Watch Youtube videos using Sargasso RSS feed reader

There’s an updated version of Sargasso 2.08pre1 available here.

The main changes from 2.07 are improved formatting of ‘Google News’ feed.
It’s now possible to launch a Youtube video by clicking on a suitable feed link.

To be able to play Youtube videos !Python3 and !MPlayer must be ‘seen’ by the filer.
Get the latest MPlayer from here.

Python3 is available from PackMan if you have added the source https://packages.lessthan3.org.uk/pkg/testing.
The Youtube-dl python module also needs to be installed.

python3 -m pip install youtube-dl

If you already have youtube-dl installed upgrade to the latest version (2020.12.14),

python3 -m pip install --upgrade youtube-dl

To track new releases of youtube-dl add the feed https://pypi.org/rss/project/youtube-dl/releases.xml to Sargasso.

To be able to launch Youtube videos from Sargasso you’ll need to add a Youtube news feed for the Youtube user or channel.

To find a feed launch Otter browser or your favourite Javascript capable RISC OS browser.
Enter the URL https://m.youtube.com/?persist_app=1&app=m
Click on the search icon and enter e.g. Wi-fi Sheep.
Click on the found entry for Wi-Fi sheep. You should now see the Wi-Fi Sheep channel. Hover over it with your mouse. The Channel Id should display.

You can now add the news feed to Sargasso using the Channel ID.
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCyoGtuvngylmF2a20sj2cUA

Other channels may show the user instead of the Channel ID.
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=explainingcomputers

Once the channel/user feed has been fetched by Sargasso just click the Youtube link you want to watch.
The MPlayer splash screen will appear. After a few seconds the video should start playing.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the Sargasso update and instructions on getting Youtube working with it.

One thing I have noticed is that it does tend to select the highest available resolution and hence runs slowly.

Even if you are quick to cycle the resolutions it still leaves you with a video/sound syncing issue.

YTplay allows you to select a default Mplayer resolution to start off with.

Is this something that could be added?

To change the default video playback to 360p edit the !Sargasso.youtubedl obey file and change best to 17.
The next version should have it as an option.

Hi Chris

edit the !Sargasso.youtubedl obey file and change best to 17.

I changed it to 18, as per YTPlay, and it works well here with MPlayer 1.04 on my ARMX6.

Once again thanks for your help and look forward to the options ability.

Apologies if this is a diversion. If I should have started a different thread, please say and I’ll do so. However to a large extent I may be asking about some of the above!

My interest is in being able to fetch youtube items (i.e. use youtube-dl) and if possible BBC iPlayer ones (i.e. get_iplayer). I guess the second will be irrelevant here. But is is possible given some of the above software to now simply use youtube-dl on an ARMX6 and then play it using MPlayer? If so, some info on what from the above is needed, and how to set it up would be welcome.

I currently do this with Linux, but it would be good to do it with RO. And I’ve been meaning to do RO versions of some of the simple ROXapps I wrote to semi-automate some of the above and make DnD actions rather than typing into terminals.

(Ahem!) All I’d need then would be for the audio to go to a USB DAC as well 8-]

There’s an updated version os Sargasso (2.08pre2) available here.

The main changes in this version,

Now possible to set the default ‘Quality’ in Choices when playing Youtube videos.
Use ‘best’ (up to 720p) on Titanium, IGEPv5 and Rpi4(00) or 18 (up to 360p) for slower machines.
Linked with libcurl 7.74 and libssl 1.1.1i.

Thank you for the update, the new Choices… options are a nice addition. ;) Now if only I could find Leo White’s YouTube channel id.

Chris many thanks for all your hard work on this one. I have downloaded the latest python3.8 from packman but I do not seem to be able to install youtube-dl. I get the error message
“pip is configured with locations that require TLS/SSL, however the ssl module in Python is not available.”
Any ideas?

“pip is configured with locations that require TLS/SSL, however the ssl module in Python is not available.”

Some of the python modules have dependencies on shared libraries.

At a minimum make sure the following are installed using PackMan.

LibSSL
LibFFi6
LibBZ2-1.0
ZLib1g
LibLZMA5

Now possible to set the default ‘Quality’ in Choices

Hi Chris, Thanks for implementing the video quality setting, works ok on my ARMX6 and makes the video smoother iwhen set to 18.

