YouTube Issues?

I sell a few systems both from the DTV store in Wainscot and on XChange Street that use video from YouTube. I have been contacted today by a couple of owners who have told me that they are now only getting black screens when they click play.

I have investigated a bit further and it seems that my players are working as they're supposed to. As are the DTV servers on the web. I've also tried grabbing the MP4 videos from YouTube in the same method that my systems use and that also works.

At first I thought it was a problem with DTV devices but one user has told me that he bought one after a player from another manufacturer stopped working.

So, is anyone aware of any problems? It seems that the break in the link is with SL, so either SL itself has stopped supporting the videos, or YouTube have started to block requests that come from an SL client (I assume they can do that?). I need to get to the bottom of it though, as soon as I can.

Same here..

I have one player that i make just for fun and to give to friends..

I have one parser running in an webserver that generate the URL sending back to my player.. using Torley`s video method.

Since yesterday the URL my parser sendback didnt work or match the same when get the mp4 url using the javascript code..

i didnt had time to investigate this yet...

Nope cant get You tube to work on my tv says server error

Just an idea, might be related to Youtube.de blocking all official music videos now because they are having a fight with the GEMA (the german version of the RIAA). Maybe your customers are from germany, and they try to use music videos that are not streamed anymore to a german IP addy.

Nice timing, a tenant just tp'd to show me her non working telly

well I am from the US so dont think I am blocked. Trying to figure out who to ask about this. But quite a few are kind of mystified.

Bec

To mystify it even more.
My youtube videoplayer works fine.

ok Ron give it up lol. How do you get yours to work


Bec

Same now in the UK with music videos being blocked. So many countries are having this? Maybe due to changes and all the blockings being put into place it's effecting it generally.

But if I go to the YouTube site and use the javascript I can download the video, so how is this different?

Ron, I wondered if yours uses YouTubeMP4.com maybe? Different to most

[edit]I take it back; YouTubeMP4.com appears to be down anyway[/edit]

The way I've done it:

<?PHP
/*
input  = "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRGnDxqVdZQ"														(YouTube video url)

output = "http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=nRGnDxqVdZQ&t=OEgsToPDskKbDYZCzvvEY6P-is0Z3r5G&fmt=18"  (YouTube mp4 url)
 
Only signature 't' changes with each call on YouTube.
*/

if(isset($_POST["video"])) {
	$url = trim($_POST["video"]);

	$len = strlen($url);
	$video_id = substr($url,31,$len-31);

	$filepointer = fopen($url,"r");
	$file = "";
	if($filepointer){
		while(!feof($filepointer)){
			$buffer = fgets($filepointer, 4096);
			$file .= $buffer;
		}
		fclose($filepointer);
	} else die("Could not create a connection to YouTube");    

	$swfArgs = strstr($file,"var swfArgs");
	$start = strstr($swfArgs,'"t":');
	$end = strpos($start,",");
	$sig = trim(substr($start,0,$end));
	$t = substr($sig,6,-1);

	$URL = "http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=" . $video_id . "&t=" . $t . "&fmt=18";
	echo $URL;
} else echo "No video URL posted!";
?> 

just adding the "&fmt=18" makes it mp4.

Not all videos have a mp4 version though.

You can use json_decode() to process the swfArgs variable if that helps, though with YouTube apparently not giving it to us we can't use it anyway.

I did create a Yahoo pipe that processed it too, but I couldn't use that because Yahoo objected to the number of requests that were being dumped on it

Yea, any solution or php script I can find isn't working. The URL's YouTube is giving them seem to lead to 403 Forbidden

Ya, I was just using the youtubemp4.com directly as my media URL on parcel - that seemed to stop working yesterday as well.

Wednesday around 22:00 (BST) youtube were advertising . "site due for maintainance at 7PM PST ". Since then I hav'nt been able to link from SL . though as posted above can still capture video from the site.

Maybe a coincidence.

In-world objects that attempt to parse for the video key themselves have their own problem. The key is just about on the limit of where SL cuts off html responses at 2K. Youtube may have added a few bytes before the key to push it over the limit.

