Thursday, March 18, 2010

Some new issues

Looks like there are some new changes in YouTube request format. I'll try to investigate and fix as soon as possible.

27 comments:

a n d r e s said...

Does this have to do with the authorization required error that now appears in iTunes?.

Thanks

Unknown said...

We believe in you guy, a lot of people are hoping a fix soon..

A lot of business are down because of YT modification.. DAMN !

Anonymous said...

It seems YouTube has blocked direct access to its videos :-( Hopefully you find some way around it. I've googled, coded and tried to build several solutions e.g. using Yahoo Pipes, PHP etc. but to no avail... Hopefully you can think of something smart :-)

Tom said...

Is there any chance, once fixed, that these feeds will work with an application like Automatic - http://codingcurious.com/automatic/ - which I believe requires enclosures?

Alternatively, is there any way that I can get these files downloaded (on a Mac) to my 'Automatically add to iTunes' folder, so it adds them as Movies, not Podcasts?

Dmitry said...

Thing is that YouTube changed format and now it is filtering client's requests by IP. All requests are signed and it seems to be quite powerfull solution against hosted YT download services (untill there is some really clever hack).
Situation is better for installed (in-browser or stand alone) applications that can run queries directly from user's computers.
So, there is little hope that service will be up any time soon.
But there are good news too. I have started to write little program that will work very similarly to this site, but users just have to run it from their computers.
I already have working prototype on my PC, it is not published yet, but I plan to release early version next week already, so anyone who needs this service badly could start using it soon.
Program is in Java, so it should be ok for users on Mac, Windows, Linux, etc.
I also plan to release it as open source, so anyone interested could contribute.
Also it will be better compared to site, because there is no need to cache feeds and (probably) it will allow also to watch videos that are not allowed for embedding.
For devices that cann't install software (S60 or PSP), it will be possible to use installed program as server and download feeds though them.
So basically all existing users will be supported and will be able to watch podcasts as before. If they want to.

Tom said...

That's brilliant news. I'd had some success with jDownloader but I think I'll just wait for your release. Thank you.

Tom said...
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Dmitry said...

If there are brave early adopters, then they can try to use new application at http://code.google.com/p/rsshandler/ .
It defenitely is not production ready, but at least some feeds are working on my computer.
So if someone ready to try it and help me with finding bugs - you are welcomed.
Also, contributors can apply via Google Group.

Seth Hanisek said...

I tried this app and it seems to work just fine for me. I look forward to some UI improvements, but other than that nice job! Thanks for all your work on this, I appreciate it.

Anonymous said...

Great work! Unfortunately it's quite heavy in terms of memory usage - I've hacked together a similar solution using a 1-file Ruby webserver script and Yahoo Pipes, also works :-)

Dmitry said...

Seth, it is really great to hear that it helps you!
If you have some improvement idea or advice, please share it here, in blog, or there is also Issue Tracker at http://code.google.com/p/rsshandler/issues/list
It would really help to improve program.

Dmitry said...

Maarten, Python was first candidate to write program (it is language in which rsshandler.com is written), but Java provides really good deployment options and seemless integration with user settings (proxy settings, for example), as well as transparent program updates.
I measured all pluses and minuses and decided to go with Java for this program.
For my personal stuff I prefer Groovy :)

Unknown said...

I append the "&max-results=50" before "&fmt=18" to break the limit of 25 items in RSS of youtube, but it's not working anymore... :(

a n d r e s said...

I just tried a couple of youtube channels and they worked fine!. Thanks very much for the work!!

Tom said...

Nice work, thanks for this. One issue - when subscribing to a playlist, I seem to get the oldest 25, not the newest. Any way to switch that around or is that how it always worked and therefore is up to the Youtube channel owner?

hamster said...

Looks like the RSS handler app can't handle unicode characters. It produces an "invalid url" for itunes

Dmitry said...

Phoenix Wu, option to select feed size added to version 2.0, check it at http://code.google.com/p/rsshandler/downloads/list

Dmitry said...

tom, option to specify ordering and feed size added to version 2.0, check it at http://code.google.com/p/rsshandler/downloads/list

Dmitry said...

hamster, thanks for reporting. There was fix for some encoding bug, please check it in beta version at http://rsshandler.googlecode.com/files/rsshandler-2.0.jnlp
If it still not works, please post user or playlist id, so i could check it.

Glen said...

The java version worked well for me with only a minor security request issue. I ran it on my windows home server machine, which (like all MS server OSs) has trust issues with pretty much every website.

Does anyone know of a good way to get this to run as a service, so I can just leave the machine on but not logged in, and have my client apps hit it?

Vincent said...
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todd said...

thanks for the update. wondering if there's a way to keep it working with the old urls (without all the new features. example: http://localhost:8083/user.rss?id=MuppetsStudio&format=18&host=localhost&port=8083). now that i've updated the server, it killed all of my podcasts. since i can't easily update them in itunes, would be nice to not have to delete and readd them all. thanks.

Dmitry said...

todd, I have posted new update, now it uses defaults instead of missing parameters, so old URLs should work. Please update old link at http://rsshandler.googlecode.com/files/rsshandler-2.0.jnlp

todd said...

all is well again. thanks for that quick work. this really is a great product. glad you were over to overcome the challengers from the big g in the cloud. thanks again.

Unknown said...

Hello:
Is it possible to subscribe the top rated/favourite videos in Taiwan or Hong Kong only?
Thanks

Dmitry said...

Glen, I have put instructions how to run it as service at http://code.google.com/p/rsshandler/wiki/WIndowsService

Dmitry said...

qzhiang, I have created new beta version at http://rsshandler.googlecode.com/files/rsshandler-3.0.jnlp . It has new configuration options for standart feeds, like country and time, there are all YouTube defined countries, so both Taiwan and Hong Kong included. Also there are new sorting options, usefull for standart feeds. Please, check, and if there is any bug, let me know.