12-11-2021 - PPCMC 7.2.6 - YouTube/Twitch Streaming, Downloading, File Conversion, Web Interface, & More For Panther-Leopard PPC/Intel

[B S Magnet]

Epic! V7.2.3 was built on Leopard, and for what ever reason that made FFplay and FFmpeg crash on G3’s.

I ended up upgrading my Mac mini G4 to Tiger awhile ago. And just by building on Tiger, that fixed that issue, and I guess now the Snow Leopard issue.

I don’t follow the logic of how building on an older OS makes it work on a newer one but I will not question it, v7.2.5 was built using a rewritten build system as well. That’s awesome. Quite ironic I just updated the documentation to say it doesn’t work on Snow Leopard.

Yah I honestly can’t say.

Though somewhere in all that, I imagine a Tiger build might cast a wider net. Tiger was the one major version of OS X which was pieced together to do more for more situations (like continuing to support Classic mode; support for 32-bit G3s through 64-bit Intel; and even maintaining SDK support for 10.3.9), and it had more time to be refined and tweaked to run equally well on both major architecture families. Contrast that with Leopard, which was aiming high for Intel optimization, was less optimized and less refined than its own successor, and it dropped a lot of legacy stuff which existed in Tiger.

That would be my best guess.

Also, added PPCMC 7.2.5 to Appendix A on the Snow Leopard for PowerPC WikiPost.

 

[alex_free]

Something I haven’t really mentioned on the forums but that I did add to the user guide of v7.2.5 are the CD options. I know it’s not 2005 anymore but these were fun features to add.

Burning And Ripping CDs​

As of PowerPC Media Center 7.2.4, PowerPC Media Center can burn and rip CDs. To use this functionality, Open PPCMC.app, and double click CD Options. You will be presented with the following options:

• Burn Audio CD - Allows you to select an existing .toc or .cue file and burn a standard audio CD
• Burn Data CD Or Mixed Mode Data+Audio CD - Allows you to select an existing .toc or .cue file and burn either a data-only CD or a mixed mode CD with both audio and data. This option works for burning PSX/Playstation 1 backups and homebrew CDs. Other consoles like the Sega Saturn and Sega CD will also probably work with this option as it byte swaps audio data in mixed mode CDs automatically.
• Burn Folder Of WAVs To Audio CD - Allows you to select an existing folder of *.WAV and or *.wav files to burn as a standard audio CD. This will also automatically create a .cue file in the folder of *.WAV and or *.wav files for future use, such as with the previously mentioned Burn Audio CD option in PPCMC7.
• Convert And Burn Folder Of Media Files To Audio CD - Allows you to select an existing folder containing any media file type, automatically convert it to .wav, generate a .cue file, and then burn it to a standard Audio CD.
• Rip Audio CD - Rips a standard Audio CD in raw mode.
• Rip Data CD Or Mixed Mode Data+Audio CD - Rips a data or mixed mode data+audio cd in raw mode. This option works for burning PSX/Playstation 1 backups and homebrew CDs. Other consoles like the Sega Saturn and Sega CD will also probably work with this option. Disregard the audio byte swap message at the end of ripping as PPCMC7 automatically does this when burning mixed mode data+audio CDs.

 

[alex_free]

I’ve said it before, but please archive data! One of my favorite artists had an entire unreleased album leaked. From what I can tell no action was taken from the artist themselves, but since they’ve passed it was taken down from YouTube and then uploaded to SoundCloud. Now the SoundCloud upload was taken down, but I downloaded it from SoundCloud using PPCMC 7 months ago! I don't even know the track names since it was deleted from YouTube, the soundcloud MP3 was just like 38 minutes of audio.
I think I now have 3 files no one else has, or has re uploaded.

 

[alex_free]

I'm in awe of the speed boast of using PPCMC 7.2.5. It's like 3x faster IIRC from older versions on my iBook G4! Using YouTube-dl's .py script directly and updating it via git was totally worth it! Please leave feedback on the new update.This is my most important project.

 

[Dronecatcher]

I'm in awe of the speed boast of using PPCMC 7.2.5. It's like 3x faster IIRC from older versions on my iBook G4!

Agreed - that one step of not de-compressing youtube-dl is really felt on G3s, like you said, at least 3 times quicker.
It's a brilliant improvement @alex_free

Alas, as expected none of my shortcut scripts will work with the new version but I will re-write them eventually.

