FlowTube - Alternative YouTube Player (1.05)-[11/09/2010]

[sulpherdragon]

FlowTube 1.01

Updated 21/08/2009

FlowTube is a plugin that embeds Flowplayer into YouTube.

Features:
Toggle Autoplay: It’s now your choice if a video plays when the page loads or not.
Toggle Buffering: If you choose not to Autoplay videos, you can have them buffer in the background.
Better Buffering Prediction: Flowplayer buffers your video and plays it when it thinks you will be able to play the video without stuttering caused by bad internet connections.
HQ/HD: Updated- Not only can FlowTube play HD and HQ videos, it will force a low quality video to play as a HQ video. You may not get an improvement, it all depends on googles sampling methods, However you may notice the video takes longer to load, as with a HQ video. I hope the previous HD problem is fixed now, but if there are any bugs let me know.
No Adverts: Yay, you can watch in peace without those annoying adverts that pop up in the middle of your videos. Only a small Flowplayer watermark appears in the top right of Fullscreen mode.
No Annotations: Yay again, you don’t have get sick at the ugly annotations put up by some ignorant YouTube uploaders.
Looping: You can choose to loop the video, can always be used if you want to loop music videos.
Cookies: Settings are saved in a cookie, so it remembers your preferences.
On/Off Toggle: If for any reason, you can revert to the original YouTube player by simply toggling the Flowplayer button on the YouTube sidebar, Then hitting refresh. All this is done without turning off the plugin.
Compatability: Should work with all other YouTube scripts. Edit: there is a small problem with my YouTubeAutoResize script and this. Will fix ASAP.
Aesthetics: Not only is Flowplayer a nice looking player, the FlowTube control panel fits with the YouTube theme. Buttons that are activated are intuitively highlighted yellow.

Notes:
There are few tiny problems here and there, but they are mostly rare. For example, time markers in the comments (With formats such as 2:32 and 0:28, you know the ones) don’t work. If there are any problems let me know. In the future versions I plan to make the interface more intuitive. Some Actions do not take effect until the page is refreshed; these include embedding Flowplayer and changing to or from HD. You can use the handy Refresh Page button.
Some sections of the code are borrowed from other websites and converted for use in IE, such as YouTube Alternative Player, all respect goes to those dev's without whom, this may be difficult to impossible to implement.
I don’t know why anyone would want a button version of this plugin, but I’m supplying one anyway.
I've grown fond of the black edges on Flowplayer, I might release a CSS theme to modify all of YouTube to fit the Flowplayer theme.


Download FlowTube Auto-Exec 1.01
Download FlowTube Button 1.01
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AutoInstall FlowTube Auto-Exec 1.01
AutoInstall FlowTube Button 1.01

[AXEMAN]

Hello can this be saved to puter with out running it. FlowTube (Auto-Exec).aba . Thank you

[kudos]

Sulpher Dragon, I have installed the script on the current versions of both Avant and Orca but I am unable to get it to work.

Steps: Imported the .aba then restarted the browser. I found some short videos on YouTube then I hit the add-on button icon. The layout changes as per your screenshot, the player shows the loading spinning circle but it never loads.

I have tried it on a couple of PC's running XP - any suggestions?

[sulpherdragon]

Hello can this be saved to puter with out running it. FlowTube (Auto-Exec).aba . Thank you

Yes, Ill add links, but you can just click the attachments.

The layout changes as per your screenshot, the player shows the loading spinning circle but it never loads.

Yes, Ive mentioned the HD/HQ problem in my post, I'll edit it to make it more clear. Unfortunately when inserting the player, it needs to point at the right file, the Standard Definition, High Quality, or High Definition streams are all different files.
Using javascript alone, it doesn't seem like there is an easy was to automatically detect which streams are available. Your problem is pretty simple, Your trying to run a HD or HQ stream on a video file that doesn't have a HD or HQ option. Uncheck HD on the FlowTube control panel on the right of the video.

Whenever i get time, i will look through the YouTube API to see if there are any handy ways to pull out the available qualities, so the end user doesn't have to do muck about.

Also, this is not tested in Orca at all.

[kudos]

Got it - thanks! I didn't read your post correctly and assumed that it would automatically go to the version that I was viewing with the YouTube player. Great work!

[sulpherdragon]

Ok, ive made an updated version, hopefully fixed that HD problem your having kudos.
Now; if you have HD on, it will try to play the highest possible Quality, when its off, it will always play on standard quality.
Version is updated to 1.01

[xGrind]

Not work in Orca?

[kudos]

Working well for me in Orca and Avant (v1.01). Thanks Sulphur Dragon.

One request: can the button become a toggle to switch back to the standard YouTube player? Currently another press brings up a duplicate set of buttons.

[xGrind]

Here is only loading. The video does not open.

[sulpherdragon]

Working well for me in Orca and Avant (v1.01). Thanks Sulphur Dragon.
One request: can the button become a toggle to switch back to the standard YouTube player? Currently another press brings up a duplicate set of buttons.

