How to download videos with the new SMTube

Posted on May 12, 2015 by rvm

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)

How to play torrents directly with SMPlayer (linux)

Posted on March 20, 2015 by rvm

It’s possible to play torrents directly in SMPlayer, no need to download the torrent first!

You need to install peerflix. This is a video streaming BitTorrent client. It starts to download the torrent (to a temp folder) and streams the video. Then SMPlayer (or any other player) can play the stream.

You can install peerflix in Ubuntu with these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs
sudo npm install -g peerflix

Now to play a movie with SMPlayer run this command:

peerflix http://some-torrent/movie.torrent -g -d

For more info about the command line options type:

peerflix --help

More info about peerflix and how to use it with other players:
http://www.webupd8.org/2014/03/peerflix-stream-torrents-with-vlc-or.html

How to use SMPlayer with mpv in Ubuntu

Posted on January 27, 2015 by rvm

SMPlayer now supports mpv, which brings new interesting features. Click here to know more.

This article explains how to get the latest version of SMPlayer and mpv in Ubuntu.

To get the latest version of SMPlayer, just update it from the official PPA, open a terminal and enter these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer 
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install smplayer

To get the latest mpv, you can use this PPA:
https://launchpad.net/~mc3man/+archive/ubuntu/mpv-tests
It contains packages for Ubuntu 14.04 and 14.10.

Type these commands to add the repository and install mpv:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/mpv-tests
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install mpv

Finally, to use mpv instead of mplayer in SMPlayer, open the SMPlayer preferences dialog, and replace “mplayer” with “mpv” in the mplayer executable field:

That’s all.

How to install SMPlayer with mpv

Posted on December 18, 2014 by rvm

Now it’s not necessary anymore to use a special installer to install SMPlayer with mpv. The regular installer gives the possibility to install either mplayer or mpv.

Just click on “Playback components” and select mpv. An mpv build will be downloaded from the internet, so you need an internet connection to perform the installation.

If you don’t know what mpv is, please read this previous article:
SMPlayer with support for MPV is now available/

How to play a 1080p video from Youtube with SMPlayer

Posted on December 8, 2014 by rvm

The following requires SMPlayer from SVN + mpv 0.7.0 + youtube-dl.

Visit http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/mpv to know how to get them. Windows users only need to download the package from that page, everything is included in the package.

Now you have to make this adjustments in the SMPlayer configuration. In Preferences -> Network, disable the option to use the internal support for Youtube, and enable the option to play videos from streaming sites:

Now go to Advanced -> Options for MPlayer/MPV and enter

--ytdl-format=bestvideo+bestaudio

That’s all.

There’s a little problem, in this mode the reported duration of the video is wrong.

Support for video sites (not only youtube)

Posted on November 28, 2014 by rvm

A new very interesting feature, thanks to the newly added support for mpv, is the possibility to play videos from many video sites. Youtube was already supported, but now you can play videos from DailyMotion, Vimeo, Vevo and many more sites, just by entering the URL of the video in SMPlayer. Performance is much better in SMPlayer (or any other player) than using the flashplayer in a web browser.

You’ll need:

SMPlayer from SVN
mpv 0.7.0 or greater
the very latest version of youtube-dl

Configuration:

You need to enable the option “Play video from streaming sites” in Preferences -> Network.

After that you only have to enter the URL of the video you want to play in Open -> URL. The video will be played by mpv, which will use youtube-dl to get the real address of the video.

Youtube-dl supports a lot of sites. You can get a list here: http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html

SMPlayer already had support for Youtube, so the Youtube URLs will still be handled by SMPlayer. However it’s possible to disable SMPlayer’s internal support for Youtube. In this case the Youtube URLs will be passed directly to mpv, which actually provides an interesting feature: subtitles are available.

Displaying two subtitles at the same time, now it’s possible

Posted on November 26, 2014 by rvm

This is a long-awaited feature. Now SMPlayer can display two subtitles at the same time. The first subtitle is shown on the bottom of the image, the second one on the top.

This is available since SVN r6474 and requires mpv.

Click here for more info about SMPlayer with mpv and how to get it.

SMPlayer with support for MPV is now available

Posted on November 16, 2014 by rvm

After 25 days of hard work and almost 7,000 lines of code, I’m proud to announce the first public version of SMPlayer with support for MPV.

MPV is a player based on MPlayer and MPlayer2, with new features and bug fixes.

Some of its most interesting features:

Possibility to display two subtitles at once
Play videos from video sites, like Youtube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Vevo and many more
Support for MKV ordered chapters
Precise seeking
Native support for VAAPI and VDA. Improved VDPAU
Better support for taking screenshots
(Windows) Improved support for Unicode file names

Click here for a detailed list of the MPV features

The support for MPV in SMPlayer is not complete yet, but the most usual functions should work now.

How to get it

Support for MPV is available in SMPlayer from version svn r6419.

There are packages for both Windows and Linux here:
http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/mpv.php

How to use it

To use MPV instead of MPlayer, open the SMPlayer preferences dialog, and enter “mpv” instead of “mplayer” in the mplayer executable field.

SMPlayer will support MPV

Posted on November 8, 2014 by rvm

I’m very happy to announce that the next version of SMPlayer will support MPV.
I’m currently adding support for MPV, it’s not an easy task, since every single command has to be reimplemented, so it’s a slow process.

At this point the basic functions (play, pause, seek, etc.) and most of the options in the menus “Play”, “Video”, “Audio” and “Subtitles” work.

For more detailed info click here.

There’s no public version available yet, but a beta will probably be available soon.

SMPlayer using mpv

Posted on October 21, 2014 by rvm

mpv is another fork of mplayer. Many people have asked to add support for it in SMPlayer.

In this video you can see SMPlayer playing a video using mpv:

However only very basic things work (play, pause, stop, seek).

Adding full support for mpv would be very hard. The mpv developers made a lot of changes which made mpv incompatible with SMPlayer (and other mplayer front-ends).

They renamed many options, removed the slave mode, and even removed the -identify option which SMPlayer uses to get info about the video.

Actually the slave mode is not removed, but it’s deprecated and the developers said it shouldn’t be used.

Maybe it would be possible to fully support mpv, but it would be a hard work that would take months, and only if they do not actually remove the slave mode.

What do you think? Would it be worth to try to support mpv? I mean, after all probably most of the SMPlayer users wouldn’t notice any difference compared to mplayer…

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