YouTubed-2x is now being hosted at SourceForge. After I released the last version, a member of the OpenHandhelds community, CSXM, asked about the status of the project and offered to help a little bit with the development of the project. So, it looks like YouTubed-2x will continue to be developed for the time being. Since there is interest in this program, I will work on it again as well; I will likely not be that involved since I want to do some other things. If this experiment doesn't go over well, the program will go back to being abandoned.

The first order of business is implementing a plugin system for the program. A plugin system will allow parsers to be added to the program and updated without releasing a new version of the program. I still don't know exactly how such a system should be implemented; the main problems at this point are how users will add the new plugins and what data structure will hold all the instances of parser classes.

The scope of this program has gone beyond what I originally intended. At this rate, it is basically becoming a mini-xVideoServiceThief.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/youtubed-2x

This whole portion is solely a disclaimer. Part 1 will be the first part of the actual guide. Some notes in this part might be incorporated into the final guide when it is finished; that is, if it ever gets finished. Another thing to note is that I will write my draft PC-DC server on my blog but the final guide will likely not be split across many posts on my blog. I need to figure out how I want to distribute the guide.

Much of the guide will likely be similar to the PC-DC server guide for NetBSD that I originally used for my own setup: http://ragol.homeunix.net/; the guide has portions for setting up a PC-DC server under Linux but a couple of topics are missing. Since I have been primarily using Ubuntu Linux as my main operating system for the longest time, my guide will be written with Ubuntu Linux in mind but I want to make the guide as generic as possible so that people can use their Linux distribution of choice and have a use for the guide. One other major goal of the guide is for the guide to be easy to understand but to have a fair degree of detail; for an example of what I don't want to happen, check http://www.kinox.org/articles/linuxdc.html.

As I mentioned before, I would like to also make a screencast series based of the content written in the guide. I don't know if I will make the screencast series while I write the written guide or if I will wait until the written guide is completed before I start the screencast series. The screencast series will be a great tool to make the process of making a PC-DC server easier for people. However, based on my experience, it is actually easier to get a PC-DC server working under Linux than it is under Windows; although, there are better guides for setting up a working PC-DC server under Windows.

I should also note that a post about my PC-DC server setup can be found at http://www.dreamcast.onlineconsoles.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=68477#68477. In addition to that, a little post about using a PC-DC server under a VM can be found at http://www.dreamcast.onlineconsoles.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=73216#73216. I think that is all that I will mention for this part.

Check out Part 1 »

Lately, I have been using YouTubed-2x less than usual. Also, coding the program is not as fun as it used to be. The little time that I spend working on the program anymore just seems like a waste of time to me. So, I will package the changes that I have made and release a new version. This will likely be the last version I will ever publish. There have been some good additions with this version. Here is a list of the most significant changes.

• Icons are placed next to a video title in order to show which site a video is hosted at
• A downloader class has been made. Wget is no longer a dependency for this program
• Anonymous HTTP proxy support has been added
• 640x480 resolution option has been added. This option should be useful for watching videos while using the Tv-Out option of the GP2X
• Automatic download support has been added and enabled by default. Videos will immediately begin downloading once a URL has been added and a page has been parsed. Manual downloading is still available
• Process limit added. The default is 4 but setting the option to 0 will count as unlimited
• Right-click menu added. Only has a copy URL action
• Porn2Pc parser added. Videos listed on the site that originate from a website supported by this application will work
• Google Video parser updated, PacoPorn parser added, RedTube parser updated
• 17 websites are now supported by this program

Downloads:

Linux: http://www.ryochan7.com/files/projects/youtubed-2x_2009-06-17.tar.gz
Windows: http://www.ryochan7.com/files/projects/youtubed2x-win_2009-06-17.zip
Archive: http://www.ryochan7.com/files/projects/youtubed-2x_archive_2009-06-17.tar.gz

Screenshot:

Based on what I have seen, the videos converted with this program should also work with the new GP2X Wiz so I might start working on this application again if I get a Wiz and I find this program useful again. That is not very likely though. I do plan to get a Wiz sometime but I don't think that I will have a need for this application then. It is a shame that I am going to stop now since this program is close to being 3000 lines long. I still consider writing 1000 lines of code to be a major undertaking; I didn't even realize that this program was so close to 3000 lines until about a week ago. I don't know what I am going to do with the little amount of time that I will gain by not working on this app but I hope that it will go towards something more useful.