RO5.29 and YTPlay

Since upgrading the OS from 5.28 (stable) to a recent nightly beta (5.29 04-Nov-21) I’ve noticed a marked deterioration in the performance of YTPlay. Videos that used to play smoothly at 720p with infrequent dropped frames are now virtually unwatchable at 360p due to extreme jerkiness. Nothing else has changed in my system (a standard Pi4 with 4GB of RAM). Has anyone else had problems?

It looks like Youtube have changed something a few weeks ago that affects download speeds (restricted to about 44KiB/s) using youtube-dl. Youtube-dl hasn’t been updated for a while.
There is a fork of youtube-dl called yt_dlp that is more up to date that supposedly doesn’t suffer from the slow download speed. It’s not a straight replacement as it relies in a ‘C’ python module so can’t be installed using ‘pip3’.

Thanks, Chris; the OS upgrade was coincidence rather than causation! Maybe Raik will be able to devise a workaround.

I will take a look but I think I’m to stupid.
YTPlay is only a frontend and bring together any tools like youtube-dl, youtube-search, ffplay and mplayer.
The real work comes from Chris! Without his ports, YTPlay will do nothing.

Just to add to this I think that mplayer is effected more than when using ffplay as i did some tests as follows:

mplayer VFP – Sound/picture quickly gets out of alignment.
mplayer EABI – Stutters and mplayer goes up to 92% in Usage on occasions.
mplayer – Latest Packman download – Again sound/speach gets out of alignment.
FFPlay – No noticable lags unless you try to open say a browser/filer window etc.

All tests done in video format 18.

Of the 4 tests FFplay gives the smoother video.

I had noticed as Chris pointed out that there has been no YouTube -dl updates for months so perhaps part of a deal to stop litigation…

mplayer is effected more than when using ffplay

I’ve noticed the same thing. FFPlay is now my default.

Ffplay is the Iyonix-optimized one from Chris Martin.
Format 18 is small and so in addition it feels better.

The good news is yt-dlp 2021.11.1 works with RISC OS Python 3.

Smooth playing for 720p (format ‘best’) Youtube videos with MPlayer is back to normal.

I had to comment out a few lines to get it run and it won’t install using pip38 on RISC OS. Luckily the dependencies don’t seem to be needed.
It should be available via PackMan at the weekend.

The good news is yt-dlp 2021.11.1 works with RISC OS Python 3….It should be available via PackMan at the weekend.

Chris, you’re a star!

yt-dlp 2021.11.10.1 is now available from PackMan.

Once installed you can test that it’s working by typing in a task window,

yt-dlp --help

The help should display if all the dependencies are installed. If there are any errors make sure ZLib1g, LibSSL and TaskRunner are installed.
The next version of the YT-DLP package will install these automatically.

Sargasso 2.0.8 is also available from PackMan. The only change in this version is support for yt-dlp. To be able to view Youtube videos using Sargasso 2.0.8, YT-DLP and MPlayer can be installed using PackMan.

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

I’ve installed yt-dlp 2021.11.10.1 using !PackMan. I checked the installation using *yt-dlp —help in a task window, got about 11 screens of detailed instructions for doing various things, no error messages that I could see so I assume it has installed OK. I then rebooted and tested YTPlay. However, YTPlay is still as jerky as before, regardless of format or player used. I’m now wondering how YTPlay ‘sees’ the new version, as it still seems to be using youtube-dl?

However, YTPlay is still as jerky as before, regardless of format or player used. I’m now wondering how YTPlay ‘sees’ the new version, as it still seems to be using youtube-dl?

Neither Youtube-dl nor Yt-dlp play the video: they download it from YouTube. The issue with Youtube-dl was that it hadn’t been updated since YouTube nobbled file downloads which didn’t jump through some magic hoops to verify that they were “approved”; Yt-dlp has been, and so isn’t throttled to 10kb/s or whatever the naughty speed is.

If the playback is jerky, you’ll need to look at what is being used to play the video.

I’m now wondering how YTPlay ‘sees’ the new version, as it still seems to be using youtube-dl?

Edit the file !YTPlay.Resources.youtube-dl and change the line,

from youtube_dl import main

to

from yt_dlp import main

Once you’re happy it’s working youtube-dl can be uninstalled.

pip38 uninstall youtube-dl

@ Steve

you’ll need to look at what is being used to play the video.

MPlayer v. 1.04, or FFMPeg/FFPlay which I think was optimised for the Iyonix in 2016: it’s the latest RO version AFAIK. I’ve tried both.

At this time, YTPlay try to find the video-url via youtube-dl and give it to the player. Yt-dlp is not supported at this time. I’m not magic ;-) I will try to find a way to use it, but it take same time. Sorry.
Edit:Try Chris fix. Maybe it helps. Thanks a lot.

Edit the file !YTPlay.Resources.youtube-dl and change the line

I’ve now tested 3 fairly demanding youtube videos at 720p using MPlayer and this fix works: they play smoothly and sound works fine.

Strange effect. Have install the yt-dlp stuff on my Pi4 with WiFiHat. After yt-dlp was installed, the autodetect of WiFiHat fails at restart.
There is a !Python in predesk. SetUpNet must start before !Python and the WiFi connection is back again.
Edit: There must be an additional reason. !SetUpNet works, SetUpNet not. I have not an idea. No errormessage, looks like nothing is missing.