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HQTube

Watch YouTube with MPlayer/Xine/VLC/etc (any Mozilla plugin that can play flv and mp4). Dynamically resize the player and use the HQ/MP4 streams when available.

What does this do?

Converts the flash based EMBED tag into one that other more competent media players can play. This version allows users to dynamically resize the player via drag & drop. Also lets you use the HQ or MP4 streams when available (MP4 seems to be enabled for all videos). Besides that, there are utility links to download the video and next/prev links via the related videos list.

Why would I want to use Mplayer/Xine/VLC...?

Why would anyone want to use a separate media player like Mplayer? You thought youtube videos sucked because the limited format? Nope, the format quality isn't actually that bad, the flash player sucks tho. Flash has limited hardware access and consumes a lot of CPU power doing software scaling and still does a poor job at it. Players like mplayer/xine/vlc do such a better job at video playback youtube is a whole new experience.

Requirements

You need a video player plugin for Mozilla that can play flv and mp4 formats (Mplayer, Xine, Vlc). For Windows, it seems that VLC might be your only choice. Please leave a comment if you found another player you can use on various platforms. You also might want to prevent the flash player from loading, using Adblock or something of the sort.

Script installed. Now what?

Hover the mouse over the left, right, or the bottom edges of the video player. The cursor changes and a drag bar shows up. Drag the bars to resize the player. In addition, there are a few menu commands accessible via the greasemonkey menu. Right click on the monkey in your status bar. The menu lets you:

Lock the aspect ratio (the default)
Unlock the aspect ratio
Reset the size to the default.
Use default format (~200kpbs mono) always
Use MP4 format (~512kbps stereo) always
Use HQ FLV format (~900 kbps mono) when available, fallback to MP4

Changelog

2008/05/14

Added preliminary next/prev links for series's via the related videos info

Tweaking

Here are some Mplayer settings that worked best for me:

~/.mplayer/mplayerplug-in.conf

...
vo=gl
cachesize=512
cache-percent=5
profile=plugin
...

~/.mplayer/config

...
[plugin]
autosync=0
mc=0
correct-pts=yes
...

This has only been tested with mplayerplug-in on a Ubuntu 7.10 system. This script was once based on Mtube.

Jun 21, 2008 Joe Simmons Scriptwright	Quicktime wont work and I don't have any flv plugins -- do you have any flv plugins I can have?

May 18, 2008 oldarney Scriptwright	the mplayer plugin for firefox has been blocked out fro FF3 rc1. because it dosent have security updates or something.

Apr 23, 2008 jaek rich Script's author	georgie, you can edit the script and change the mime type from video/quicktime to anything that VLC supports. I think video/x-flv would work.

Apr 20, 2008 georgie Scriptwright	Im also having these problems, like georgie already mentioned hmmm I installed and tried it out (Windows user), but Quicktime seems to be the player that loads instead of vlc...After about 10-20 seconds, the quicktime player gives me a big ? mark and stops trying to load. I installed the mozilla plugin for vlc so I don't know what the problem is. help!

Apr 17, 2008 FurYy Scriptwright	Kewl! Anyway about VLC controls, there's js libs on net. I have added this little piece of monkey .

Apr 17, 2008 Tesiph Scriptwright	Wow, this works great. Be gone you evil Flash.

Apr 17, 2008 jaek rich Script's author	I have done some testing in Windows. First, to get VLC to work, you need to check the "Mozilla plugin" option when you install it. Quicktime player can actually play the videos if you have selected "Use MP4 format always", but it won't resize the player. Since VLC doesn't have controls you can not make it go fullscreen... or anything else. I might add some javascript based buttons later.

Apr 17, 2008 Q Sutq User	I registered on userscripts just to thank you for this. I'm using it with mplayer. At first youtube was out of sync, but then I set up the mplayer plugin config like you said and set up the script to default to a higher encoding. I donno which of these did it, but it works perfectly now. Thank you

Apr 16, 2008 Mindeye Scriptwright	Ok, I have tested the script under Kubuntu and it works ok. It must be some plugin conflict or maybe the plugin doesn't works well with Windows

Apr 15, 2008 Mindeye Scriptwright	For some reason, although VLC for Windows can play a flv from the "get_video" URL, the VLC plugin doesn't seem to support the "video/x-flv" MIME type according to about:plugins Can you please test the script with the VLC plugin?

Apr 15, 2008 georgie Scriptwright	hmmm I installed and tried it out (Windows user), but Quicktime seems to be the player that loads instead of vlc...After about 10-20 seconds, the quicktime player gives me a big ? mark and stops trying to load. I installed the mozilla plugin for vlc so I don't know what the problem is. help!

Apr 14, 2008 jaek rich Script's author	VLC has a plugin for windows. Have you tried VLC for windows?

Apr 13, 2008 oldarney Scriptwright	this is a huge pain in the tooshie. is this even available for windows? i tried each of those players and there all oriented towards linux. ill keep looking.

Apr 12, 2008 TheGreekSage User	Very Good script. I knew about the fmt 18 code for the MP4 quality but I didn't know the fmt 6 code for the hq flv. The only thing that I wish is to have the name of video as the name of the file you save i.e. some kind of routine to take the title of the web page and put it as filename.