 

[alex_free]

Agreed - that one step of not de-compressing youtube-dl is really felt on G3s, like you said, at least 3 times quicker.
It's a brilliant improvement @alex_free

Alas, as expected none of my shortcut scripts will work with the new version but I will re-write them eventually.

Like Steve Jobs once said, good artists copy. Great artists steal.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Like Steve Jobs once said, good artists copy. Great artists steal.

I remember when he said that during his interview for the Triumph of the Nerds documentary and I've always loved the intertextual irony behind the origin of that very quote.

(Good work btw.)

 

[alex_free]

I remember when he said that during his interview for the Triumph of the Nerds documentary and I've always loved the intertextual irony behind the origin of that very quote.

(Good work btw.)

The man has such a legacy… (btw thanks random raspberry PI poster from 2014 I found on Google)

 

[alex_free]

Agreed - that one step of not de-compressing youtube-dl is really felt on G3s, like you said, at least 3 times quicker.
It's a brilliant improvement @alex_free

Alas, as expected none of my shortcut scripts will work with the new version but I will re-write them eventually.

What’s your time from selecting an option to streaming/downloading? On my iBook G4 it’s around 10 seconds (used to be 30 seconds!)

 

[Dronecatcher]

What’s your time from selecting an option to streaming/downloading? On my iBook G4 it’s around 10 seconds (used to be 30 seconds!)

16 seconds on my 900Mhz G3 iBook - used to be a fair bit longer.

 

[B S Magnet]

A couple of new testing notes, using my A1261 running 10.6.8 and PPCMC 7.2.5 in Rosetta:

The first is more general: on first run, when the script asks to find the preferred video player (in this case, VLC), I cannot select VLC unless the file name itself is exactly “VLC.app”. For Snow Leopard and later (especially), I typically have multiple versions of VLC handy, and I denote this in the filename (in this case, this Mac has both “VLC 2.0.10.app” and “VLC 2.2.8”). Unfortunately, I cannot select these unless I make a duplicate of one of those and rename the duplicate as “VLC.app”. This is more inconvenience than a bug.

The second is specific to running 7.2.5 in Rosetta to download a clip at highest quality H.264 MP4. I ran into this error when trying a download. I have no idea what it’s saying:

 

[alex_free]

A couple of new testing notes, using my A1261 running 10.6.8 and PPCMC 7.2.5 in Rosetta:

The first is more general: on first run, when the script asks to find the preferred video player (in this case, VLC), I cannot select VLC unless the file name itself is exactly “VLC.app”. For Snow Leopard and later (especially), I typically have multiple versions of VLC handy, and I denote this in the filename (in this case, this Mac has both “VLC 2.0.10.app” and “VLC 2.2.8”). Unfortunately, I cannot select these unless I make a duplicate of one of those and rename the duplicate as “VLC.app”. This is more inconvenience than a bug.

The second is specific to running 7.2.5 in Rosetta to download a clip at highest quality H.264 MP4. I ran into this error when trying a download. I have no idea what it’s saying:

View attachment 1791108 View attachment 1791110

Thanks for the excellent feedback. I will change how selecting VLC works in v7.2.6. However, you should be able to technically accomplish this in a brute force way in v7.2.5. Edit the preferences, and when asked at the end about if you want to edit the media player command, select yes instead of the default no. A txt file will open which contains the arguments/path of the video player used by all related features. Make sure you use quotes or escape it if the path contains spaces and save the file. Let me know if there's any questions about doing this.

For the Rosetta error, I have no idea and no Intel Mac to further investigate it. Weird idea, but maybe the panther build would be different?

Please tell me, can that Macbook Pro play 1080p with PowerPC FFplay?

 

[B S Magnet]

Thanks for the excellent feedback. I will change how selecting VLC works in v7.2.6. However, you should be able to technically accomplish this in a brute force way in v7.2.5. Edit the preferences, and when asked at the end about if you want to edit the media player command, select yes instead of the default no. A txt file will open which contains the arguments/path of the video player used by all related features. Make sure you use quotes or escape it if the path contains spaces and save the file. Let me know if there's any questions about doing this.

For the Rosetta error, I have no idea and no Intel Mac to further investigate it. Weird idea, but maybe the panther build would be different?

