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flv video downloader issues

Hello. I've tried both youtube-dl and abby (front-end for cclive), and neither seem to work now (they both had worked previously). Any idea what's going on? Is there a way to download the flv videos from youtube? I use Debian Lenny (with some unstable, testing, and/or backport packages).

Look on the debian forums in the howto section for oswaldkelso's post on imac/emac instralling.
Maybe it isn't the same architecture but he does give command lines that may help you.

I searched it, but I couldn't find anything about downloading flv files (from youtube or elsewhere).

I checked the bug reports for cclive and youtube-dl, and they both say that there are issues with recent youtube videos. The cclive bug report seemed to suggest that clive worked (which I'll try, but given what I read on the clive bug report, I'm doubtful), so I'll try this. Also, in one of these reports, conkeror's scraper function was mentioned as working, so I'll try this too.

Here it is:

Quote:

Originally Posted by oswaldkelso

EDIT: YOUTUBE

Quote:

Gnash and swdec are to resource heavy and unfortunatly not quite there on my PPC machines. Here a rehash of info on youtube or PPC My self and other posted on the ubuntu forum. It will give you a good youtube experiance if nothing else.

How to watch youtube clips without flash-gnash etc on PPC
I just notice a lot of new PPC users struggling so thought I'd chuck this in.

I only really need flash for youtube and as it doesn't exist and gnash can be a bit cpu intensive on my old PPC hardware I use clive in terminator. Then I split the screen and run mplayer -ontop name-of-clip, works a treat. (you can leave out the -ontop bit if your feeling lazy)
No need to wait for the download, and you can be adding other clips at the same time.

Depending on your connection speed you can vary how much video to cache. On my poor 1mb connection I give 5% on small clips and 10-15% on larger ones.

In reality by the time you've split the terminator screen and typed mpla (TAB to auto complete) and read and started typing the youtube clip name (clive changes all that gobby gook to a real name) your buffer has loaded.

In debian I use mplayer from debian multimedia repo,(non gui).

as root

Code:

apt-get install clive mplayer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-KeLxxHkEY

Or

For a nice gui try Abby it needs clive or cclive to be installed http://code.google.com/p/abby/ I use clive or cclive if I just want to play a single youtube link and abby if I want to select from all the links on the page and down load them all for later in a few clicks.

Code:

Apt-get install abby cclive

Hi I've been playing around with cclive and after read in the help things get even easier.

http://code.google.com/p/cclive/
http://code.google.com/p/cclive/wiki/FA ... from_clive

try adding this to your hidden ~/.ccliverc

filename-format = "%t.%s"
regexp = "/(\w|\pL|\s)/g"
stream-exec = "mplayer -really-quiet %i"

then to view youtube just enter

cclive -s youtude-URL

And mplayer will start the video automatically

Or
Minitube a sort of youtube TV http://freshmeat.net/projects/minitube http://flavio.tordini.org/minitube
I did eventually manage to compile it. http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=46571 But it failed to play on my machine. You may have better luck and it is as of today being activly developed.

Or
You could just use the customvid addon for firefox/iceweasel https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12027 (License: Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL 1.1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aahiPQwb5hM

Or

If you run epiphany or iceweasel use a greasemonkey script.
First you need to install greasemonkey from the repos

Code:

apt-get install epiphany-extensions

Code:

apt-get install iceweasel-greasemonkey

And then, install this script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771

If you run epiphany the script goes in ./gnome2/epiphany/extentions/data/greasemonkey/50771.user.js
I found it worked well on my better machines but on my low end 333mhz imac clive and mplayer was a better option and much more flexible in that it didn't restrict browser choice, and was faster and seems to use less resources.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To install enter

CODE:

# apt-get install vlc mplayer gxine audacious
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: UPDATE AND UPGRADE

CODE:

# apt-get update

CODE:

# apt-get upgrade
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: now we update the debian menus so you will see your applications in blackbox when you right click on the desktop.

CODE:

# update-menus
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: now we shut-down and restart. If all goes well you will have "X" and a graphical login window (gdm), enter your user name and password and start customising your new system as you see fit. If you want to see my customising below.

CODE:

# shut-down -r now

Thanks. However, tips on getting mplayer to start automatically after I use cclive (via abby) to download the flv file won't work if cclive doesn't download it in the first place.

I tried to get clive from the sid source, and it doesn't seem to exist. So, I'm now going to try conkeror.

[later...]

Well, conkeror is kind of interesting (I tried stable, because sid sources did not have it). But I could not find or figure out the scraper function that had been referred to in the youtube-dl bug report.

Is anyone else having problems downloading the flv files from youtube? If you have been able to do this, please let me know what you're using.

Strange. I was attempting a youtube-dl of a Tommy Douglas speech on healthcare, and it was frozen at the following:

Code:

mark@debian:~/stuff/debs/youtube-dl$ youtube-dl C2oUInTUlAM

[youtube] Setting language

So, after reading the bug reports, I noticed that the one bug report that said the program wasn't working got the response of "more information is needed", claiming that the bug report was referencing a previous version of youtube-dl. So, since I had just installed the most recent version from Sid, I decided to try to make a bug report using the reportbug program. It listed the previous bug reports, asking if one fit the bill. I chose the one that said the program wasn't working (IE, not downloading the file), and I was told that duplicate reports were not necessary. So much for "more information is needed". The whole bug reporting system of Debian needs a major revisit, in my opinion. But I digress.
Anyway, right after closing the xterm where I was attempting to submit the bug report, suddenly the lifeless corpse of youtube-dl showed a pulse (but, the download was so slow, that it eventually died):

Code:

mark@debian:~/stuff/debs/youtube-dl$ youtube-dl C2oUInTUlAM

[youtube] Setting language

[youtube] C2oUInTUlAM: Downloading video info webpage

[youtube] C2oUInTUlAM: Extracting video information

[download] Destination: C2oUInTUlAM.flv

[download]  1.0% of 9.21M at  96.95b/s ETA --:-- 

ERROR: content too short (expected 9661089 bytes and served 98779)

mark@debian:~/stuff/debs/youtube-dl$

So, it CAN connect and begin to download the flv. But it seems seriously inhibited by whatever hurdles that the Google people have set up at youtube.

I finally got the unstable clive installed (I gave up trying to port it to stable from source, and just installed the package from the sid repository). Tried it, but it also does not work. So, the only thing that comes close to working is youtube-dl. Again, if anyone else is capable of downloading the flv videos from youtube, do please share your secret.

More Info on Cclive & Libquvi

A few questions for regular users of cclive.

Have any of you installed either cclive or libquvi on a remote Centos box? If not, is it possible to customize these 2 programs to work on a remote machine? The problem for Centos5+ users is that there is no binary files available for curl v7.18.0. The Centos users that have commented in other forums who upgraded to this version from an Ubuntu mirror have proven to be problematic with other aps on their machine.
So basically, is there a 7.18.0 generic version out there that will do the job on Centos?

I also would like to know from anyone with good experience with these aps if they actually work well. Are we still having problems with You Tube dl's? Do most of the media sites mesh well with these aps? Can you bulk download or can you only dl files one by one? How does Abby GUI mesh with cclive? I'm interested in any of your thoughts. Thanks.