Using with ViewTube - atauenis/webone GitHub Wiki

WebOne can be used together with sebaro's ViewTube user script to watch or download videos from YouTube and some other video hostings.

Original ViewTube user script is designed to replace default video player frame with customizable. It's allowing user to select video player used to display content and to select codecs and resolution.

See ReadMe file for full description of features available in ViewTube.

Playback via ViewTube Protocol

By default, ViewTube does not support WebOne proxy servers. But such proxies can be used with this user script to change resolution or convert codecs to easier to play by old PC. It's possible via Protocol function. It enables user to use installed video players like VLC or MPlayer to watch videos from ViewTube instead of in-browser player box.

To play YouTube videos on slow PCs, install ViewTube userscript (or xpi/crx extension) and my VTP script. Then you'll be able to watch videos via external VLC Media Player window.

Video download feature will fetch original files from remote servers.

Playback via patched user script

Because Protocol-based playback is very limited and difficult to configure, I have created a fork of ViewTube that can utilize WebOne proxy server just like the proxy is working with elderly browsers. It's called "ViewTube with WebOne support".

It is requiring only a browser that can run ViewTube user script (e.g. Firefox 3.5+ with Greasemonkey 0.8+ or Opera 11.64+) and a properly configured proxy server with WebOne running on a separate PC in same network.

First you need to check configuration file of WebOne. It should contain ffmpeg -i pipe: %ARG1% pipe: line in [Converters] list.

Then you need to have FFmpeg binaries in folder where WebOne.exe is located. Older versions of Patched ViewTube are using AVconv. If FFmpeg is installed and WebOne is configured properly, it's time to start the proxy server and go to old computer.

Install the user script in web-browser. Then choose what you want - to play videos directly via browser (just like in old good Flash Player time) or to download them to PC and watch via offline player. If the computer is too fast to watch at least 240p videos in browser, install VLC Media Player and its NPAPI plugin. They are not need for local playback.

Then run the browser and open an YouTube video page. ViewTube (exactly, ViewTube+WebOne) box should appear. Open player settings frame by clicking button with 3 dots.

The last option box is related to use of WebOne. Set "Use proxy for codec converting" to "On". Proxy server options will display under, like shown on the screenshot.

In first row enter IP address or computer name of proxy server that you want to use in transcoding. The list on the right chooses media container that will be used in converting.

  • MTS - MPEG2 Transport Stream. The most common media container.
  • AVI - container for older players and player plugins.
  • ASF - Microsoft Windows Media Video container.
  • ASF* - Microsoft Windows Media Video container, streaming version.
  • WebM - Google WebM container, designed for in-browser HTML5 players.
  • Ogg - other container for HTML5 players, supported by Firefox 3.x and Opera 10.

Second row containing codec converting options:

  • video codec (may be set to "original" to do not touch the video stream).
  • video resolution.
  • video bitrate (you may use "K" and "M" to shorten "kb/s" and "mb/s" here or leave "max" or empty to let FFmpeg set the bitrate).
  • audio codec (may be set to to "original" to don't touch the audio stream).
  • audio channels.
  • audio bitrate (similar to video bitrate).

These settings should be set depending on computer performance and hardware abilities. Note that Windows Media Player does not know any of these codecs and containers, even Microsoft-developed. It is need to install codec packs (like K-Lite) to teach it how to play videos.

After setting Proxy Preferences, ViewTube will work as sebaro's original version, but in all places will use converted video and audio streams. So it will be possible to watch converted videos in VLC plugin ('Embed video with "Embed/Object" and play with/as "VLC"'), external players launched via Protocol (with original VTP script) or even through download button and then local player like Windows Media Player 6.

If the video doesn't play, see WebOne log for detailed errors. In most cases problems are caused by incorrect configuration of FFmpeg or by using codecs unsupported by selected container (WebM can contain only VP8/VP9 plus Vorbis/Opus content, Ogg can contain only Theora+Vorbis, other containers have no known such limitations).

Note that WebOne v0.9.2 have known bug that prevents using Windows Media Player plugins and QuickTime 7 plugin with ViewTube. VLC is currently only tested and supported plugin.