gHacks technology news » youtube-tips http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:18:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Automatically Buffer Youtube Videos http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/06/automatically-buffer-youtube-videos/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/06/automatically-buffer-youtube-videos/#comments Sun, 06 Sep 2009 08:29:49 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=16058 youtubeMany Youtube users do not like the fact that Youtube videos start playing as soon as the video is opened. This objection has several reasons. The most prominent ones are that users with slow connections can experience pauses during playback as the video download speed is slower than the playback speed of the video. Another reason becomes apparent if users open multiple videos at once on Youtube. All of these videos start playing as soon as the page has loaded which is obviously not a good experience.

The Greasemonkey script Youtube Auto Buffer And Auto HD and Remove Ads offers a quick and unobtrusive solution to that problem and two additional ones.

Youtube videos will automatically buffer completely without playback. Users who want to do that manually need to press the pause button on each video so that the video is not played but the contents are buffered. The script automates that process.

The Greasemonkey script adds two additional features. The first will automatically load the HD version of the opened Youtube videos. That’s a feature that most Youtube scripts and add-ons provides. The second will remove those annoying ads that are displayed at the bottom of Youtube videos.

Some users reported that they got the script working not only in the Firefox web browser but also in Opera. Interested users can download it from the Userscripts website. Make sure to check out our download Youtube videos guide if you are interested in download videos from the video portal.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/09/06/automatically-buffer-youtube-videos/feed/ 24 Youtube Annotations http://www.ghacks.net/2008/06/05/youtube-annotations/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/06/05/youtube-annotations/#comments Thu, 05 Jun 2008 07:24:59 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=4866 Youtube has finally added a new feature to their website, it’s called Youtube Annotations and you can see it here in action. It’s basically subtitles for videos although they prefer to call it annotations to make it clear that they can be used for a broader purpose. Subtitles usually only provide a textual version of the voice acting in videos and to a lesser extent scene descriptions.

Youtube Annotations could be used to add information to the video. This is a great chance to add value to a video but poses the risk that many videos might be misused for advertisement.

Thankfully though it’s relatively easy to turn annotations off unfortunately though only on a per video basis. The Youtube video bar at the bottom of each video has a new item located in the right corner of the bar.

youtube annotations

If you click on that icon a new icon appears on top of it. That icon turns the annotations off and on. Probably only a matter of time until someone creates a Greasemonkey script for users who want to turn off annotations completely.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/06/05/youtube-annotations/feed/ 2 Download Mp3 from Youtube Videos http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/03/download-mp3-from-youtube-videos/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/03/download-mp3-from-youtube-videos/#comments Sat, 03 May 2008 07:57:42 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=3994 Several web services have been created to convert the audio of Youtube videos into mp3 files. Most of them however require the url of the video as input which means that the process requires some heavy copy and paste operations if several videos are to be converted. And then MP3 Getter. appeared on the scene. MP3 Getter is a German service that combines video search and mp3 download in one service.

Although the website is completely in German it should not be a problem for non-German speakers to navigate the website. The process is easy and clear. A search term is entered in the only search box on the main page of MP3 Getter. Youtube is then queried and the results are shown on the next page. Ten results are shown with preview images and names and a click on any of them loads the video in the foreground.

The video starts playing automatically and a click on the button MP3 downloaden starts the process to split the audio from the video. It takes a while and a save file dialog box is presented once the mp3 file has been created.

mp3 getter

MP3 Getter has the advantage over similar web services in two key areas. It provides a Youtube search which means that the user does not have to copy and paste the url of the video that he wants the audio from. The second is that the video is actually playing while the ripping is processed.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/03/download-mp3-from-youtube-videos/feed/ 11 Watch Restricted Youtube Videos in any Country http://www.ghacks.net/2008/04/18/watch-restricted-youtube-videos-in-any-country/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/04/18/watch-restricted-youtube-videos-in-any-country/#comments Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:33:54 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=3842 Some videos on Youtube are only available to users of a specific country, countries or region. Everyone else may not watch the video and receives a message stating that “This video is not available in your country.” Youtube is also restricting access to videos that have been flagged to contain (possible) inappropriate content and users have to login to verify that they are 18 or older. Once they are logged in they can watch the video without difficulties.

You will be delighted that there is a speedy url hack (thanks to the Google OS blog) that bypasses both restrictions. This means that country restrictions as well as age restrictions will be bypassed. The following video for example points to one that is only available to US-residents: Youtube Video. If you click on the link and do not have a US IP address then you will receive the message that the video is not available in your country. US-Residents who can watch most videos on Youtube will run into difficulties when they try to watch some BBC content for instance.

All that needs to be done to watch the video is to change the URL of the video slightly. The above example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9ciR9qR1dU would be changed to http://www.youtube.com/v/I9ciR9qR1dU to watch the video. This can be done with every video available at Youtube. So basically the watch? part is removed and the = after the v is replaced by a /.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/04/18/watch-restricted-youtube-videos-in-any-country/feed/ 7 Higher Quality Videos starting to appear on Youtube http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/03/higher-quality-videos-starting-to-appear-on-youtube/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/03/higher-quality-videos-starting-to-appear-on-youtube/#comments Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:22:12 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/03/higher-quality-videos-starting-to-appear-on-youtube/ When we read the announcement that higher quality videos would come to Youtube we were delighted that the video quality would finally see an upgrade. Apparently the conversion has started and some videos are already available in different quality versions. It still looks like Youtube is testing settings and stuff and that not everyone can access those higher quality videos yet.

You can also bet that it takes some time to convert the 140+ million videos hosted on the website. The default video resolution is 320×200 and the two new resolutions that are tested are 448×336 and 480×360. To test it you only need to append the parameters &fmt6 for 448×336 or &fmt18 for 480×360 video resolutions.

Not all videos are converted as of yet and videos that have not are displaying the loading screen all the time.

320×200 quality: [link]
youtube default quality

480×360 quality: [link]
youtube high quality

Firefox users can access a Greasemonkey script that changes the video resolution. [via Googlesystem]

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/03/higher-quality-videos-starting-to-appear-on-youtube/feed/ 1 Speed up Youtube Video Playback and Download http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/04/speed-up-youtube-video-playback-and-download/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/04/speed-up-youtube-video-playback-and-download/#comments Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:30:54 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/04/speed-up-youtube-video-playback-and-download/ Youtube Videos which are also used on sites like Myspace or embedded into blog posts sometimes take ages to load which results in freezes and stuttering which can only be solved by pausing the playback until the video is fully loaded. There is a possible way that would accelerate the download of the youtube video by up to five times. This is done by the free software Speedbit Video Accelerator which builds up five different connections to the video server to speed up the streaming of the video. This method does not help if you are already using the maximum bandwidth available of course.

speed up youtube videos

Each request for a youtube video is routed through the Speedbit servers which open five new connections to the video server offering the video which results in a speed increase which can be remarkable.

The service has to be running in the system tray while watching youtube videos and starts automatically whenever a new video is requested from youtube. I was not able to take a look at some of the program features that are shown at the developers website but the video acceleration is working fine.

youtube accelerate video

As you can see the technology is working in Firefox and Internet Explorer, unfortunately not in Opera. I found the software at the Connected Internet Blog.

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