Unique YouTube Skin is another powerful YouTube userscript
If you hang out on YouTube a lot you have probably already explored browser add-ons and userscripts that improve your experience while you are on the site. I know that we have reviewed more than a dozen or so in the past, and while that is certainly giving anyone a great selection of extensions to choose from, there is always one lurking around the corner that may be better than the last.
I recently reviewed a script that resizes the frame of the player on YouTube to fit the browser window perfectly. No annoying sidebar on the right or other page elements on top or below the video.
Alex mentioned Unique YouTube Skin as an alternative to the script linked above in an email. It basically does what the other script does but adds a ton of options and features on top of that. Below is a screenshot of the script in action. Note that it displays the videos this way automatically.
Compatibility:
The script is compatible with Firefox if Greasemonkey or a comparable script is installed, with Google Chrome if Tampermonkey is installed, and with the Opera web browser if Violantmonkey is installed.
Review
The first thing that you will notice after installation is that it loads all videos so that they match the browser window size. What it does as well is switch to a higher video quality automatically depending on the resolution of the browser window. So, if you are watching the video in full screen on a 1920x1080 screen you will notice that it will pick the highest available quality automatically to make the experience more enjoyable.
The sidebar just like all other page elements are hidden by default. You can use the scroll wheel of your mouse or tap on the x-key on the keyboard to display it on the left of the screen. Moving the mouse to the right screen border or tapping on the z-key hides it again.
The c-key should open the settings but that did not work on my system. I was able to open the settings by displaying the sidebar first using the mouse-wheel, and clicking on the gears icon on top there to do so.
Here is a list of features that you can enable or disable:
- Auto Dim Sidebar - Dims the sidebar.
- Auto Hide Sidebar - Hides the sidebar when you load videos.
- Cool Black Theme - This disables the default black theme and uses YouTube's regular theme instead to display the sidebar.
- Reverse layout - Moves the sidebar to the right instead.
- Auto expand description - Displays the full description right away.
- Expand description on hover - Displays the full description when you move the mouse over it.
- Collapse comments.
- Collapse related videos.
- YouTube logo to subscriptions - A click on the logo loads the subscriptions page.
- Search bar always visible.
- Hide scrollbar.
- Hide video responses.
- Hide comments.
- Hide related videos.
- Hide logo and search bar.
- Hide like bar and view count.
- Loop always on.
- Bypass age verification.
- Show video size and buffer speed.
- Auto hide player controls.
- Hide annotations.
- Auto Play / Buffer - On Focus, On or Off.
- Auto HD - select resolution.
As you can see, it has a lot to offer. When you make changes to the settings the page you are on gets reloaded automatically right away.
Tips
- I suggest you open the settings right away and play around with the preferences before you start watching videos. Since the page is reloaded automatically whenever you save a change, it can become frustrating if this happens half-way through a video.
- You may want to display the sidebar on the right as it may feel more natural.
Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?
Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.
Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.
huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.
yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.
Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up
Solution:
Open VLC player.
On Menu Bar:
Tools
Preferences
(at bottom – left side)
Show settings — ALL
Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”
Save
Exit
Re-open – done.
Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts
Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc
Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.
@Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.
Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?
I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…
/thanks
/j
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.
No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure
Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me
I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).
Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?