A brand new way to play YouTube clips on your Windows Mobile device!

Menneisyys · 06-07-07, 03:02 AM

Anyone into watching YouTube videos knows it has always been pretty problematic to play YouTube videos on Windows Mobile. This has also been explained in my related article Playing Flash Video (FLV) files on the Pocket PC - is it possible?.

The built-in PIE / IEM, because of the very bad JavaScript support, has always been unable to play them back and it was only lately that Opera Mobile (as of the first beta of 8.65) and NetFront (as of TP 3.4 007 released early June, 2007) received YouTube support.

These solutions are really sub-par, particularly that of NetFront, which has a comparatively slow Flash plug-in.

This means, so far, the best way to watch YouTube videos was relying on external, Web-based convertor services listed in my earlier all-in-one article on playing back YouTube videos. These convertor services, unfortunately, need a lot of additional work and, in general, result in files that are (much) larger and/or of (much) lower quality than the original YouTube videos.

TCPMP Plugin for Flash Video on PPC for the rescue! It provides a VERY fast (MUCH faster than even Opera Mobile’s playback, let alone the far inferior YouTube support in the latest NetFront beta) and, what is more, conversion-less (meaning no additional bandwidth / quality loss because of the conversion) solution. What is more, it’s FREE, as is TCPMP itself, and runs on both Pocket PC’s and, with some restrictions, touch screen-less Smartphones.

In the following, I explain how it should be used.

1. download the latest (currently: 0.3) version from HERE and, of course, TCPMP (either the PPC (tcpmp.pocketpc.0.72RC1.cab) or the Smartphone (tcpmp.smartphone.0.72RC1.cab) version).

Extract all the files from the tcpmpflvplugin ZIP file, (currently) tcpmpflvplugin-v0.3.zip, player and, after installing TCPMP, copy the two .plg files in the home of TCPMP (\Storage Card\Program Files\TCPMP when installed on the only storage card under WM5+ etc.).

Copy YouTubeDownload.exe anywhere on your handheld; for example, \Windows\Start Menu\Programs (it’s very small so you can even store it in the main storage)

2. in order to see a video, fire up a Web browser and go to YouTube. When you are on a page you’d like to see the video of, in the address bar, highlight the last part of the URL (the one after the ?v=) as can be seen in HERE. Copy this to the clipboard by tap-and-holding the selection and selecting Copy in the menu:

Here, I’ve copied the ‘x4arSJCWwpk’ parameter of the URL YouTube - Smartphone & Pocket PC, MEDC 2007 .

3. Now, fire up YouTubeDownload.exe, (after selecting the right target directory) tap-and-hold the “Video ID:” field and select Paste in the drop-down context menu. Now, click Start. The video will be downloaded to the target directory:

Note that the downloader utility is incompatible with the MS Smartphone (WM6 Standard) operating system. First, it doesn’t support focus transfer with D-pad / the Tab key (it’s been written for WM2003) – it’s only with a cursor emulator like SPHelper hat you can traverse the focus as can be seen HERE. However, it won’t be of help as the app won’t be able to connect to YouTube as can be seen in HERE (tested this on my HTC Vox / s710 several times). I really hope the author of YouTubeDownload.exe will soon fix this problem so that Smartphone users can also download any YouTube clips. Until then, you’ll need to rely on files downloaded in other ways.

Also note that version 0.2 is the only version to offer a desktop-based (x86) downloader tool (as opposed to what the developer states). It, however, wasn’t able to download anything on my desktop when I’ve tried. That is, you’ll need to download directly onto your Pocket PC.

4. Then, fire up TCPMP and select the given file (File / Open File):

Now, it’ll be played back:

(same on the MS Smartphone operating system)

It’s very important that you can NOT invoke directly video playback from any Windows Mobile Web browsers – you will ALWAYS need to manually download the videos, manually switch to TCPMP and manually load it for playback.

It’s also worth knowing that the plug-in does NOT work with CorePlayer, the commercial descendant of TCPMP.

Related talk

Note that these threads are FULL of misinformation. It’s worth checking them out but don’t necessarily believe what you read in there.

