SheepTech » YouTube

YouTube Switches to 480p on Toggling Full Screen

Vincent — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 09:13:03 +0000

This is what I usually do on YouTube when I’m on a slow connection:

Click play, then immediately pause the video
When the video is done loading, full screen and play it smoothly
Until recently, this has changed. Step 3 would be “Get pissed when the video is automatically bumped from 360p to 480p. The loaded 360p is gone. Now wait for the 480p version to load, all over again!“

Are you experiencing the same? If yes, this is something you can do:

Go to your account settings (Click on username on top right > Account)
Select Playback Setup (left sidebar)
Select “I have a slow connection. Never play higher-quality video.”

Works well for me. I can now watch 360p videos in full screen without any interruption. If you’d like to watch the video in higher quality, you can manually bump it up to 480p.

Download Song from YouTube Video

Vincent — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:05:30 +0000

Love that song you just heard on YouTube? With sites like ListenToYouTube and VidToMp3, you can download the audio off a YouTube video with minimal effort.

The two mentioned sites are using the same script, so they work identically. All you have to do is to enter the YouTube video URL. The video will then be converted to an mp3 file playable on all mp3 capable music player.

Before downloading the file, you can first preview it to make sure you are downloading what you are expecting.

If none of these work for you, you can try Zamzar, which is slightly more troublesome. You will need to enter the YouTube video URL, select mp3 from the list of output format, and lastly enter your email address so that they will send you a download link when the file is ready.

I find Zamzar pretty slow compared to the two sites mentioned earlier, but it works perfectly nevertheless.

[Solution] YouTube 400 Bad Request: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE

Vincent — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:12:49 +0000

Have you ever see the following error message when you are trying to access YouTube using Firefox?

Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.
Cookie: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE

It used to happen to me. Then after a while, it’s gone, and now it’s back at a higher frequency. I have to clear the cookies every single day to do away with the error message.

After a bit of Googling, it turns out that there are quite a lot of other Firefox users with the same problem. If you are one of them, try the following steps to see if it helps:

Locate your Firefox profile folder (how?)
Delete cookies.sqlite and cookies.txt

It works well for me.

Show Time-stamped Breakdown of YouTube Video Scenes

Vincent — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:33:06 +0000

(Firefox Add-on): Just like torrent files, YouTube videos can get pretty nasty too. Judging from the quality of comments left by the YouTube community, you shouldn’t be surprised to spot some nothing-better-to-do YouTubers uploading fake videos with misleading titles (say, a video full of emoticons titled Pink Panther 2 Trailer: watch).

VideoSurf Videos at a Glance, a Firefox add-on, will dramatically reduce the chance of being tricked into watching a fake video. Instead of displaying screenshots for verification like Vertor, VideoSurf adds an interactive time-stamped storyboard-like summary under YouTube videos, YouTube search results, Google and Yahoo! search results.

The thumbnails, which are scenes from the video, clearly reveal the content of the video, eliminating the guessing game. You can choose to see thumbnails from the best scenes or from all scenes. You can also opt to filter thumbnails so that it will only show scenes that contain human faces.

Clicking on any of the thumbnail will skip the video automatically to the specific scene you have selected.

Key features of VideoSurf Videos at a Glance:

VideoSurf lets you see a breakdown of the most important scenes from the video
Skip to a particular moment by clicking on any of the thumbnails
View thumbnails from the best scenes or all scenes with or without human faces in it
Supports YouTube video page, YouTube homepage, YouTube search, Google search, Yahoo! search and FriendFeed
Make all HD-compatible YouTube videos play in high quality (or HD) by default (optional)

VideoSurf in action on Google search results:

Videosurf on Yahoo! search results:

[VideoSurf Videos at a Glance]

Further Customize YouTube Embed Player Color

Vincent — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:56:11 +0000

By default, YouTube offers 9 color schemes to colorize its video player for embedding. Although color customization of YouTube player is very flexible, since it can be manipulated using hex color codes, YouTube is not providing any easy way to do so for whatever reason.

There is no way else to get more creative with colors, unless you edit the hex color code in the embed code, or use a third party tool.

Using VTubeTools to customize YouTube player color

VTubeTools is a YouTube video customizer, providing options like autoplay, flexible resizing, coloring, border, allow/disallow full screen, loop, display related videos, high quality and custom player background.

Since a color palette is included, it makes life much easier. After selecting colors from the color palette, you can have a preview first before grabbing the new embed code.

A sample video player color that is not included in the default 9 color schemes offered by YouTube:

I made it autoplay, for the lulz

Do it manually, edit the hex color code in the embedding code

If the tool above is not working, you can opt to do it manually, by editing the hex color codes (highlighted in red below) in the embedding code. Just simply modify them to the color you desire. Use this hex code generator if you have no idea what hex codes are.

3a3a3a&color2=0x999999">3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344">

Make sure the # symbol is not included.

Bypass “This video is not available in your country”

Vincent — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:00:58 +0000

You might not notice this if you are staying in US, but some YouTube videos, especially official music videos, are restricted to viewers from the United States only. Whenever a viewer from outside US wants to view those videos, YouTube says “This video is not available in your country“.

