Bye Bye YouTube?

[pjpjpjpj]

I'm all for getting it working, even if it requires download. Most of what we use youtube for is short video clips (Sesame Street stuff for the kids, etc.) and much of that we end up saving/recording anyway (let it all buffer, pause, hit the record button in Sage). Most of the non-kid stuff we watch on youtube through Sage is stuff we already know we want - i.e., I'll see something hilarious at work, and want to show my wife when I get home. We have a folder on the Sage server for stuff like that, which we keep/save as well.

So if we had to download it and then just choose to delete it if we didn't want it, it really wouldn't change our use habits much at all.

[Skirge01]

With most of the internet speeds available today, waiting for the video to complete shouldn't take very long. Let's face it, if your download speed is so slow that you don't want to wait, you probably don't watch many videos online anyway.

I'm all for this. I'd love to see movie trailers return to Sage. I also like the cinema option in Kodi, where it plays a bunch of videos like at a theater. It's pretty cool to sit down to watch a modern movie like Guardians of the Galaxy and get a trailer for something like the first Die Hard.

[Boolah]

Originally Posted by Rob23

Have you tried using Boolah's fix in this thread? It is working well for me. It doesn't allow one to search for videos, but it is helpful if there are youtube channels to which you subscribe.

Adding search to my fix shouldn't be that difficult if there is some way to redirect the search query from SageTV's YouTube search to point to my web site. (I don't know how easy this would be, or even if it's possible.)

Don't get me wrong, I think tmiranda's approach is definitely the way to go about permanently solving the YouTube issue in Sage, but if the search terms could easily be redirected to an outside web site, I could probably have a working solution in 15 minutes or so.

tmiranda's approach of using YouTube's API should work no matter how YouTube presents its content. My approach on the other hand (scraping) will break whenever YouTube changes the structure of their site.

[Boolah]

Well that was easy... I just took a look at the OnlineVideoLinks.properties file and the YouTube search queries the [old] YouTube API URLs directly. This means that we can use this to redirect YouTube searches to an external web site to get YouTube searches working again in SageTV.

See this post for instructions.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Boolah

Well that was easy... I just took a look at the OnlineVideoLinks.properties file and the YouTube search queries the [old] YouTube API URLs directly. This means that we can use this to redirect YouTube searches to an external web site to get YouTube searches working again in SageTV.

See this post for instructions.

That post is for setting up links to your channels in youtube, isn't it? Were you just referencing it as the way someone can fix the youtube search function? Or does that fix the actual search function in Sage?

[Boolah]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

That post is for setting up links to your channels in youtube, isn't it? Were you just referencing it as the way someone can fix the youtube search function? Or does that fix the actual search function in Sage?

Actually, the linked post (post #7 from the thread) is instructions for setting up the actual YouTube search function in Sage. The initial post (post #1) in the linked thread was for setting up YouTube channels.

[brianrent]

Thanks for this. I was missing the youtube movie trailers and now they work again.

[sacrament055]

Originally Posted by Boolah

Well that was easy... I just took a look at the OnlineVideoLinks.properties file and the YouTube search queries the [old] YouTube API URLs directly. This means that we can use this to redirect YouTube searches to an external web site to get YouTube searches working again in SageTV.

See this post for instructions.

Well done!

[tmiranda]

Teaser - I can now do all kinds of searches and display all kinds of different information using the V3 API. I'm still exploring the API to see how to get some of the useful things displayed on the main YouTube.com page.

I can also play most content progressively but that wil take a little more time to implement.

I still haven't been able to do requests on behalf of a user. That's a WIP.

So while I am working on this does anybody have any special requests? Here is what I think I can already do and plan on getting into the first release:

- Browse channels (like on the YouTube main page)
- Search for videos and channels.
- Create playlists (NOT integrated with the playlists you create on YouTube.com, I'll hopefully get to that later.)
- Add favorite videos and channels (Ditto comment above.)

[dinki]

With Kodi/XBMC and the Yatse remote app I can send youtube video links from my phone to Kodi and have it open on my tv. I know this is a stretch, but can you think of any way to accomplish this with Sage? Allow for a remote machine/phone to send a Youtube URL to Sage and have it open that link in the Sage Youtube addon you're working on?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by dinki

With Kodi/XBMC and the Yatse remote app I can send youtube video links from my phone to Kodi and have it open on my tv. I know this is a stretch, but can you think of any way to accomplish this with Sage? Allow for a remote machine/phone to send a Youtube URL to Sage and have it open that link in the Sage Youtube addon you're working on?

