Topic: Stripping Youtube videos from player

As a byproduct of my recent Flash investigations :
http://www.abdulqabiz.com/blog/archives/flash_and_actionscript/constructing_youtube_1.php

Basically :
- flv files are Flash video files.
- Youtube embeds them in the player.
- Those files can be used in full quality, and in a tailored Flash movie, using the above technique.

I find it spiffy, make sure you check the sample app.

not sure if i understand what this thing does

quote:

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argo navis said:

Those files can be used in full quality

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what do you mean with full quality? does youtube store the uploaded videos in a better quality than it outputs?
i think i'm totally wrong here, so excuse my assumption....but isnt this just another way to obtain youtube's flv files?
because if yes, this is what http://www.downloadyoutubevideos.com/ already does. but i am sure that you know of services like these, so please explain to me whats the advantage of the technique you mentioned.
thx


The Space Between Us | My Blog: lukas.grumet.at

The advantage of implementing an .flv extraction yourself is that you don't rely on another server.

OTOH there's plenty of sites/services doing this and not limited youtube : most services include google videos, dailymotion, and dozens of other videos sites. Therefore I think it's better to go through such sites/services as they offer much than just youtube.

(Jesus, say I went out only to find myself next to a pc AGAIN Note to self : stop dating ladies as nerdy as myself - anyway) :

- it seems the youtube player is flickery, didn't manage to verify this myself from the test videos I use.
- this is the "trick behind the magic" of flv download sites.
- this trick is handy to program something that "pumps" flv data on the fly from youtube : instead of using a service that prompts me for a download,
I just retrieve the flv source of a youtube stream, and plug -any- interface (in this case, a php/javascript/SWFObject mix) on top of it.

I don't even have to use a proxy : I'll show you the finished product, which I will release shortly - my server space is spared,
my server bandwidth is spared (since youtube happily serves my users with flv), all I have to do is craft the interface.

I am interested in seeing other services like the one you mentionned : if they don't just provide me with a form to fill/click,
I'll be happy (and if they do mirror the flv content, I will be happier).

Finally, on the technical side of thing, this is interesting also because a youtube flv url is not static :
They use clustering. They have several mirror servers to serve videos, and the main video identifer (the one you get when you watch the video)
is unique and static, but the tru flv pointer changes depending on availability of streaming servers.

So, the interface I am building on top of this never fails to retrieve a video, consumes little bandwidth on my website and a couple of kilobytes
of storage space.

...

And the same trick is certainly possible and easy with dailymotion and the likes (and mp3 streaming services as well).

http://keepvid.com/ for instance provide links to .flv from ~40 sites. All it takes is to make a POST request with the correct REFERER to http://megaupload.net/keepvid.php to receive an easy to parse ~700 bytes page with the URL of the .flv

I haven't checked their terms of service, but I've seen a KeepVide widget. At worst it would take a link to them and a mention in the FAQ.



(Edited by poi on 01-12-2008 21:05)

Thanks a bunch poi. For the time being, and unless there is a demand for my radio player, I'll be fine with youtube's huge repositories.

@mas, about clustering : you can see it in action for youtube in the debug version of my script, here :
http://www.beyondwonderland.com/index.radio.html

<obsolete>
If you click the "debug" blue layer, the 2g0MDjrl32M youtube movie (Mason - exceeder tune) is fetched -
so, inside the layer, the current "flv id" is appended along the "watch me id". "flv id" changes all the time, on the fly
(hence the interest, for my script, to actually fetch it on the fly - so I can grab the most suitable flv and play).
</obsolete - it now works more transparently in IE and FF, Op chokes>

And more tests seem to show that the youtube swf player does recompress flv in some way - there is a noticeable quality loss on some movies.

(Edited by argo navis on 01-13-2008 12:50)