LL really needs to increase the number of bytes in html responses to something that makes sense in 2009.

Ron, the URLs created by your script don't work anymore. I got it to work once or twice, and now it's just not working. The strings it returns look like the ones youtube creates and they're the same length, but they don't work as media URLs.

EDIT: Correction: If I run it from my desktop it creates working URLs. If I run it from my web server it creates URLs that don't work. The codes it's returning in either case look to be the same form.

No frickin' clue.

Well, I'm just an amateur without a real understanding of what I'm doing when making scripts . I do know the scripts, both inworld and under my apache webserver, are working fine.

I made a object inworld to test what Anya said:

message posted to serverscript: "video=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to9xb2sNo5Q"

body of http_response: "http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=to9xb2sNo5Q&t=vjVQa1PpcFMzlXt64wnveKafooSeq0boMQRlSM_vhko=&fmt=18"

Which is just as it's supposed to be, and the video does play.
Me and my server are located in Holland. Maybe that's a factor.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

I agree that SL need to increase the 2K limit, but the information in the YouTube page is actually just over 2K already, so I'd be amazed if any LSL was doing all the work. That's why we all use a webserver to do the work instead.

I'm still looking in to why mine works via FireFox but not via SL

If you are regarding music videos, a lot of them are getting banned here in the UK and other country's.

I'm not in the UK and this affects all videos, not just music videos.

Landing, I appreciate you investigating this. Our players on two separate parcels stopped working completely despite some time consuming trouble shooting. The vid we are streaming isn't music, it's a product vid we uploaded to show customers how our homing birds "behave." I hope there is a fix for this, as it was a valuable marketing tool.

I have worked a bit more out today, but have yet to fully implement it in the DTV players. At the risk of giving competitors an edge I'll give you a hint to the route that I was taking:

When you enter a working URL in a web-browser, you don't actually get the video from the URL that you requested. Instead, you are sent to another URL which is completely different and even includes your IP address. When I used this URL in SL I was able to get a video to play.

Here is an example that I've made earlier:

Original YouTube URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXSovfzyx28

URL From Script:
http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=22&video_id=fXSovfzyx28&t=vjVQa1PpcFMjQlXllJCeP5DiV7QYy1m9UITV1iO3JkI=

Actual URL:
http://74.125.4.157/videoplayback?id=7d74a8bdfcf2c76f&itag=22&sparams=id%2Cexpire%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag&ip=MY_IP_ADDRESS&signature=10BB16DCC90489488F341AFA99746AD4E2F834DA.C92D9B4C27F848E914CAC0AE80EAFD67FA8B1470&sver=3&expire=1238940802&key=yt1&ipbits=0

I should imagine that since the IP that is retrieved would be that of the webserver, or even SL's servers, that we have a problem here.

Also, the last time I tried it, I got this URL:

http://v4.lscache8.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?id=7d74a8bdfcf2c76f&itag=18&sparams=id%2Cexpire%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag&ip=MY_IP_ADDRESS&signature=2CF2907E37435C0148F604AEBE124FF7DEE7C326.BD18FE548BFBF3DD27A07F07D59B794CAD54895B&sver=3&expire=1238967175&key=yt1&ipbits=0

These URLs don't seem to work in SL just yet.

Another important note is a new variable in the YouTube page, which is "isHDAvailable". If this is "true" then the fmt part of your URL must be 22, otherwise 18. I tried to change it to 18 for an HD video and the URL stopped working. The downside to using fmt=22 being that my connection struggled to keep up with SL and the HD stream at the same time, so users will get jerky video playback, although the sound was fine.

I checked how much data needed to be retrieved to get all this data and it's 2,611 bytes, so still over the 2Kb LSL limit.

More investigation to be done!

Worked out why the http://v4.lscache8.googlevideo.com/ URLs aren't working: They're too big for the parcel dialogue. Replace the domain with http://74.125.4.157/ and it now fits.

I need to play around a little with the IP address though to see whether other people can watch that video or not.