New version. Now this program is around 4000 lines. I have to focus on other things, particularly regarding the upcoming school semester, so I will not be working on this application for a while; I have to commit myself to that decision this time around. This release has also been posted on SourceForge.

• New parser plugin system has been implemented. It is simple but it works. I should mention that there is no documentation on how to make a custom parser. If you want to make a parser, look at the code of existing parsers
• Fixes to allow application to work on Windows 7 and Windows Vista
• Added "Time Left" column to GUI. Works with downloading and transcoding
• Transcoding progress is now more accurate
• Right-click menu updated. "Play Video" and "Copy Video URL" options added
• Added button for opening the output folder using the desktop environment default file manager. Uses xdg-open command on Linux and start command on Windows
• 4 parsers added (ScrewAttack, GameTrailers, Yahoo Video, The Escapist). Now a total of 21 sites are supported
• Fixed regular expression for determining video resolution. Padding now works for mp4 video consistently
• Media paths are now found in a more flexible way

Downloads:

Linux: http://www.ryochan7.com/files/projects/youtubed2x/youtubed-2x_2009-07-07.tar.gz
Windows: http://www.ryochan7.com/files/projects/youtubed2x/youtubed2x-win_2009-07-07.zip
Archive: http://www.ryochan7.com/files/projects/youtubed2x/youtubed-2x_archive_2009-07-07.tar.gz

Screenshot:

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.

More content. YAY! I have written some information about my PC-DC server setup in the past but I have never documented my setup in detail. Sometime this summer, I plan on writing a guide about how to set up a PC-DC server using Linux; the main focus will be on Ubuntu but I want to make the guide as generic as possible. It probably won't be a definitive guide but it will be a good resource for other people that want to get a PC-DC server working.

Besides a written guide, I would like to make a little video series on YouTube that will go through setting up a PC-DC server. At this point, I can already see the guide being split into at least 4 parts such as the following.

1. Hardware requirements and PC-side configuration
2. DC-side configuration
3. Connecting to the web and connection tips
4. Game-specific information (mainly focused on PSO and Quake 3)

Optionally, I can make a video regarding using a PC-DC server on a VM. This can be a fun little project if I actually do it. Also, I can make this a presentation for a LUGOP meeting.

I registered a domain name for this site a couple of days ago. Now I just have to make better use of my site. http://www.ryochan7.com/

I just made a small change so that RSS feed links are in the sidebar. There is a link for the latest posts feed and there is a link for a feed with posts tagged with a specific tag when browsing archived posts tagged with a specified tag. These feeds were already available but I placed the links in the sidebar to make them even more apparent.

I should start posting more updates to this blog other than cool videos I come across. Anyway, FindTheComputerRoom has posted a bunch of videos for songs on the Face to Faith: Sonic and the Black Knight Vocal Trax CD and the song "Live Life" has caught my interest.

I bought BoA (The First Album) off of Amazon earlier. The only real dud in the whole album that I have found so far is "Dress Off"; I still have to listen to "Look Who's Talking" and "Touched". Here is a video of the song Obsessed; this is the best song in the whole album in my opinion.

Edit: "Look Who's Talking" is another dud. "Dress Off" is definitely a worse song though.

This is an incremental update but there are some neat changes made. The main motivation for releasing an update is that YouTube changed the format for high quality videos so the YouTube parser would only get the low quality version of videos. Now, the mp4 version of the file is used as the high quality video file on YouTube. Changes:

• Changed YouTube page parser to get the new default high quality format
• Experimental Windows release. Both the GUI and command-line versions work
• Site directories option added. Videos from a particular site are saved in their own directories
• Small preferences window added. FFmpeg location and site directories option can be set
• GirlsInTube parser added
• Timed updating of GUI. Download and transcode information is updated every 1/2 second. This is mainly for Windows since updating after each message from ffmpeg or wget was too intensive and would cause Windows to slow down
• Changed regular expressions used with ffmpeg due to new Ubuntu package
• RedTube and DailyMotion parsers fixed
• Fixed some issues with the padding code

Downloads:

Linux: http://ryochan7.webfactional.com/files/projects/youtubed-2x_2009-03-21.tar.gz
Windows binary: http://ryochan7.webfactional.com/files/projects/youtubed2x-win_2009-03-21.zip
Archive: http://ryochan7.webfactional.com/files/projects/youtubed-2x_archive_2009-03-21.tar.gz