[blog.git] / content / posts / youtube-adventures.md

---
title: "Adventures with YouTube"
date: 2020-08-02T05:40:09+05:30
lastmod: 2019-11-04T15:40:09+05:30
tags : [ "free-software", "YouTube", "privacy", "MPV", "NimCoon" ]
categories : [ "free-software", "privacy" ]
layout: post
type:  "post"
highlight: false
---

## Why?


I stopped using my Google account several years ago. This means that I can no
longer subscribe to YouTube channels directly in YouTube.

I have been playing YouTube links that I find directly using the [MPV](https://mpv.io) player,
which internally uses [youtube-dl](https://youtube-dl.org) to fetch the video.

![Y U No Use YouTube Website](/blog/youtube-yuno.png)

Not using the YouTube
website directly has several advantages. YouTube's revenue is based on the
number of advertisements you see on the website. So, the more time you spend on
YouTube the more money they earn. It is easy to get around the advertisements by
using ad-blockers, but the site itself is optimized for binge-watching with
features such as auto-play being turned on by default. If your objective is to
just watch one useful video and leave, YouTube's website doesn't make it easy.

## Playing YouTube videos on the desktop

Over the years, I experimented with several solutions for playing YouTube videos
without going to the YouTube website.

One of the oldest solutions in this category is SMTube + SMPlayer. SMPlayer is a
GUI player based on MPlayer. [SMTube](https://www.smtube.org/) is add-on for
[SMPlayer](http://www.smplayer.info/) that can fetch YouTube videos from a proxy
called [Tonvid](https://tonvid.com). On clicking on any of the videos in the
interface, it launches the video in SMPlayer. It can also be configured to use
other backends like MPV + youtube-dl (my personal favorite).

![SMTube](/blog/smtube.png)

There are two other YouTube proxies worth mentioning:
1. [HookTube](hooktube.com)
2. [Invidious](invidio.us)

HookTube is a closed-source project with some amount of advertising. I used this
till the better free software alternative Invidious was released. These proxies
work by downloading the video to the server first and then streaming the video
to the user. There is usually a noticeable lag in fetching the video unless it
has already been cached. Sometimes, the YouTube API key used might run out of
its daily allowed quota. This will be less of a problem if you self-host
Invidious.

[FreeTubeApp](https://freetubeapp.io) is an electron-based desktop app that
allows subscriptions. It fetches its search results using an Invidious backend
and subscriptions using RSS feeds. It is easy to import and export
subscriptions, since they are basically just RSS feeds.

![FreeTubeApp](https://freetubeapp.io/images/FreeTube1.png)

For a while, I also used a bash script called `ytview` from the
[Bash-Snippets](https://github.com/alexanderepstein/Bash-Snippets) project to
search and play YouTube videos from the commandline. However, over time I was
dissatisfied with the limitations of this script. I extended some of its
features, but writing bash is not fun. So, I ended up writing a commandline
YouTube player called [NimCoon](https://gitlab.com/njoseph/nimcoon). You can see
the list of supported features in the [project
page](https://gitlab.com/njoseph/nimcoon/-/blob/master/README.md#features). I
keep adding features to this project as and when I need them.

## RSS Feeds? 🤔

Once I exported and imported the list of subscriptions on my FreeTubeApp from
one machine to another, I realized that I might as well import the subscriptions
into my RSS feed reader. The feed reader I use is [Tiny Tiny
RSS](https://tt-rss.org/). It is self-hosted on my
[FreedomBox](https://freedombox.org). The file with the RSS feeds that  I
imported from FreeTubeApp was added as a separate category called "YouTube
Subscriptions" in TT-RSS.

TT-RSS was able to fetch the videos from my YouTube subscriptions. All I need
from the feed reader is just the video name and URL. However, TT-RSS decided to
embed the YouTube video into the page itself which my Firefox extension uMatrix
was happy to block. I ended up having pages that look like this:

![YouTube feeds displayed in Tiny Tiny RSS](/blog/youtube-tt-rss.png)

I needed a way of playing the video links from my feed reader in my preferred
player (MPV, of course). I found a useful Firefox extension for this purpose
called [ff2mpv](https://github.com/woodruffw/ff2mpv).

![ff2mpv extension](/blog/ff2mpv.png)

ff2mpv makes use of the "native messaging hosts" feature in Firefox that allows you to
invoke a system executable from Firefox. In this case, ff2mpv uses a [Python
script](https://github.com/woodruffw/ff2mpv/blob/master/ff2mpv.py#L12) to invoke
the MPV player with a YouTube URL.

