VLC Player crashes when playing Youtube videos

[LGoosens]

Hi there,

recently, when using VLC Player 1.1.11 on my Windows XP SP2 machine, and playing a Youtube video, it crashes.

I simply paste the URL for the Youtube video (for instance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X_4O7ilniI ) in the Open network stream... dialog box of VLC (which has been a feature for some time now IIRC), and next thing, VLC simply disappears. When I open up VLC again, it wants to send an error report.

• I've experienced similar crashes in the past when trying to play compact discs, but usually, after trying a few times, it would stop crashing. Not so with the Youtube videos, unfortunately.
• I just tried downgrading to 1.1.10, and it won't recognise the input's format. Could this be due to a change at YouTube's end?
• I haven't tried resetting my preferences, because I'm not sure how to back-up my current preferences. I would appreciate any suggestions.

Any thoughts on how to get VLC to play nice again? YouTube just isn't the same without VLC, at least to me.

Regards,

Lennart Goosens.

[Lotesdelere]

viewtopic.php?p=306705#p306705

[Casketizer]

It is broken again since last night. Latest youtube.lua from git worked for 3 days. Seems they changed their site again
Might be that stupid new survey code.

[Casketizer]

lua warning: Error while running script C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\lua\playlist\youtube.lua, function parse(): ...\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\lua\playlist\youtube.lua:92: bad argument #1 to 'gsub' (string expected, got nil)

[Casketizer]

It seems I'm too dumb to grasp lua pattern matching or i'm missing something else. Can't get it fully working....where is Pierre?

[Casketizer]

OK i got it working. Ugly hack I know. I never touched lua script before:

Code: Select all

--[[ $Id$ Copyright © 2007-2009 the VideoLAN team This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston MA 02110-1301, USA. --]] -- Helper function to get a parameter's value in a URL function get_url_param( url, name ) local _, _, res = string.find( url, "[&?]"..name.."=([^&]*)" ) return res end function get_arturl( path, video_id ) if string.match( vlc.path, "iurl=" ) then return vlc.strings( get_url_param( vlc.path, "iurl" ) ) end if not arturl then return "http://img.youtube.com/vi/"..video_id.."/default.jpg" end end -- Probe function. function probe() if vlc.access ~= "http" and vlc.access ~= "https" then return false end youtube_site = string.match( string.sub( vlc.path, 1, 8 ), "youtube" ) if not youtube_site then -- FIXME we should be using a builtin list of known youtube websites -- like "fr.youtube.com", "uk.youtube.com" etc.. youtube_site = string.find( vlc.path, ".youtube.com" ) if youtube_site == nil then return false end end return ( string.match( vlc.path, "watch%?v=" ) -- the html page or string.match( vlc.path, "watch_fullscreen%?video_id=" ) -- the fullscreen page or string.match( vlc.path, "p.swf" ) -- the (old?) player url or string.match( vlc.path, "jp.swf" ) -- the (new?) player url (as of 24/08/2007) or string.match( vlc.path, "player2.swf" ) ) -- another player url end -- Parse function. function parse() if string.match( vlc.path, "watch%?v=" ) then -- This is the HTML page's URL -- fmt is the format of the video: 18 is HQ (mp4) fmt = get_url_param( vlc.path, "fmt" ) while true do -- Try to find the video's title line = vlc.readline() if not line then break end if string.match( line, "<meta name=\"title\"" ) then _,_,name = string.find( line, "content=\"(.-)\"" ) name = vlc.strings.resolve_xml_special_chars( name ) name = vlc.strings.resolve_xml_special_chars( name ) end if string.match( line, "<meta name=\"description\"" ) then -- Don't ask me why they double encode ... _,_,description = vlc.strings.resolve_xml_special_chars(vlc.strings.resolve_xml_special_chars(string.find( line, "content=\"(.-)\"" ))) end if string.match( line, "subscribe_to_user=" ) then _,_,artist = string.find( line, "subscribe_to_user=([^&]*)" ) end -- CURRENT: var swfConfig = { [a lot of stuff...], "video_id": "OHVvVmUNBFc", "sk": "WswKuJzDBsdD6oG3IakCXgC", "t": "OEgsToPDskK3zO44y0QN8Fr5ZSAZwCQp", "plid": "AARGnwWMrmGkbpOxAAAA4AT4IAA"}; -- OLD 1: var swfArgs = {hl:'en',BASE_YT_URL:'http://youtube.com/',video_id:'XPJ7d8dq0t8',l:'292',t:'OEgsToPDskLFdOYrrlDm3FQPoQBYaCP1',sk:'0gnr-AE6QZJEZmCMd3lq_AC'}; -- OLD 2: var swfArgs = { "BASE_YT_URL": "http://youtube.com", "video_id": "OHVvVmUNBFc", "l": 88, "sk": "WswKuJzDBsdD6oG3IakCXgC", "t": "OEgsToPDskK3zO44y0QN8Fr5ZSAZwCQp", "plid": "AARGnwWMrmGkbpOxAAAA4AT4IAA", "tk": "mEL4E7PqHeaZp5OG19NQThHt9mXJU4PbRTOw6lz9osHi4Hixp7RE1w=="}; -- OLD 3: 'SWF_ARGS': { [a lot of stuff...], "video_id": "OHVvVmUNBFc", "sk": "WswKuJzDBsdD6oG3IakCXgC", "t": "OEgsToPDskK3zO44y0QN8Fr5ZSAZwCQp", "plid": "AARGnwWMrmGkbpOxAAAA4AT4IAA"}; if ( string.match( line, "PLAYER_CONFIG" ) or string.match( line, "swfConfig" ) or string.match( line, "SWF_ARGS" ) or string.match( line, "swfArgs" ) ) and string.match( line, "video_id" ) then if string.match( line, "BASE_YT_URL" ) then _,_,base_yt_url = string.find( line, "\"BASE_YT_URL\": \"(.-)\"" ) end _,_,t = string.find( line, "\"t\": \"(.-)\"" ) -- vlc.msg.err( t ) -- video_id = string.gsub( line, ".*&video_id:'([^']*)'.*", "%1" ) -- new stream map name below fmt_url_map = string.match( line, "\"url_encoded_fmt_stream_map\": \"(.-)\"" ) -- FIXME: do this properly fmt_url_map = string.gsub( fmt_url_map, "\\u0026", "&" ) if fmt_url_map then -- old | based pattern replaced for itag,url in string.gmatch( fmt_url_map, "(%d+)\,url\=([^,]+)" ) do -- Apparently formats are listed in quality order, -- so we can afford to simply take the first one if not fmt or tonumber( itag ) == tonumber( fmt ) then -- do unescaping of / url = string.gsub( url, '\\/','/' ) -- cut off at &quality cutoff,_= url:find("&quality") url=url:sub(1,cutoff-1) -- have to run it through uri decoder path = vlc.strings.decode_uri(url) break end end end -- Also available on non-HTML5 pages: var swfHTML = (isIE) ? "<object [...]><param name=\"flashvars\" value=\"rv.2.thumbnailUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fi4.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2F3MLp7YNTznE%2Fdefault.jpg&rv.7.length_seconds=384 [...] &video_id=OHVvVmUNBFc [...] &t=OEgsToPDskK3zO44y0QN8Fr5ZSAZwCQp [...] elseif string.match( line, "swfHTML" ) and string.match( line, "video_id" ) then _,_,t = string.find( line, "&t=(.-)&" ) -- Also available in HTML5 pages: videoPlayer.setAvailableFormat("http://v6.lscache4.c.youtube.com/videoplayback?ip=82.0.0.0&sparams=id%2Cexpire%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Calgorithm%2Cburst%2Cfactor&algorithm=throttle-factor&itag=45&ipbits=8&burst=40&sver=3&expire=1275688800&key=yt1&signature=6ED860441298D1157FF3013A5D72727F25831F09.4C196BEA9F8F9B83CE678D79AD918B83D5E98B46&factor=1.25&id=7117715cf57d18d4", "video/webm; codecs="vp8.0, vorbis"", "hd720"); elseif string.match( line, "videoPlayer%.setAvailableFormat" ) then url,itag = string.match( line, "videoPlayer%.setAvailableFormat%(\"(.-itag=(%d+).-)\",.+%)" ) if url then -- For now, WebM formats are listed only in the HTML5 -- section, that is also only when HTML5 is enabled. -- Format 45 is 720p, and 43 is lower resolution. if tonumber( itag ) == 45 or ( tonumber( itag ) == 43 and not webm_path ) then webm_path = url end -- Grab something if fmt_url_map failed if not path and ( not fmt or tonumber( itag ) == tonumber( fmt ) ) then path = url end end end end if not video_id then video_id = get_url_param( vlc.path, "v" ) end arturl = get_arturl( vlc.path, video_id ) if not fmt then -- Prefer WebM formats if this is an &html5=True URL html5 = get_url_param( vlc.path, "html5" ) if html5 == "True" and webm_path then path = webm_path end end if not path then if not base_yt_url then base_yt_url = "http://youtube.com/" end if fmt then format = "&fmt=" .. fmt else format = "" end if t then path = base_yt_url .. "get_video?video_id="..video_id.."&t="..t..format else -- This shouldn't happen ... but keep it as a backup. path = "http://www.youtube.com/v/"..video_id end end return { { path = path; name = name; description = description; artist = artist; arturl = arturl } } else -- This is the flash player's URL if string.match( vlc.path, "title=" ) then name = vlc.strings.decode_uri(get_url_param( vlc.path, "title" )) end video_id = get_url_param( vlc.path, "video_id" ) arturl = get_arturl( vlc.path, video_id ) fmt = get_url_param( vlc.path, "fmt" ) if fmt then format = "&fmt=" .. fmt else format = "" end if not string.match( vlc.path, "t=" ) then -- This sucks, we're missing "t" which is now mandatory. Let's -- try using another url return { { path = "http://www.youtube.com/v/"..video_id; name = name; arturl = arturl } } end return { { path = "http://www.youtube.com/get_video.php?video_id="..video_id.."&t="..get_url_param( vlc.path, "t" )..format; name = name; arturl = arturl } } end end

of course everyone is free to use my code as they please.

edit: i just cleaned it up, functionality unchanged.

[AvtoRus]

OK i got it working.

Yes, now it works.
Thank you, Casketizer!

[caji316]

Thanks Casketizer.....Your script works great.......Yes, seems Youtube keeps on doing updates and every update make them sorrier...Thanks again my friend.......

[JCSmedia]

How do I update the Lua script in VLC on my Mac? With the script above?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

As far as I know, you cannot update on Mac since VLC is all packed in a single DMG file (like most other MacOS applications).

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Wrong

/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/share/lua/playlist/ is the place to put the .lua

[jm-deagot]

OK i got it working. Ugly hack I know. I never touched lua script before:

Sadly, this doesn't work for me

I get a tiny still picture for about half a second, before VLC Player exists.

What am I doing wrong? (edited to add, Am using VLC 1.1.11)