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Comment by TheAceOfHearts | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I've stopped watching video directly on YouTube.

Instead, I [0]

    mpv "youtube_url" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://mpv.io/[1] https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

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mpv is fantastic. I recently decided to abandon MPlayerX when I found out about their incredibly dishonest malware bundling tactics[1] but was surprised at how few good media players there are for macOS, until I read about mpv.mpv took a little bit of getting used to since it doesn't offer a lot of useful stuff out of the box (automatically queuing files, subtitle downloads, etc) but since you can write quite powerful scripts for it that didn't remain a problem for long.
[1] https://blog.malwarebytes.com/puppum/2016/09/pup-friday-mpla...

If you're on macOS and looking for something with a nice GUI, check out IINA [0]. I saw it on HN [1] last week, and it looks very promising, although it's still an alpha. It's based on mpv.[0] https://lhc70000.github.io/iina/
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13337444

Iina is very promising. Keep in mind that it is still very early in development, but I really like the mindset of the developer and contributors - creating a macOS experience, not cross-platform that looks bad everywhere.MPlayerX was once upon a time also that, but its maintenance went vaporware a few years back, and the bundled crap finally killed it. So for a while now, I've been looking for a good player. Seems Iina is that player.

What is your process for browsing for content then, do you still browse the YouTube website?

small tempermonkey script replacing all YT embeds with custom URI + custom URI handler calling mpv "youtube_url" (or in my case extracting direct 720p stream https://xxxx.googlevideo.com/videoplayback... link and passing it to SMPlayer)This lets you watch every single YT clip using player of your choosing. Result is smooth video on 10 year old laptops(1.8GHz Core2) when Flash/browser buildin codecs are barely able to play 480p.

Would you consider publishing the script somewhere? I can't speak for others, but I would personally be inclined to use it as I'm looking for a YouTube client alternative.

https://github.com/raszpl/smplayer4YTits a mess, but ~works :)

Yeah, I don't usually watch that many YouTube videos. In addition, I only follow a handful of content creators, and they don't post that frequently, e.g. Primitive Technology.

What is your opinion on mpv vs vlc?

Not that it matters to everyone, but YouTube limits users of YouTube-dl to 720p resolution I believe. If you want 1080p or higher you have to do in-browser.


    $ youtube-dl --list-formats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeJLzyxZqbk | grep '[0-9]x[0-9]' webm       256x144    DASH video   93k , webm container, vp9, 24fps, video only, 1.09MiB webm       426x240    DASH video  110k , vp9, 24fps, video only, 1.00MiB 256x144    DASH video  113k , avc1.4d400c, 24fps, video only, 1.41MiB webm       640x360    DASH video  196k , vp9, 24fps, video only, 1.83MiB 426x240    DASH video  247k , avc1.4d4015, 24fps, video only, 3.08MiB 640x360    DASH video  263k , avc1.4d401e, 24fps, video only, 2.95MiB webm       854x480    DASH video  322k , vp9, 24fps, video only, 3.11MiB 854x480    DASH video  554k , avc1.4d401e, 24fps, video only, 6.30MiB webm       1280x720   DASH video  714k , vp9, 24fps, video only, 7.48MiB 1280x720   DASH video 1127k , avc1.4d401f, 24fps, video only, 12.92MiB webm       1920x1080  DASH video 1579k , vp9, 24fps, video only, 17.86MiB 1920x1080  DASH video 2304k , avc1.640028, 24fps, video only, 27.09MiB 176x144    small , mp4v.20.3,  mp4a.40.2@ 24k 320x180    small , mp4v.20.3,  mp4a.40.2 640x360    medium , avc1.42001E,  mp4a.40.2@ 96k webm       640x360    medium , vp8.0,  vorbis@128k 1280x720   hd720 , avc1.64001F,  mp4a.40.2@192k (best)

Nope, youtube-dl is able to grab the DASH sources, which includes 4k, 1440p and 1080p. :) and audio sources can then be muxed by mpv on playback.

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