A right-click option called "Play in MPV" is added to every hyperlink in
Firefox, which when clicked loads the video in MPV. So far, so good.

But I found myself trying to play [PeerTube](https://joinpeertube.org/#/) video
links that I find on the [Fediverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse)
the same way. Well, MPV + youtube-dl can still play PeerTube videos but it uses
the HTTP stream instead of the WebTorrent stream and doesn't always pick the
highest resolution available. Fortunately, both of these problems have already
been solved in NimCoon. All I had to do was to change the executable invoked by
ff2mpv's Python script from `mpv` to `nimcoon`.

Before:
```python
    args = ["mpv", "--no-terminal", "--", url]
```
After:
```python
    args = ["/home/joseph/.nimble/bin/nimcoon", url]
```

There isn't much else to do in the RSS feed reader and the browser. Any
improvements that I make to this setup will be in NimCoon.

## What else?

While I was on this journey, many people recommended that I use elfeed in emacs
for YouTube subscriptions and use MPV to play the videos. If I had taken that
route, maybe most of NimCoon would've been implemented in emacs Lisp instead of
the Nim language. Using a self-hosted RSS feed reader gives me the advantage of
being able to use it from multiple devices. Also, I was already using TT-RSS
well before I had heard of elfeed. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

If you're interested in finding out what other tools I use for reasons of
privacy and digital minimalism, please check out my [Privacy
Stack](https://njoseph.me/mediawiki/Privacy_Stack).