Hopefully in the next couple of days the next ‘Pre’ version of Sargasso will have the ability to filter feeds so posts don’t appear based on certain criteria. :-)

At a minimum make sure the following are installed using PackMan

Thanks, youtube-dl sucessfully downloaded. Using Sargasso, and attempting to play a youtube video from Explaining Computers, the MPlayer splash screen appears for about 10 seconds bowing out leaving an empty Sargasso playlist window. Mplayer log is blank so no clues there. Has anyone else experienced this?

Hopefully in the next couple of days the next ‘Pre’ version of Sargasso will have the ability to filter feeds so posts don’t appear based on certain criteria. :-)

I can hardly wait! My excitement is palpable.

I already have my criteria!

There’s an updated version os Sargasso (2.08pre3) available here.

The main change in this version,

It now possible to exclude posts from feeds based on the author and/or title. It works globally so can be used on any feed. It’s only possible to add up to 4 exclusions at the moment.

As an example. If you added a feed that searched for the word ‘Sargasso’ you could exclude posts by particular author and also title regardless of author.

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/posts/search?q=Sargasso&submit=Go

It’s only possible to add up to 4 exclusions at the moment.

Is that an AND condition for the exclusion or an OR?
I’m presuming an AND

I’ve managed to get rid of one offender, but the “author” string seems to be very “specific” or literal!

Would just using the ID number be easier for “author”?

Would a wild-card approach make it more work-able?

But, thank you! At least he/she no longer appears!

Thanks!

We just now need those who continue to respond to such time-wasting posts to adopt the same stratagem, and the offender(s) will effectively be “frozen out”.

Authentic Steve, I think OR would be more logical – filter out him OR her OR the elephant in the room…

I think OR would be more logical

I’m not sure it works quite as some expected (John at least) when you consider he’s looking for a wildcard and also wondering whether the ID alone would be good for “author” when the latter brings in the difficulty of detecting the difference between 368 and 8368 unless you use the () and what is the ID anyway?
As in are you ID 539 or 439 and am I 1551 or 476?

Proper wild carding would likely require a working Regular Expression support. POSIX style probably best.

As for the elephant in the room – I know I’ve put on weight since restarting work but at home but really…

There’s an updated version os Sargasso (2.08pre3) available here.

In case anyone else uses Druck’s WindOpen module to automate updating of RSS etcetera, the addition of the new “Exclude” menu item opens that instead of updating the feed – so (obviously, in retrospect) the menu item number for WindOpen WO_MenuSelect will require incrementing to achieve the desired result!

Taken me a few days to work that one out and remember how my script worked!

Nice to know someone is using it John. I did consider making the command match names in addition to selection numbers so it would cope with new entries being inserted, but the presence of shortcut codes made it less than obvious what the string should be.

There’s an updated version of Sargasso 2.08pre4 available here.

Changes in this version,

Linked with libssl 1.1.1k
Iconbar menu appears in the correct place
Regular expressions can be used for the exclude criteria.

There’s an updated version of Sargasso 2.08pre5 available here.

Changes in this version.

Choices option to enable/disable display of the description in the main feed window. (defaults to off)
Choices option to change the font size of the main feed window (defaults to 18), Can be reduced to avoid wrapping of the feed name text.
Increased maximum simultaneous fetches to 9.

If you want to make John Williams very happy, could you please add support for dc:creator as an alternative to author ?

Because author is supposed to be an email address, not a “whatever you like” field.
Consequently, the way this forum does it is wrong and won’t pass validation: https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.riscosopen.org%2Fforum%2Fposts.rss
(the RSS feed is broken in other ways too)

Thanks!

Eash forum has a recent posts rss feed. So just add the feeds you are interested in.

http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/posts.rss
http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/10/posts.rss
http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/2/posts.rss
http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/8/posts.rss
http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/3/posts.rss
http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/4/posts.rss
http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/9/posts.rss
http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/posts.rss
http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/posts.rss

Latest version of Sargasso (2.08pre6) is here. The only change in this version is the exclude filter stopped working in certain circumstances.

Then use the exclude filter to ignore posts that you are not interested in by author or title.

Eash forum has a recent posts rss feed. So just add the feeds you are interested in.

This might be a good place to suggest that feeds listed in the choices Feeds file can be temporarily “commented-out” using a leading pipe and/or hash character. This would allow one to retain the RSS feed link data whilst temporarily suspending its collection.

At the moment it tries to load the data failing with a “URL using bad/illegal format or missing URL” error display.

Yes, I know we shouldn’t really be directly editing choices files, but it would be a half-way house towards a legitimate UI option to suspend a feed temporarily by getting Sargasso to respect some sort of “comment” marker!

This all seems very relevant to the current “Forum quality” thread as well!