That, ideally, would be a part of a much bigger project that would require making an app for said mobile device(s), of which there isn't really one for sage. There are a few 'partial' apps, we'll say, but that's about it.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by dinki

With Kodi/XBMC and the Yatse remote app I can send youtube video links from my phone to Kodi and have it open on my tv. I know this is a stretch, but can you think of any way to accomplish this with Sage? Allow for a remote machine/phone to send a Youtube URL to Sage and have it open that link in the Sage Youtube addon you're working on?

That's beyond my pay grade. The best chance of getting this to happen is to get stuckless excited enough about it to update his SageTV android app.

[dinki]

Understood on both counts. Can't blame me for trying.

I have two Kodi settop boxes. One in the living room and one in the bedroom. The bedroom one provides cheap extender like functionality for watching live tv (nPVR backend) and Sage recordings (Sage addon). To be honest, the living room one pretty much only serves as a Youtube/Airplay device for my phone and the wife's iPad. Having this functionality in Sage would eliminate the flipping between sources. Perhaps some day.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by dinki

Understood on both counts. Can't blame me for trying.

I have two Kodi settop boxes. One in the living room and one in the bedroom. The bedroom one provides cheap extender like functionality for watching live tv (nPVR backend) and Sage recordings (Sage addon). To be honest, the living room one pretty much only serves as a Youtube/Airplay device for my phone and the wife's iPad. Having this functionality in Sage would eliminate the flipping between sources. Perhaps some day.

I must be getting old because I just don't understand the paradigm of using the phone or iPad to "send things" to the TV. Why not just pick up the TV (or Sage) remote to play the video on the TV? What's the advantage of using a phone or iPad as a remote control for the TV?

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I must be getting old because I just don't understand the paradigm of using the phone or iPad to "send things" to the TV. Why not just pick up the TV (or Sage) remote to play the video on the TV? What's the advantage of using a phone or iPad as a remote control for the TV?

I don't know what the OP was referring to and this could be totally unrelated, but my wife and I would love the ability to move a video we were watching (NOT a recording or movie) on our phone to the TV so that we don't have to crowd around the tiny screen or listen to a crappy speaker. It might be a funny or die thing, maybe a movie trailer, etc. If it's already on one screen, it's a bit of an annoyance to search for the clip on another computer.

[dinki]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I don't know what the OP was referring to and this could be totally unrelated, but my wife and I would love the ability to move a video we were watching (NOT a recording or movie) on our phone to the TV so that we don't have to crowd around the tiny screen or listen to a crappy speaker. It might be a funny or die thing, maybe a movie trailer, etc. If it's already on one screen, it's a bit of an annoyance to search for the clip on another computer.

Yes. Very similar circumstances for us. My wife does cake decorating and she'll find a video showing how to do a new technique and will then want to show me so she'll cast it to the tv. I might come across a video posted that I want to show the kids or someone might come over and I can easily show them a funny video with a few clicks on my phone.

Not sure what your set up is like, but it is much easier to search on my phone than it is through the remote.

[Fuzzy]

I've almost always had a wireless keyboard floating around the livingroom. Much easier to type on than my phone.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by dinki

Yes. Very similar circumstances for us. My wife does cake decorating and she'll find a video showing how to do a new technique and will then want to show me so she'll cast it to the tv. I might come across a video posted that I want to show the kids or someone might come over and I can easily show them a funny video with a few clicks on my phone.

Not sure what your set up is like, but it is much easier to search on my phone than it is through the remote.

I hear you there. Our situation is very similar.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I've almost always had a wireless keyboard floating around the livingroom. Much easier to type on than my phone.

We have a keyboard by the TV and I agree that's definitely easier than searching with the remote or typing on the phone. But, the stuff we frequently want to share with someone else is found initially on our phones, not the TV.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Boolah

Actually, the linked post (post #7 from the thread) is instructions for setting up the actual YouTube search function in Sage. The initial post (post #1) in the linked thread was for setting up YouTube channels.

Does this fix work with the PlayOn plugin enabled, or do we still have to disable that plugin to get youtube to work?

[Boolah]

Don't have the PlayOn plugin, so can't comment on that.

However, it looks like YouTube made a change on their site within the last 24 hours which redirects all HTTP traffic to HTTPS. My fix would return an HTTP link to SageTV even if an HTTPS link was passed to it since Sage cannot handle HTTPS links. What this means is even with this fix in place, you'll get an RSS feed which Sage can read, but the resulting links will not play as YouTube will redirect the video link from HTTP to HTTPS which Sage can't play.

The only workaround that I can readily see to fix this (short of directly using the v3 API, which tmiranda is working on) is to proxy all video traffic and re-stream it in HTTP. Needless to say, I can't really do that. So, it looks like we're YouTube-less again until tmiranda can bail us out.