Due to changes in YouTube, the old SMTube doesn’t work anymore. A new version has been developed, written from scratch. You can download it from http://smtube.sourceforge.net

For the moment only basic functionality is included: search and browse categories. But new features will be added in the future.

In this new version you can choose which media player to use to play the YouTube videos. And you can add more in the settings dialogs. This is an explanation of the data you have to enter to edit or add a player:

Name: this is the name that will be displayed in the context menu: “Open with <name>”
Executable: the binary name (a full path is allow) that should be run. For example: mplayer or /usr/bin/mplayer or mplayer.exe (Windows).
Parameters: the parameters that should be passed to the application. There are some special characters that SMTube will replace:

• %u (the URL of the video)
• %t (the title of the video)
• %f (a string that can be used as output filename, usually it’s the title + mp4 extension)

%t and %f should only be used when the option “this player supports videos sites” is NOT checked. (See below)

Example: –title=%t –file=%f %u would expand to something like: –title=”Funny video” –file=”Funny video.mp4″ http://……..

This player supports videos sites: can be checked or unchecked. If it’s checked this means that the player is smart enough to find out the video URL from the YouTube page. When checked SMTube just passes (with %u) the URL of the YouTube page, it’s up to the player to find out the real address of the video. If the option is not checked then SMTube will find out the URL of the video and pass it to the player. For example, SMPlayer, mpv+youtube-dl and VLC can find out the URL of the video, so this option should be checked for them. On the other hand mplayer doesn’t support YouTube so you have to leave this option unchecked.

Notice that due to the terms of use of the YouTube API, this version doesn’t include any option to download videos. But you can read this article to find out how to add it:

How to download videos with the new SMTube

Due to changes in YouTube, the old SMTube doesn’t work anymore. A new version has been developed, written from scratch. You can download it from http://smtube.sourceforge.net

But now people are asking “is possible to download videos with this new version?”
Short answer: yes, but you have to configure it. Please, continue reading.

The new SMTube uses the YouTube API v.3. In order to use this API it’s necessary to ask Google for a “developer key”. And you have to accept their terms of use. Those terms of use don’t allow to implement applications to download videos. So I can’t add any function to download videos from YouTube.

But this new version includes a configuration dialog that allows you to add more media players (VLC, Windows Media Player…). Actually you can add any kind of application, you are not limited to media players. You can add a download manager… in this case the video won’t be played, it will be downloaded…

Now I’m going to give you an example. I’m going to use uget. This is free download manager with versions for both Linux and Windows.

In SMTube select View -> Settings. And add a new player.

The configuration, for Linux, is the following:

Name: uget
Executable: uget-gtk
Parameters: --quiet --folder=/tmp --filename=%f %u 
This player supports video sites: unchecked

Configuration for Windows:

Name: uget
Executable: C:/Users/<user>/uget/bin/uget.exe
Parameters: --filename=%f %u
This player supports video sites: unchecked

That’s it. Now in SMTube, right click on a video and select uget. The video will be downloaded.

Another example, to call youtube-dl (Linux):

Name: youtube-dl
Executable: xterm
Parameters: -e youtube-dl %u -f 22 -o "/tmp/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"
This player supports video sites: checked

That would save the videos in 720p quality (option -f 22) in the /tmp folder.

Configuration for Windows:

Name: youtube-dl
Executable: mplayer\youtube-dl.exe
Parameters: %u -f 22 -o "C:\Users\<user>\Videos\Youtube\%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s"
This player supports video sites: checked

And the final example. Using wget (Linux):

Name: wget
Executable: xterm
Parameters: -e wget -O /tmp/%f %u
This player supports video sites: unchecked

(This would save the videos in /tmp)