6 ms·

I'm taking a more drastic way; turning media.{mp4, webm, ...}.enabled into False never let YouTube and other media autoplay(even play nomally) without any addon

by ynak 10y ago

I'm taking a more drastic way; turning media.{mp4, webm, ...}.enabled into False never let YouTube and other media autoplay(even play nomally) without any addons. When I want to watch videos, download them by youtube-dl and watch locally.

qtk 10y ago
Why would you want that?
- goodplay 10y ago
  One good reason for me personally is to insure future availability. As I type this, there are a couple of videos in my watch-later playlist that have been replaced with "video removed".
  - muntoo 10y ago
    My Watch Later is like 100 videos long. Ain't nobody got time for that.
    - morganvachon 10y ago
      You're posting on HN, I would think you would find a way to automate it. ;-)
      - goodplay 10y ago
        I believe youtube-dl is capable of downloading entire lists, but I don't know if the watch-later list behaves as a normal list. One way to find out.
    - jerf 10y ago
      youtube-dl can download lists of videos. It also automatically doesn't download things you already have, so it can be used periodically to sync the list if you want. It only really matters if you expect videos to go down, but I also have my small collection of "videos that were obviously going to be taken down".
      - dawnerd 10y ago
        This is one of the best features (apart from channel backups). I think because of its name people also don't realize that youtube-dl works for LOTS of other sites and it's relatively easy to add new sites in as well.
Exuma 10y ago
You download YT videos before watching them? Seriously? Sometimes the suggestions on HN are literally insane in the amount of effort people go through to avoid things that wouldn't be a problem in the first place if you did something simple like use adblock software. I saw some other post where a guy hand edits tens of thousands of entries in his hosts file... yeah dude what an amazing use of time.
- xrisk 10y ago
  Link to the guy who does this?
  - fgandiya 10y ago
    It might be this one from another comment https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
- goodplay 10y ago
  I've used to employ a similar work flow to GP until a few years ago when video support finally got acceptable in web browsers. I still download talks rather than watch them on youtube or if I want to insure the future availability of the video. If the current web works well for you then great, but it would be naive to think that it fits everyone's use case (Even more so to label what they need to do as "insane").
- tastythrowaway2 10y ago
  the change to the hosts file is actually a really good idea. it is reliable and doesn't trip up ad blocking detectors. perhaps its greatest benefit is that it's a change that only has to happen once and everyone else who also wants to can benefit from it [0]. so your assertion is valid, even though it was sarcastic, that it is an amazing use of one's time. [0] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
- morganvachon 10y ago
  Watching later with youtube-dl is actually the recommended way to do YouTube on OpenBSD; various "OpenBSD as a desktop OS" tutorials mention it, and in practice it works very well. On that particular OS it is due to the lack of a native Flash plugin, but even with YouTube offering most of their videos via HTML5 it actually makes for a better experience to download and then view them. I'd imagine it could even be automated trivially, by calling youtube-dl via a browser plugin, or by writing a script to pass YouTube URLs to with a simple GUI thrown together in FLTK or TCL/TK. As for the hosts file, a hand-edited file works great, and you don't have to do thousands of entries on your own. You can find some great examples all over the web, then tune them to your own needs, saving a lot of time. For example, there are at least two out there for Windows 10 users to block all communication with Microsoft's servers, avoiding any telemetry and tracking by the OS. If your router is smart enough, you can even upload your hosts file to it to block any device on your network from getting ads and being tracked.
ReFruity 10y ago
I use butterflies to watch videos http://xkcd.com/378/ http://xkcd.com/378/
noir_lord 10y ago
#!/bin/bash url=`xsel` notify-send "Downloading - $url" youtube-dl -o - "$url" -f 43 | mplayer - Whatever is in your default xsel buffer gets streamed to mplayer, if you bind it a keyboard shortcut (I use alt+shift+y (for Youtube)). Makes life a lot more convenient :)

by ynak 10y ago

qtk 10y ago

Why would you want that?

goodplay 10y ago
One good reason for me personally is to insure future availability. As I type this, there are a couple of videos in my watch-later playlist that have been replaced with "video removed".
- muntoo 10y ago
  My Watch Later is like 100 videos long. Ain't nobody got time for that.
  - morganvachon 10y ago
    You're posting on HN, I would think you would find a way to automate it. ;-)
    - goodplay 10y ago
      I believe youtube-dl is capable of downloading entire lists, but I don't know if the watch-later list behaves as a normal list. One way to find out.
  - jerf 10y ago
    youtube-dl can download lists of videos. It also automatically doesn't download things you already have, so it can be used periodically to sync the list if you want. It only really matters if you expect videos to go down, but I also have my small collection of "videos that were obviously going to be taken down".
    - dawnerd 10y ago
      This is one of the best features (apart from channel backups). I think because of its name people also don't realize that youtube-dl works for LOTS of other sites and it's relatively easy to add new sites in as well.

Exuma 10y ago

You download YT videos before watching them? Seriously? Sometimes the suggestions on HN are literally insane in the amount of effort people go through to avoid things that wouldn't be a problem in the first place if you did something simple like use adblock software. I saw some other post where a guy hand edits tens of thousands of entries in his hosts file... yeah dude what an amazing use of time.

xrisk 10y ago
Link to the guy who does this?
- fgandiya 10y ago
  It might be this one from another comment https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
goodplay 10y ago
I've used to employ a similar work flow to GP until a few years ago when video support finally got acceptable in web browsers. I still download talks rather than watch them on youtube or if I want to insure the future availability of the video. If the current web works well for you then great, but it would be naive to think that it fits everyone's use case (Even more so to label what they need to do as "insane").
tastythrowaway2 10y ago
the change to the hosts file is actually a really good idea. it is reliable and doesn't trip up ad blocking detectors. perhaps its greatest benefit is that it's a change that only has to happen once and everyone else who also wants to can benefit from it [0]. so your assertion is valid, even though it was sarcastic, that it is an amazing use of one's time. [0] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
morganvachon 10y ago
Watching later with youtube-dl is actually the recommended way to do YouTube on OpenBSD; various "OpenBSD as a desktop OS" tutorials mention it, and in practice it works very well. On that particular OS it is due to the lack of a native Flash plugin, but even with YouTube offering most of their videos via HTML5 it actually makes for a better experience to download and then view them. I'd imagine it could even be automated trivially, by calling youtube-dl via a browser plugin, or by writing a script to pass YouTube URLs to with a simple GUI thrown together in FLTK or TCL/TK. As for the hosts file, a hand-edited file works great, and you don't have to do thousands of entries on your own. You can find some great examples all over the web, then tune them to your own needs, saving a lot of time. For example, there are at least two out there for Windows 10 users to block all communication with Microsoft's servers, avoiding any telemetry and tracking by the OS. If your router is smart enough, you can even upload your hosts file to it to block any device on your network from getting ads and being tracked.

ReFruity 10y ago

I use butterflies to watch videos http://xkcd.com/378/ http://xkcd.com/378/

noir_lord 10y ago

#!/bin/bash url=`xsel` notify-send "Downloading - $url" youtube-dl -o - "$url" -f 43 | mplayer - Whatever is in your default xsel buffer gets streamed to mplayer, if you bind it a keyboard shortcut (I use alt+shift+y (for Youtube)). Makes life a lot more convenient :)