I've tested this in Orca and it does not work as intended. For me the buttons don't even do anything, the player still plays however. I only get duplicate buttons in Orca too (uploaded a pic to show).
There is a reason I didn't have the buttons as toggle buttons. The settings are applied to the next video you open, the refresh button is there incase you want to modify the current page you on. If you wanted to change to use Flowplayer and then turn it to HD you would have to load the page twice, once to select Flowplayer and again after you select HD. However if enough people ask for the toggle functionality, I can do that and remove the Refresh Page button.

Here is only loading. The video does not open.

If your trying it in Orca then its most likely its not supported. If your trying it in Avant then you most likely have a version of IE that is incompatable, upgrade to IE8.
If the problem is neither of these, then you need to give more information or we cant really help.

[sulpherdragon]

FlowTube 1.02

Updated 7/10/2009

Previous versions linked to the MP4 files, they now point to smaller FLV's, as a result videos load faster.
Improved Quality Parsing, FlowTube now discovers all the available Video Qualities and presents them on the control panel.
Qualities 5 through 1 allow you to choose your prefferred quality, the larger the number, the higher the quality.


Download FlowTube Auto-Exec 1.02
Download FlowTube Button 1.02

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AutoInstall FlowTube Auto-Exec 1.02
AutoInstall FlowTube Button 1.02

[jasarthur]

If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

--George Harrison

I'm actually tired of tubes on the internet.

[sulpherdragon]

FlowTube 1.03

Updated 19/10/2009

I've done a little research. From what I understand of FlowPlayers terms and conditions, its ok to remove the FlowPlayer branding as long as you give recognition that your code is based off there's. I've removed the branding (Nothing against FlowPlayer, just because its in the way of my view and the whole point of a new YouTube player is to remove annoying annotations and adverts). As a result, I've uploaded the debranded flash files to a new server and updated the links in the plugins. The flash file size has been reduced since the watermark was removed. Not much else.

Updated Features:
No FlowPlayer Branding
Reduced flash file size


Download FlowTube Auto-Exec 1.03
Download FlowTube Button 1.03
-----------------------------------------
AutoInstall FlowTube Auto-Exec 1.03
AutoInstall FlowTube Button 1.03

[sulpherdragon]

FlowTube 1.04

Updated 24/10/2009


YouTube updated the site layout and some changed variables broke the code in FlowTube.
FlowTube now works again.
The Autoplay option is now turned on by default.


Download FlowTube Auto-Exec 1.04
Download FlowTube Button 1.04
-----------------------------------------
AutoInstall FlowTube Auto-Exec 1.04
AutoInstall FlowTube Button 1.04

[kudos]

Download FlowTube Auto-Exec 1.04
Download FlowTube Button 1.04

FYI - both files are identical.

[sulpherdragon]

FYI - both files are identical.

Thanks Kudos, Fixed.

[Musaad]

Sorry kudos if i asked one last question for real !

It's about The youtube " download as MP4 " thing , it works and downloads videos as .MP4 file
But sometimes the same button downloads as a .FLV file ,
Then after I cancle the ( where to save message) I click the same " download as MP4 " button agin untill I see save as .MP4 file.
Some of those videos at youtube allways shows as .FLV no matter how many times I click on that " download as MP4

Anything that i can do to fix ?


Thanks agin for your help


Peace

[kudos]

Musaad, I have not used the addon much so I have moved your post to the appropriate thread where you may be able to get a reply from the addon author, sulpherdragon.

[sulpherdragon]

It's about The youtube " download as MP4 " thing , it works and downloads videos as .MP4 file
But sometimes the same button downloads as a .FLV file ,
Then after I cancle the ( where to save message) I click the same " download as MP4 " button agin untill I see save as .MP4 file.
Some of those videos at youtube allways shows as .FLV no matter how many times I click on that " download as MP4

Hi Musaad,

I didnt write the code that retrieves the MP4 file, I just included it in a nice little package for Avant with pretty buttons. Try downloading an older version of the plugin: From what I understand of the authors original comments, right clicking and selecting "Save Target As..." is supposed to force the file to download as an MP4. He acknowledged there was an issue here.
You wont be able to do this in the current version because of the way the buttons are formatted.
If your really stuck you could probably get some file conversion software.

If you can give me a link to a video that never converts to an MP4 I might be able to examine the problem better.
Hope this helps.

[sulpherdragon]

FlowTube 1.05

Updated 11/09/2010

So for a while I was content with the new YouTube player. Until I got StarCraft 2 and wanted to watch a ton of replays on YouTube. They were split into 10 minute segments and between each one I was forced to watch the same retarded advert over and over. So I updated FlowTube to work with modern YouTube. Oh, and I'm using Orca now, so right now this wont work on Avant properly.

Ive also found a CSS script to change the colour of YouTube to a darker gray.
http://userstyles.org/styles/27179
Its turned off by default because I'm not sure everyone will like it. To turn it on. edit the plugin and change the first variable DarkenPages=false; to DarkenPages=true;

Notice, if you've downloaded this soon after it was released, please update it. There was a hosting problem so I moved the swf to a private host.


Download FlowTube Auto-Exec 1.05
Download FlowTube Button 1.05
-----------------------------------------
AutoInstall FlowTube Auto-Exec 1.05
AutoInstall FlowTube Button 1.05