## Comments

Please post your comments on this [thread](https://social.masto.host/@njoseph/104617325372898963) on Mastodon.
Commit	Line	Data
2c707b05 JN	1	---
	2	title: "Adventures with YouTube"
	3	date: 2020-08-02T05:40:09+05:30
	4	lastmod: 2019-11-04T15:40:09+05:30
	5	tags : [ "free-software", "YouTube", "privacy", "MPV", "NimCoon" ]
	6	categories : [ "free-software", "privacy" ]
	7	layout: post
	8	type: "post"
	9	highlight: false
	10	---
	11
	12	## Why?
	13
	14
	15	I stopped using my Google account several years ago. This means that I can no
	16	longer subscribe to YouTube channels directly in YouTube.
	17
	18	I have been playing YouTube links that I find directly using the [MPV](https://mpv.io) player,
	19	which internally uses [youtube-dl](https://youtube-dl.org) to fetch the video.
	20
	21	![Y U No Use YouTube Website](/blog/youtube-yuno.png)
	22
	23	Not using the YouTube
	24	website directly has several advantages. YouTube's revenue is based on the
	25	number of advertisements you see on the website. So, the more time you spend on
	26	YouTube the more money they earn. It is easy to get around the advertisements by
	27	using ad-blockers, but the site itself is optimized for binge-watching with
	28	features such as auto-play being turned on by default. If your objective is to
	29	just watch one useful video and leave, YouTube's website doesn't make it easy.
	30
	31	## Playing YouTube videos on the desktop
	32
	33	Over the years, I experimented with several solutions for playing YouTube videos
	34	without going to the YouTube website.
	35
	36	One of the oldest solutions in this category is SMTube + SMPlayer. SMPlayer is a
	37	GUI player based on MPlayer. [SMTube](https://www.smtube.org/) is add-on for
	38	[SMPlayer](http://www.smplayer.info/) that can fetch YouTube videos from a proxy
	39	called [Tonvid](https://tonvid.com). On clicking on any of the videos in the
	40	interface, it launches the video in SMPlayer. It can also be configured to use
	41	other backends like MPV + youtube-dl (my personal favorite).
	42
	43	![SMTube](/blog/smtube.png)
	44
	45	There are two other YouTube proxies worth mentioning:
	46	1. [HookTube](hooktube.com)
	47	2. [Invidious](invidio.us)
	48
	49	HookTube is a closed-source project with some amount of advertising. I used this
	50	till the better free software alternative Invidious was released. These proxies
	51	work by downloading the video to the server first and then streaming the video
	52	to the user. There is usually a noticeable lag in fetching the video unless it
	53	has already been cached. Sometimes, the YouTube API key used might run out of
	54	its daily allowed quota. This will be less of a problem if you self-host
	55	Invidious.
	56
	57	[FreeTubeApp](https://freetubeapp.io) is an electron-based desktop app that
	58	allows subscriptions. It fetches its search results using an Invidious backend
	59	and subscriptions using RSS feeds. It is easy to import and export
	60	subscriptions, since they are basically just RSS feeds.
	61
	62	![FreeTubeApp](https://freetubeapp.io/images/FreeTube1.png)
	63
	64	For a while, I also used a bash script called `ytview` from the
65	[Bash-Snippets](https://github.com/alexanderepstein/Bash-Snippets) project to
66	search and play YouTube videos from the commandline. However, over time I was
67	dissatisfied with the limitations of this script. I extended some of its
68	features, but writing bash is not fun. So, I ended up writing a commandline
69	YouTube player called [NimCoon](https://gitlab.com/njoseph/nimcoon). You can see
70	the list of supported features in the [project
71	page](https://gitlab.com/njoseph/nimcoon/-/blob/master/README.md#features). I
72	keep adding features to this project as and when I need them.
73
74	## RSS Feeds? 🤔
75
76	Once I exported and imported the list of subscriptions on my FreeTubeApp from
77	one machine to another, I realized that I might as well import the subscriptions
78	into my RSS feed reader. The feed reader I use is [Tiny Tiny
79	RSS](https://tt-rss.org/). It is self-hosted on my
80	[FreedomBox](https://freedombox.org). The file with the RSS feeds that I
81	imported from FreeTubeApp was added as a separate category called "YouTube
82	Subscriptions" in TT-RSS.
83
84	TT-RSS was able to fetch the videos from my YouTube subscriptions. All I need
85	from the feed reader is just the video name and URL. However, TT-RSS decided to
86	embed the YouTube video into the page itself which my Firefox extension uMatrix
87	was happy to block. I ended up having pages that look like this:
88
89	![YouTube feeds displayed in Tiny Tiny RSS](/blog/youtube-tt-rss.png)
90
91	I needed a way of playing the video links from my feed reader in my preferred
92	player (MPV, of course). I found a useful Firefox extension for this purpose
93	called [ff2mpv](https://github.com/woodruffw/ff2mpv).
94
95	![ff2mpv extension](/blog/ff2mpv.png)
96
97	ff2mpv makes use of the "native messaging hosts" feature in Firefox that allows you to
98	invoke a system executable from Firefox. In this case, ff2mpv uses a [Python
99	script](https://github.com/woodruffw/ff2mpv/blob/master/ff2mpv.py#L12) to invoke
100	the MPV player with a YouTube URL.
101
102	A right-click option called "Play in MPV" is added to every hyperlink in
103	Firefox, which when clicked loads the video in MPV. So far, so good.
104
105	But I found myself trying to play [PeerTube](https://joinpeertube.org/#/) video
106	links that I find on the [Fediverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse)
107	the same way. Well, MPV + youtube-dl can still play PeerTube videos but it uses
108	the HTTP stream instead of the WebTorrent stream and doesn't always pick the
109	highest resolution available. Fortunately, both of these problems have already
110	been solved in NimCoon. All I had to do was to change the executable invoked by
111	ff2mpv's Python script from `mpv` to `nimcoon`.
112
113	Before:
114	```python
115	args = ["mpv", "--no-terminal", "--", url]
116	```
117	After:
118	```python
119	args = ["/home/joseph/.nimble/bin/nimcoon", url]
120	```
121
122	There isn't much else to do in the RSS feed reader and the browser. Any
123	improvements that I make to this setup will be in NimCoon.
124
125	## What else?
126
127	While I was on this journey, many people recommended that I use elfeed in emacs
128	for YouTube subscriptions and use MPV to play the videos. If I had taken that
129	route, maybe most of NimCoon would've been implemented in emacs Lisp instead of
130	the Nim language. Using a self-hosted RSS feed reader gives me the advantage of
131	being able to use it from multiple devices. Also, I was already using TT-RSS
132	well before I had heard of elfeed. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
133
134	If you're interested in finding out what other tools I use for reasons of
135	privacy and digital minimalism, please check out my [Privacy
136	Stack](https://njoseph.me/mediawiki/Privacy_Stack).
c0aeb4e8 JN	137
	138	## Comments
	139
	140	Please post your comments on this [thread](https://social.masto.host/@njoseph/104617325372898963) on Mastodon.