Poor quality video; but some good fails tho. ;-)
One of
the drawbacks of Flash is that it requires a decent amount of power
to execute. Even simple animations, when rendered on the Pi using
Gnash, are not very smooth at the best of times. Unfortunately,
YouTube and numerous other streaming video sites all use Flash. Wouldn't it be great to stream these videos easily to the hardware
accelerated OMXPlayer that is included in Raspbian?
The
following tutorial will allow you to browse the YouTube website in
Chromium, but instead of playing the video by clicking on it, you
click a custom icon on your panel launcher in LXDE. This process
should also work in Firefox, but I haven't tried it.
Disclaimer:
I can't be held responsible for borking your Raspbian install if you
follow these instructions. This procedure worked for me; YMMV. ;-)
Environment:
I am
using the latest version of Raspbian for this tutorial.
2013-02-09-wheezy-raspbian
(http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads)
Let's
get started:
SSH
remotely to your Pi, or open a terminal in LXDE. I find it's a good
idea when starting off on something like this to make sure the system
is up-to-date.
sudo
apt-get update
(check
repos for updated packages/libraries)
sudo
apt-get upgrade
(upgrade
the packages)
sudo
reboot
(if
you are extra cautious like me)
Step
1: Download/update additional software
Get/update
OMXPlayer. I found that the OMXPlayer included with this version of
Raspbian resulted in corrupted desktop graphics or black screens
after playing video. Updating OMXPlayer fixed this issue for me:
cd ~
wget
http://omxplayer.sconde.net/builds/omxplayer_0.2.5~git20130223~b1aec105_armhf.deb
(download to home
dir)
sudo dpkg
–-install omxplayer_0.2.5~git20130223~b1aec105_armhf.deb
(run installation
package)
rm
omxplayer_0.2.5~git20130223~b1aec105_armhf.deb
(clean-up)
For
the most current version of OMXPlayer, visit: OMXPlayer
Builds
Get
'YouTube Downloader' (youtube-dl) to convert YouTube URL's to the
video stream address that's passed to OMXPlayer.
-
I already had it, but Google had changed the method for addressing
the stream so I needed to update it. This occurs fairly frequently,
so they have built in an update feature on the command line.
sudo
apt-get install youtube-dl
(install
from repo)
sudo
youtube-dl -–update
(get
latest version)
Get
SQLite3; a very small database engine that many applications make use
of. It's needed to read the History database of Chromium (&
Firefox).
sudo
apt-get
install sqlite3
(install
SQLite3 from repo)
Step
2: Create a script to read the last page in the browser History
database and use youtube-dl to find where it is and stream it to
OMXPlayer. This can all be done with very few commands (Gotta love
the power of Linux).
Create a 'bin'
folder in your home folder if not already there and edit
a new file called 'omxplayyt.sh'.
mkdir
~/bin
cd
~/bin
nano
omxplayyt.sh
Type/copy the
following into that file:
#!/bin/bash
#Script
to play YouTube using OMXPlayer
echo
"Loading YouTube Video..."
cp
~/.config/chromium/Default/History ~/History.tmp
omxplayer
-o hdmi $(youtube-dl --max-quality 35 -g $(sqlite3 ~/History.tmp
'SELECT url FROM urls ORDER BY last_visit_time DESC LIMIT 1'))
rm
~/History.tmp
- press
Ctrl-X, then 'y', then 'Enter' to save
Explanation:
-
We need to copy the browser History database to a .tmp as it is
locked when the browser is open
-
Line 5 is the magic: SQLite3
queries the last URL from the URLS table and passes it to youtube-dl
to fetch. Youtube-dl then passes the stream on to OMXPlayer to
display.
-
Finally, we delete the .tmp file
Notes:
- I use the '-–max-quality' flag because my DSL isn't fast enough to stream 720p without stutter. See wikipedia for more info on YouTube fomats.
- 'omxplayer -o hdmi' forces OMXPlayer to output via the HDMI connection.
Set
the script to be executable:
chmod
+x omxplayyt.sh
Step
3: Create a '.desktop' file to define an icon/launcher to call our
script while looking at a YouTube page, then place it in the 'Application Launch Bar' panel for quick access.
Create the
.desktop file so LXDE will place an icon in the 'Accessories' menu
cd
~/.local/share/applications
nano
omxplayyt.desktop
Type/copy the
following into that file:
[Desktop
Entry]
Type=Application
Name=OMXPlayYT
GenericName=OMXPlayYT
Comment=Open
YouTube url in OMXPlayer
TryExec=lxterminal
Exec=lxterminal
--geometry=25x1 -t OMXPLAYYT --working-directory=/home/pi/bin -e
./omxplayyt.sh
NStartupNotify=true
Categories=Utility;Player;
Icon=youtube_48
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=OMXPlayYT
Comment=Open
YouTube url in OMXPlayer
- press
Ctrl-X, then 'y', then 'Enter' to save
Explanation:
-
The important
items here are:
Exec:
the environment that our script runs in; it is a bash script so
lxterminal is the binary that launches it
--geometry=(columns)x(rows):
I made the terminal window very small so it basically only shows
“Loading
YouTube Video...”. You may want to leave this out until you know
everything works.
-t:
The title of the lxterminal window
-e:
Execute the following script
Icon:
I downloaded a nice one (I'll get to that later)
Categories:
'Utility' actually places the icon in the 'Accessories' menu of
the LXDE Menu
Step 4: Get a cool icon and create your 'Application Launch Bar' launcher.
If
you're not already there, start LXDE with the 'startx' command (or
VNC in).
Open
Chromium and get yourself a nice icon! I used a 48x48 .png
icon called
'youtube_48' and placed it into the following folder using PCManFM:
~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps
-
This location is in the icon path for my LXDE theme so I was able to
just type the file-name into the Icon parameter for the .desktop file
above. If your icon doesn't show after doing this, try
shutting down and restarting LXDE; now might also be a good time to
reboot. ;-) If it still doesn't show, you can simply
edit the .desktop file
and enter the
full path to the icon in the Icon parameter.
Now
we can set up the icon as a launcher in the 'Application
Launch Bar'.
- Right-click
the LXDE Menu icon (Start button) and choose 'Add/Remove Panel Items'
- Select
'Application Launch Bar' from the list, and click the 'Edit' button.
A window with two columns will appear; in the right-hand column,
expand 'Accessories', select 'OMXPlayYT', then click the 'Add' button
so that it appears in the left-hand column.
-
Select the 'OMXPlayYT' icon in the left-hand column, and use the 'Up'
and 'Down' buttons to position it to your taste.
-
Click 'Close' to close the 'Application
Launch Bar'
settings, then 'Close' again to close the 'Panel Preferences' window.
We
are DONE!!
Fire
up Chromium, and go to YouTube. Choose a video to play. Once the
page loads up, click your new icon and the vid should play in a
full-screen OMXPlayer window.
-
Pause = Space
-
Quit = q
*Note: If you click your icon before the page completely loads, the last video may play. I have completely removed Gnash to decrease load times.
See
http://elinux.org/Omxplayer
for all the OMXPlayer hotkeys.
I
hope you get a lot of use out of this. I find it easier than using
some of the non-LXDE YouTube browsers for the Pi. Leave me a
comment!
