Simple scripts to stream videos to VLC and CorePlayer

I did some quick testing in Leopard for the latest ViewTube.

In safari (4.0.1) lowend flv is best performer, but fake fullscreen does not work, only shows the plugin at the same resolution and screen size as when it is embedded. In Omniweb newest viewtube doesn't work at all, nor does it work in Camino with geekmonkey, thought it did before. I suspect some of these issues are Tiger and quicktime plugin related.

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All is working well for me in Safari. Same thing for Camino 2.1 with the exception of Youtube, where script doesn't load at all (it seems to be a Camino problem, since I have no problems using ViewTube as a bookmarklet in any other browser). It works in Omniweb, but with the same problems you are seeing in Safari 4 (except if I use html5).

Vimeo works but only HD mp4, which my ibook can't handle streaming unless I am using coreplayer.

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The same happens in Leopard and in Lion.

Many thanks to Sebaro and B-G for keeping the PowerPC youtube browsing within a browser alive in 2012, quite a feat if you stop and think about it!

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I did nothing, Sebaro did all the hard work.

Two more tricks.

1) In the first page of this thread I posted a [not working] script to launch CorePlayer from ClickToPlugin/Quicktime. Well, it turns out this is much easier than what I thought. Even if I've been using ClickToPlugin for ages, I only recently noticed that the elements in the source selector are right-clickable. If, for example, I want to launch a 720p video in CorePlayer, I only have to right click on the 720p item in the source selector, copy the link, and then paste it in CP (using the script in the first post).
I'm gonna edit the post in the first page.

2) This may be useful for TenFourFox users who don't want to mess around with applescript and Spark. Open With is a Firefox (and SeaMonkey) extension that allows you to open the current web page (or a link) in another browser:
http://www.darktrojan.net/software/addons/openwith/
The cool thing is the applications it works with don't have to necessarily be browsers. For example, access Open With properties and add Mactubes to the list of applications appearing in the menu. Now visit a youtube page or right-click on a youtube link, and you will be able to launch the video in Mactubes. Apart from MT I tried it with VLC and Quicktime. For QT you will have to use links to the actual video files (in this thread we have seen several methods to get them). For VLC remember that if you try to open a youtube video from the page URL, the player will open it at the highest available resolution by default. Be careful if your computer doesn't like HD videos.
This method doesn't work with CorePlayer.

Small update.
I just found it is possible to watch fullscreen videos in ViewTube (or with HTML5 players). Download HotBox:
http://briankendall.net/hotBox/index.htm
Even if not perfect (once the video is zoomed in mouse buttons will not work) it should do the job (and it should work in Tiger too).

New scripts, inspired by and based on this old post by PPC Luddite:
http://ppcluddite.blogspot.it/2011/05/hd-on-old-mac-with-mplayer.html
We are going to use applescript to launch MPlayer from the shell.
To use these scripts extract the MPlayer binaries as suggested in the post above. I'm assuming you are placing them in your applications folder, if not the scripts are so simple it won't be difficult for you to change the path.

The first script opens a file from your hard disk.

-- Open video in MPlayer
tell application "Finder"
set sel to the selection as text
set video_name to POSIX path of sel
end tell
set player to "/Applications/mplayer -framedrop "
set MPvideo to player & quoted form of video_name
do shell script MPvideo

Copy and paste in Script Editor, then save. Copy the resulting file in /Users/_YOURUSERNAME_/Library/Scripts, then enable the script menu using Utility AppleScript. Select a video file on your hard disk, then launch MPlayer using the script menu. You could also create a contextual menu item for the Finder using Automator, see:
http://faqintosh.com/risorse/en/guides/as/guide/findermenu/
Please notice that:

1) The line set player to "/Applications/mplayer -framedrop " is particularly important. This is where the path to your MPlayer binary file is. This is also where you pass parameters to the player. See the PPC Luddite post linked above, or http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.txt
For example if you want to play HD videos the script may look like this:

-- Open video in MPlayer
tell application "Finder"
set sel to the selection as text
set video_name to POSIX path of sel
end tell
set player to "/Applications/mplayer -framedrop -lavdopts skiploopfilter=all:skipframe=nonref "
set MPvideo to player & quoted form of video_name
do shell script MPvideo

Modify the parameters according to your needs, or maybe save two or more versions of the script to open files at different resolutions.

2) The parameter -really-quiet is not needed because the script launches MPlayer without opening a Terminal window.


The next script streams a file from the net to MPlayer. To use it you have to copy the actual video URL in the clipboard. In my not so comprehensive tests I used Tenfourfox + Videodownloadhelper. I'm also using Spark (see the first post in this thread) to invoke the script.

--Net to MPlayer
set video_name to the clipboard as text
set player to "/Applications/mplayer -framedrop -cache 10000 -cache-min 10 "
set MPvideo to player & quoted form of video_name
do shell script MPvideo

Now, I must say that I'm having a few problems using Mplayer to stream videos from the web. MP4 files can sometimes begin to stutter. flv files take a while to load, or don't play at all. This seems to be a player issue, since I see the same behaviour if I launch MPlayer manually from the Terminal. (Edit 17/9/2012: the lagging mp4 problem seems to be solved by using a larger cache)

Let me know how all this works for you.

