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Show HN: Tube – Minimalist YouTube

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Re: Show HN: Tube – Minimalist YouTube

#41

Post by lozf »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #25

For some time I've been tinkering with a script which manages my own fine-grained youtube subscription preferences, periodically scrapes various pages for metadata, and then as necessary extracts videos by using the youtube-dl utility. The end result is a directory on my machine which always has a few interesting videos to watch, ad-free, tracking-free, network connection free, using my favorite full-featured video p…

I've been a youtube-dl fan for a long time -- it was essential whilst traveling a few years ago with suboptimal 3G bandwidth... these days I usually just paste the URL in to a terminal after typing `mpv` for a minimal experience but still with all the control you might want for playback speed, brightness, screenshots, & skipping around etc. Those who prefer a GUI could use SMplayer.

Re: Show HN: Tube – Minimalist YouTube

#42

Post by lucb1e »

JulienRbrt wrote: post #20
lucb1e wrote: post #14

I started a project to make websites like this for all websites, but didn't get very far. I feel like pretty much every other website could use a lightweight and fast version. Creating those versions is a lot of boring work, though, as you're just parsing DOMs or APIs and there is no challenge to it. (Never mind when they change the HTML again.) Thanks for creating this one!

One thing I love to do is to block all the garbage of websites with uBlock Origin by adding my own filters. That does not give a result as good as this project but it quicker to do.

Yes. One example where this worked particularly well for me is the Youtube homepage, where I blocked all the content so only the search bar and sidebar are still visible. They've since changed the html and I have since made two workarounds for the homepage, but for years that saved me from getting distracted by all the crap people watch and forgetting what I was going to search for.

Re: Show HN: Tube – Minimalist YouTube

#43

Post by NetOpWibby »

stephengillie wrote: post #39
nearmuse wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be easier to "make" these with semantic web. Maybe your browser would just have some generic viewer so that you would not have to make any at all.

I'm writing a small JavaScript engine that converts websites to JSON, and displays JSON as websites. Since an entire site is described in the same JSON file, the whole site is a single download, and it rebuilds pages in the browser instead of calling the server - much faster, especially on mobile. If the browser had this small engine, it could render these sites natively.

Your project sounds very interesting, is it hosted somewhere?

Re: Show HN: Tube – Minimalist YouTube

#44

Post by goda90 »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #25

For some time I've been tinkering with a script which manages my own fine-grained youtube subscription preferences, periodically scrapes various pages for metadata, and then as necessary extracts videos by using the youtube-dl utility. The end result is a directory on my machine which always has a few interesting videos to watch, ad-free, tracking-free, network connection free, using my favorite full-featured video p…

How well does youtube-dl deal with video playback being restricted to play only from youtube.com? For instance this Tube site can't really play most music videos.

Re: Show HN: Tube – Minimalist YouTube

#45

Post by chriswarbo »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #25

For some time I've been tinkering with a script which manages my own fine-grained youtube subscription preferences, periodically scrapes various pages for metadata, and then as necessary extracts videos by using the youtube-dl utility. The end result is a directory on my machine which always has a few interesting videos to watch, ad-free, tracking-free, network connection free, using my favorite full-featured video p…

youtube-dl is really cool, and supports loads of sites as well as just youtube.

VLC can also play youtube URLs directly, although buffering can be annoying.

There's also a Python package called "whitey" which provides an ncurses interface for searching youtube, and sending videos to e.g. mplayer or youtube-dl.

If you want to "subscribe" without needing an account, every youtube channel provides an RSS feed (look in the of the page source).

Re: Show HN: Tube – Minimalist YouTube

#46

Post by drivers99 »

I'm seeing a permanent back arrow overlapping the video itself. Don't cover up the screen.

At the end of the video, it still shows recommendations. Do you have any control over that? Can you set it to not show recommendations?

It is missing comments. I can see why you would choose that, but I'd rather have comments (something I also miss when I watch YouTube on a Roku) and still not have recommendations because they lead to watching too many videos.

Re: Show HN: Tube – Minimalist YouTube

#47

Post by doomrobo »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #25

For some time I've been tinkering with a script which manages my own fine-grained youtube subscription preferences, periodically scrapes various pages for metadata, and then as necessary extracts videos by using the youtube-dl utility. The end result is a directory on my machine which always has a few interesting videos to watch, ad-free, tracking-free, network connection free, using my favorite full-featured video p…

Not sure how much you'd benefit from it, given that you've already got a good setup, but I just made a website called HookRSSTube[0] that essentially proxies YouTube RSS feeds and replaces the video playback with HookTube[1] instead.

I'd love to know if you have any comments or suggestions.

[0] https://hookrsstube.com

[1] https://hooktube.com

Re: Show HN: Tube – Minimalist YouTube

#49

Post by krrrh »

Hijacking this thread to share other approaches to YouTube without YouTube. This site takes a YouTube URL, extracts the audio and adds a link to your personal podcast feed on huffduffer. It’s great for loading a bunch of interviews, lectures, and other things that don’t require the video into your podcast player.

https://snarfed.org/2015-03-07_huffduff-video

Re: Show HN: Tube – Minimalist YouTube

#50

Post by seba_dos1 »

goda90 wrote: post #44
RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #25

For some time I've been tinkering with a script which manages my own fine-grained youtube subscription preferences, periodically scrapes various pages for metadata, and then as necessary extracts videos by using the youtube-dl utility. The end result is a directory on my machine which always has a few interesting videos to watch, ad-free, tracking-free, network connection free, using my favorite full-featured video p…

How well does youtube-dl deal with video playback being restricted to play only from youtube.com? For instance this Tube site can't really play most music videos.

Well.
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