open source project that had working code.

Avg users won't try 100 or 1000 vids that fail, before abandoning a player...

...again not VLC's fault. No reason to abandon a player for YouTube causing the problem.

it took another open source player's devs all of ~ 1.5 days to adjust to the latest changes that google made

...OK, so they were faster, great! So was the open source dev whose source code I found. He, according to his Changelog, had been fighting YouTube for at least a couple months, trying to keep up with their changes -- I'm just not sure why it took so long for VLC to be affected (broken) by the changes, if YouTube had been changing things for months.

Maybe that player's code is much simpler to change.

...not exactly related, but I have to say, I hate editing lua code...I only put up with it cuz VLC embeds lua. I really wish VLC would embed JavaScript...then I could make a youtube.js & be done with lua. My point is: if VLC would embed JavaScript, it would make it MUCH easier for ME to keep youtube.js (a theoretical future file) updated.

[Chrisi22]

I appreciate your work & contributions. Is it possible you're interpreting comments too literally? Like when someone replies, "works for me," that doesn't mean (literally) they tried every type of Flash vid, or even the same ones that don't work for another user. I should have said, "no youtube videos that I've tried."

[Kodika]

After trawling the web and other forums I have found a downloader that still plays You Tube music videos (even Vevo ones). It is the YouTube Video and Audio downloader (version 0.2.2) which is an Add-On for Firefox and plays them in the .flv format. it can be found here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefo ... audio-dow/. One warning - it does not work in private browsing mode.

Hope this is helpful.

[Ludrax]

Nightly Build of VLCnow I can confirm that for all videos [/NB]