Ok, I think that the lagging problem with streaming mp4 files is a caching issue. MPlayer seems to default to a 320 kB cache. I did some quick testing adding the parameters -cache 10000 -cache-min 10 , and this seems to solve the problem. We now have a 10 MB cache, filled to 10% before the video starts playing (the downside is that now it takes a second before Mplayer shows up at launch). I edited the Net to Mplayer script in my previous post.
I don't see any noticeable difference using a larger cache to open files already on my hard disk.

Dan, yesterday I tried to add a comment in your blog to bring these scripts to your attention and to compliment you for your good work, but Blogger didn't let me post. Glad you found this thread here on MacRumors.

The Youtube in VLC script has not worked since the latest Youtube changes a few weeks ago. I found a patch for the youtube.lua file in Videolan forums. Download the attached file, unzip it and put it in /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/share/lua/playlist (right click VLC icon and choose show package content to access the Contents folder). You should now be able to open Youtube in VLC again.


EDIT 20/12/2012: Youtube update. See message 61

While QuickTime is not as efficient as VLC, MPlayer or CorePlayer, it can still open things the others can't (for example large animated GIFs). So, almost a year late, here is the QT from clipboard script:

QuickTime from clipboard

set myurl to the clipboard as text
tell application "QuickTime Player"
activate
getURL myurl
end tell

It works in the same way the CorePlayer and MPlayer script do. Copy the link to a file into the clipboard then launch the script.

New script to open YouTube videos in MacTubes. Visit a Youtube page then launch the script. If it doesn't work properly try to change the delays.

Launch MacTubes

delay 0.5
tell application "System Events"
keystroke "l" using command down
delay 0.5
keystroke "c" using command down
end tell
delay 0.5
set mypath to the clipboard
set player to "open -a MacTubes "
set MTvideo to player & the quoted form of mypath
do shell script MTvideo

Youtube update. If you are using an older release of VLC and you still want to use the youtube in VLC script, you'll have to copy and paste the youtube.luac script from version 2.0.5 into the appropriate folder of your player (see message 58 for instructions).

I attached a copy of the required file

This is the NetToMPlayer script saved as an application bundle. It will allow you to open video URLs in MPlayer using the Firefox add-on Open With.
See this post from PPC Luddite.
At the moment it should be able to open only http URLs. If you want to open other URL schemes (rtsp, for example) it shoud be possible to do so by editing the info.plist file inside the application package. If you want to change the parameters passed to MPlayer, just open and edit this application in Script Editor. Please notice that I'm assuming your MPlayer binaries are in the Applications folder.

[EDIT 21-6-2013]
See the post below for a much better version of this application

New MPlayer scripts for Linux and OS X

I recently installed Debian Wheezy + LXDE on my eMac, and yesterday I was finally able to get 3d hardware acceleration working. So I decided to install MPlayer2 and try to write some new scripts for it. Once again we want to launch MPlayer from the shell. We are in Linux this time, so no AppleScript (see post 55 for OS X scripts, and the end of this post for some new app). Luckily it wasn't as difficult as i was expecting.
Once again, this is based on the excellent work of the PPC Luddite. See his posts here, and here.

For this to work you will need to install MPlayer (as I said I went for MPlayer2) and xclip. This is very easy thanks to Synaptic. Xclip is an utility that will let you paste to/from the terminal from/to the clipboard.
We have four scripts. Two of them to open videos from the net, the other two to open files on your hard disk. Copy them to a text editor and save them to your folder of choice. Then, and this is very important, make your scripts executable or they won't work at all. The easiest way to do this is right clicking on them,
selecting properties, going to the permissions pane and selecting "Make executable" (or something like that, on my system I'm not using English as system default, so there may be a few differences)


Here are the first two scripts:


netToMplayer

#!/bin/bash
cd __PATH TO YOUR SCRIPTS FOLDER__
video=$(xclip -o)
(nohup mplayer -really-quiet -framedrop -cache 10000 -cache-min 10 "$video" >/dev/null &) && exit


netToMplayerHD

#!/bin/bash
cd __PATH TO YOUR SCRIPTS FOLDER__
video=$(xclip -o)
(nohup mplayer -really-quiet -framedrop -lavdopts skiploopfilter=all:skipframe=nonref -cache 10000 -cache-min 10 "$video" >/dev/null &) && exit

Remember, of course, to add the path to your scripts folder. The first one is for standard definition videos, the second one for HD (it will slightly reduce the quality, see the Luddite's posts linked above for reference, or, even better the MPlayer manual).
These two scripts require you to copy to the clipboard the link to a video file embedded in a webpage. If you have read this thread or the Luddite's blog you already know that there are several ways to do this. An extremely easy one is using the UnPlug add-on for FireFox/TenFourFox/IceWeasel. Once you have copied the link to the clipboard, you can launch the scripts by double clicking them or, much better, with a keyboard shortcut. To create keyboard shortcuts in LXDE login as root and open /root/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml in a text editor. Be very careful, this file configures many different features of your window manager, you don't want to damage it (in fact it would be wise to back it up before editing). Search for the line: " <!-- Keybindings for running applications -->", then add your shortcuts, using the following lines as a model:

<!-- Keybindings for running applications -->
<keybind key="W-S-m">
<action name="Execute">
<command>/home/mic/Script/netToMPlayer</command>
</action>
</keybind>
<keybind key="W-S-h">
<action name="Execute">
<command>/home/mic/Script/netToMplayerHD</command>
</action>
</keybind>

Let's try to understand what's happening here. I installed the scripts in /home/mic/Script/ , and I chose command-shift-m (i.e. W-S-m) to launch netToMPlayer and command-shift-h (i.e. W-S-h) to launch netToMPlayerHD. See this link and this link for further reference.
Save your lxde-rc.xml file, then open the terminal and launch this command:

openbox-lxde --reconfigure

Done! The scripts are ready to be used (did you remember to make them executable?).

Here are the other two:


launchMPlayer

#!/bin/bash
mplayer -really-quiet -framedrop -cache 10000 -cache-min 10 "$1"

launchMPlayerHD

#!/bin/bash
mplayer -framedrop -lavdopts skiploopfilter=all:skipframe=nonref -really-quiet -cache 10000 -cache-min 10 "$1"

As i said, these are to launch video files already on your hard disk. To make them work we need to create .desktop files for them, or, in other words, we have to promote them from simple scripts to applications. Go to /usr/share/applications, open your text editor and create two new files using the following as a model:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=launchMPlayer
Comment=MPlayer2 launcher
Exec=/home/mic/Script/launchMPlayer
Type=Application
Categories=AudioVideo


[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=launchMPlayerHD
Comment=MPlayer2 HD video launcher
Exec=/home/mic/Script/launchMPlayerHD
Type=Application
Categories=AudioVideo

Save as launchMPlayer.desktop and launchMPlayerHD.desktop . Please notice that if you want you can add an icon to your scripts, see the other files in the directory for reference (be careful not to damage them, I did and I had to reinstall one of my applications).
Now the scripts should work (once again, did you remember to make them executable?). If you open the audio and video section of your LXDE menu they should appear there. Right click on a video file and you should be able to open it in MPlayer. You should also be able to set up the scripts as default video players (right click on file --> properties), so that the next time you will just have to double click to open. It can't get easier than that!

There is one thing I would like to add. It's not as complicated as it may seem, it's actually easier done than said. In fact writing the original OS X scripts in AppleScript costed me much more work and effort. Sure, I'm a beginner with AppleScript, but when it comes to Linux I'm a complete, absolute noob!
Also, I'm a masochist! In fact when I saw that it's possible to launch a file in MPlayer by simply double clicking on it I decided that I had to get the same behavior in OS X. More AppleScript fun!
I attached the resulting scripts to this post. To be more precise they are applescripts saved as applications. Please notice that I'm assuming that MPlayer is in your Applications folder. This is likely not the case if you installed the player with MacPorts or TigerBrew. Open the applications with Applescript Editor and edit the path to your MPlayer binary as necessary.
NetToMPlayer is the new and much improved version of a similar application I wrote a few months ago (see post 62) and has to be used with TenFourFox and the Open With add-on as detailed by the Luddite in one of the posts linked above. LaunchMPlayer works in the same way as its Linux counterpart. Right click on a video file and open it with the app (please notice that I wasn't able to get all the files of a certain kind, for example mp4, to open with LaunchMPlayer; for some reason QuickTime takes over). MPlayer Assistant is NetToMPlayer merged with LaunchMPlayer. It opens both online and offline videos and it's useful if you want to use only one of the applications. All three have their HD counterparts, and all three launch MPlayer in a separate process. In other words they quit immediately after having invoked the video player, so they won't waste resources during playback (this means you have to be patient when you open online videos; it takes Mplayer a second or so to come up after the script has finished its work).

Have fun, and let me know if you find ways to improve these scripts.

MacinDan said:

[...] but bash scripting is deceptively easy.

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That's true. I expected to spend a lot of time on these scripts, instead it was a pretty easy job. And as I said I'm completely inexperienced in Linux, and even on OS X, while I'm not scared by the command line, I rarely open the Terminal. The key is in the enormous amount of help that a simple Google search can bring out. It's very easy to find Linux users who have done the same things you want to do or something very similar. Applescript on the other hand tends to be used for very specific tasks, so you have to dig deeper to find what you need. It's a really nice scripting language, though, extremely close to natural language. And considering it gives you control on both the user interface and the command line (thanks to the "do shell script" command) it is incredibly useful.

I resurrect this old thread to post a script to open NicePlayer from the clipboard, just in case someone might find it useful. NicePlayer is the only player (apart from QuickTime) that I know of on Leopard that can open https videos from the net.