MoDaCo
PPCT
XDA-Dev

spunker88 · 06-07-07, 07:27 AM

If you can get tcpmp to play flvs, why cant you stream them directly from youtube, etc. Afterall, it streams asx, wmv, avi, etc. Why not flvs, are they too large to stream?

06-07-07, 07:13 PM

I suspect that this is because the streaming involves ActiveX controls, IIRC, as the videos aren't JUST videos when you're watching them on a webpage, but they're embedded into widgets that pull the video off the server... and TCPMP is not a web browser by any stretch of the imagination.

Or else it just takes up too much CPU time, unlike WMV which may be able to use some of the built-in decoding features of various mobile CPU's. Remember, this IS a first release, so we may not be seeing it as 'feature complete' as the authors intended.
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newdoughboy · 06-07-07, 10:34 PM

Originally Posted by Haesslich

I suspect that this is because the streaming involves ActiveX controls, IIRC, as the videos aren't JUST videos when you're watching them on a webpage, but they're embedded into widgets that pull the video off the server... and TCPMP is not a web browser by any stretch of the imagination.

Or else it just takes up too much CPU time, unlike WMV which may be able to use some of the built-in decoding features of various mobile CPU's. Remember, this IS a first release, so we may not be seeing it as 'feature complete' as the authors intended.
.

I need help here, the videos that I download from youtube had a weird format. The file type is .file and not .flv, so how do I play it then?

Menneisyys · 06-08-07, 01:30 AM

Originally Posted by newdoughboy

I need help here, the videos that I download from youtube had a weird format. The file type is .file and not .flv, so how do I play it then?

Dunno, try renaming them to FLV to see whether they can be played back.

cravaus · 06-08-07, 10:21 AM

Time to make a macro to automate this.

cravaus · 06-08-07, 11:03 AM

YouTubeDownload keeps saying "Invalid returned link"

Menneisyys · 06-08-07, 11:07 AM

Originally Posted by cravaus

YouTubeDownload keeps saying "Invalid returned link"

don't use 0.2 - use 0.3, as is also pointed out in the article

Pocketbrain · 06-08-07, 04:09 PM

wunderbar!

I got it working with a sample video... off to download every episode of Robot Chicken!!

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Menneisyys · 06-09-07, 09:59 AM

UPDATE (06/09/2007): as has been explained in the article, currently, the only way to download FLV files is using a Pocket PC-based tool. This is no longer the case: XDA-Developers forum member banannq has just released a tool to do this on the desktop. Furthermore, it requires a full URL - that is, you don't need to manually chop off the not-required part of it. Just download the attachment from the post (after registerig yourself in the forum - don't be afraid, it's free).

newdoughboy · 06-10-07, 04:38 PM

Originally Posted by Menneisyys

Dunno, try renaming them to FLV to see whether they can be played back.

and how would I do that? it doesn't change the file type, does it?

newdoughboy · 06-10-07, 05:55 PM

Originally Posted by Menneisyys

don't use 0.2 - use 0.3, as is also pointed out in the article

I used the new version 0.3 but instead of (can't find the link thing) it says Can't open file.

Xtremegene · 06-23-07, 05:35 AM

It's great seeing TCPMP fill another role, not to mention provide MUCH better quality playback than what I had tried with a converted file!

Nice info once again, thanks Menneisyys.

spunker88 · 06-23-07, 09:30 AM

Originally Posted by Haesslich

I suspect that this is because the streaming involves ActiveX controls, IIRC, as the videos aren't JUST videos when you're watching them on a webpage, but they're embedded into widgets that pull the video off the server... and TCPMP is not a web browser by any stretch of the imagination.

Or else it just takes up too much CPU time, unlike WMV which may be able to use some of the built-in decoding features of various mobile CPU's. Remember, this IS a first release, so we may not be seeing it as 'feature complete' as the authors intended.
.

I can watch flvs saved on another computer and stream them to another computer and they play fine. Also, there is a direct path to flvs on most sites. It just has to use some weird formula to find it out using the url.

But flvs are large, and u may need the whole file downloaded in order to play it. This may be the limitation of it. Although, you can start watching youtube clips before they are all the way downloaded.

Menneisyys · 06-29-07, 04:02 AM

Don;t forget to check out http://www.aximsite.com/boards/tips-...be-videos.html , folks!