The trick of replacing the YouTube video URL from www.youtube.com/watch?v=[video-ID] to www.youtube.com/v/[video-ID] will no longer work.

Using translators such as Google Translate and Babel Fish as proxy server will not work either, since they do not support flash. Proxy websites will probably not work as well, YouTube will show “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available” instead—but with one exception.

Workaround #1 – Using Hide My Ass!

Hide My Ass! works flawlessly in bypassing the YouTube region filter. As Hide My Ass! streams YouTube video using its own player, it will prevent the YouTube player from displaying the “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available” message. The server is located in US, therefore videos restricted to US viewers will play without a problem.

~~This is by far the only proxy website that will play country-restricted YouTube videos nicely and without any problem.~~

Update: More proxy websites that works..

Workaround #2 – Convert & Download Using Zamzar

Alternatively, you can use Zamzar to convert the YouTube video into any video format, then download and watch it locally. You might want to try other YouTube video downloaders too, but I have no luck so far.

Censorship? Discrimination? Muting? To hell with all that.

P.S. The workarounds works well at the time of writing.
P.P.S. They might not work for videos intended for audience in a specific non-US country.
P.P.P.S. Now I can watch Crank Dat Obama already

YouTube Provides Download Link, Somewhat

Vincent — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:22:57 +0000

As reported at ars technica, YouTube seems to be providing a download link at the bottom left of all videos on the ChangeDotGov channel.

There are a few possibilities. 1) YouTube is experimenting to allow its users to download videos off YouTube itself, 2) YouTube is just providing download links for Obama’s videos, either upon request or out of courtesy.

What say you? It doesn’t really matter anyway, as downloading YouTube videos is as easy as pie using third party tools.

YouTube Mutes Videos with Copyrighted Songs

Vincent — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:28:47 +0000

YouTube is trying hard enough to speed up its suicidal. First they have annoying search boxes on all embedded videos. No one liked it. They ignored.

For now, they decided to mute all videos that contain copyrighted audio track.

In another words, those funny homemade videos, screencasts, or just any other original that is using a copyrighted audio track would now be muted. Laugh all you want at the dull video that won’t make a sound.

Under all these muted videos, there will be a notice that reads:

This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled. More about copyright

See it for yourself. Some comments on videos that were muted already, contain NSFW languages, as expected:

Embed YouTube Videos in High Quality [&fmt=18]

Vincent — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:59:48 +0000

To watch a YouTube video in high quality on YouTube website itself, it is as easy as clicking the “watch in high quality” link, provided it’s available. Even when it is not available, you can use the &fmt=18 trick, which will work on most videos.

But how do you embed a YouTube video in high quality? You can do so by using the HQ Embed Code Generator. Just paste the YouTube video ID of the video you want to embed in high quality into the input field and click “Create Code“—an embed code of high quality video will be generated.

Low Quality

High Quality

Bookmark HQ Embed Code Generator, Open in Sidebar

Since the generator has no styling or whatever, it will open beautifully in Firefox sidebar. For future use, you can bookmark the generator and launch it in your Firefox sidebar without leaving YouTube website itself.

To do so, bookmark the generator, then right click on the bookmark, select “Properties“, then select “Load this bookmark in the sidebar“. The next time you open the bookmark, it will open neatly in the sidebar.

Prefer altering the embed code manually instead of using the generator?

To do it manually, you have to modify the embed code copied from YouTube.

1. Locate the YouTube URLs in the embed code, there are 2. Bolded in the below sample code:

http://www.youtube.com/v/7HPfAhA2FBU&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="345">

2. In each of them, add “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18” at the back of it. It’d look something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/v/7HPfAhA2FBU&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D18

3. Your embed code would then look something like this:

&ap=%2526fmt%3D18">http://www.youtube.com/v/7HPfAhA2FBU&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="345">



Fixmymovie: Enhance Your Crappy Video
Vincent — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 15:46:36 +0000
Handphone cameras, though produces low quality videos most of the time, is one of the most frequently used device to record an unexpected event. Almost everyone carries their phone around, but not an expensive camcorder that will capture DVD quality videos.
 
 With Fixmymovie, there is no need to settle with those handphone-camera-quality anymore. It will not turn your crappy video into DVD quality, but it will make your unwatchable video to a more watchable one—by brightening your dark video, sharpen your blurry video and make your video less jerky.
Example
 The video on the left below is the original video uploaded on YouTube, while the video on the right is after the fix. The original is too dark to see a single thing, but after the fix, you would be able to see someone playing a guitar.

 Click on image to watch and compare
After fixing the video, you can either push it to YouTube or download it. For a fee of $2, you can download the fixed video in four formats, which are Windows media, iPod video, flash video and original movie with the “fixmymovie” logo watermark removed.
Not all videos will look better after being fixed though, some would even look unnatural instead.
©2011 SheepTech

Fixmymovie: Enhance Your Crappy Video