64-bit Linux Answers to Adobe Foot-Dragging.

Tired of being shut out of discussion about the YouTube or Google video flavor of the week because Adobe won’t get off its butt and release a 64-bit Flash player? Despair not! for there are in fact solutions to your dilemma. I will show you how to access those those videos without having to drop down to 32-bit browsers or OS’s.

YouTube

While you can’t actually view YouTube content on 64-bit browsers because the Flash plugin isn’t available — and most like won’t be for a while longer — you can always download the Flash Video format file and play it on any movie player application that supports the ffmpeg codec. ffplay is the most obvious one.

To get the show going:

1. Grab the youtube-dl script. I recommend that you add a .py extension to the downloaded script, that makes it easier for your OS to recognize it as a Python script.
2. Place the script in your path. I recommend /usr/local/bin. Make sure it’s set to be executable by everybody (chmod a+x youtube-dl.py).
3. When someone sends you a link to a YouTube script, invoke the program from your home directory in this way:

youtube-dl.py [-o nameofmovie.flv] "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=(video_id)"

Note that the content in the square brackets is optional, as are quotes around the YouTube URL. To access restricted content (wink, wink) append your YouTube name and password to the request in this way:

youtube-dl.py [-o nameofmovie.flv] -u login -p password "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=(video_id)"

This will download the movie and save it as an FLV file (Flash Video). If you don’t specify a video name, it will be by default the YouTube id + the .flv extension. To play with ffplay, simply enter this at the command line:

ffplay nameofmovie.flv

and you will quickly be filled with YouTube goodness.

Google Video

It’s even easier with Google video. Simply you’ll use their mac download link in an automated way, which will give you a nice .avi file.

To do this:

1. In Firefox (or another browser) copy and past this URL (as a single line) as a bookmark:
   javascript:if(document.getElementById(‘macdownloadlink’)!=null){window.location.href=document.getElementById(‘macdownloadlink’)}else{alert(‘Go to Google Video to download videos as AVI.’)};
2. Name the bookmark “Download Google Video”.
3. Go to Google Video and choose a video to view.
4. While on the page for the video, click on the bookmark.
5. Either download the .avi file to disk, or pipe it to your favorite video player.

It’s that simple. Have fun!

Note: this tip wouldn’t be possible without contributions by Warren Falk, who came up with the Google Video hack, and Ricardo Garcia, the author of the youtube-dl script!