Please tell me, can that Macbook Pro play 1080p with PowerPC FFplay?

Same outcome:

As for playing 1080p, I haven’t tried at all, mostly because this needs a battery (with the Intel Macs, apparently the clock speed is halved without a working battery installed). I have managed to play 480p YT clips, but it choked on a 720p60 clip. There may be a series of playback optimizations at the system level which I haven’t learnt about or tried.

 

[MacFoxG4]

I like 7.2.5. It's faster than 7.2.3. I have tried it on both Leopard (PPC and Intel) and Snow Leopard (Intel) and it is working fine. I also had an issue with downloading videos at Best Available quality (both on 10.5 and 10.6), but in my case, there was no errors but the downloaded file refused to play in both QuickTime and FFPlay. Downloading at 480p works fine though for both Leopard and Snow Leopard.

 

[alex_free]

I like 7.2.5. It's faster than 7.2.3. I have tried it on both Leopard (PPC and Intel) and Snow Leopard (Intel) and it is working fine. I also had an issue with downloading videos at Best Available quality (both on 10.5 and 10.6), but in my case, there was no errors but the downloaded file refused to play in both QuickTime and FFPlay. Downloading at 480p works fine though for both Leopard and Snow Leopard.

Does the downloaded file playback on something like modern VLC? Does v7.2.3 do the same thing as v7.2.5? If both are true then YouTube probably changed something breaking this.

 

[MacFoxG4]

Does the downloaded file playback on something like modern VLC? Does v7.2.3 do the same thing as v7.2.5? If both are true then YouTube probably changed something breaking this.

The downloaded file from 7.2.5 plays back on the latest VLC in Ubuntu 20, but not on the last VLC for Snow Leopard (which is from 2017). In Snow Leopard's VLC I get an error message saying that it doesn't support the av01 codec.

 

[alex_free]

The downloaded file from 7.2.5 plays back on the latest VLC in Ubuntu 20, but not on the last VLC for Snow Leopard (which is from 2017). In Snow Leopard's VLC I get an error message saying that it doesn't support the av01 codec.

I designed the feature as a way to archive the best video possible, could result in unplayable media on some players. FFplay shouldn’t have this issue.

 

[alex_free]

I may be wrong, but IIRC there is some fork of youtube-dl that bypases age restricted videos (why this has not been fixed in the official YouTube-dl for MONTHS I do not know). I don't want to change to this version because I'm already having flash backs of when youtube-dl was DMCA'd from GitHub and I immediately changed PPCMC 7 to use an alternative youtube-dl fork which stopped being updated in 2020. But these age gate errors need to end... This is terrible it's not like im actively looking for NSFW content. YouTube is just restricting anything they want as far as I can tell. it's not even remotely NSFW. I've literally been able to stream a video, then have the same video age gated for months, to only be un-age gated, then age gated again...

The next PPCMC7 might include an unoffical fork at the bare minimum as an option. Google is just getting worse, I've never even got the cookies thing to work on YouTube-dl, which I'm totally against anyways because why do I need to give Google my phone number to make a 18+ account to watch some video they decide are NSFW?

 

[alex_free]

Was just thinking of this conversation with @RogerWilco6502 and @Dronecatcher … such an amazing moment. Dronecatcher had asked if FFplay was possible with PPCMC 7, so I kept banging my head against the wall until it worked 😆.

 

[dextructor]

I know that I've been late to the PPCMC party because tha latest release that I used was before ffplay and I must say @alex_free that I'm more than impressed with the quality that this player have. Ok that I'm testing on the 20" iSight iMac G5, but even with mplayer the frame rate wasn't great and the CPU wasn't taxed above 30% but still wasn't the best experience with 720p. The moment I switched to ffplay of course that CPU was above 80% but even streaming 720p 60fps there's a few framedrop a couple times during the video. I tweaked your script to best fit my needs with support for the other sites that youtube-dl has (didn't have the time to test if all they work flawlessly but so far ok for download and streaming).
The question is: There's anyway to use ffplay directly to open files as CorePlayer or QuickTime besides using the PPCMC interface? How ffplay deals with subtitles?

Thanks!

 

[Dronecatcher]

The question is: There's anyway to use ffplay directly to open files as CorePlayer or QuickTime besides using the PPCMC interface? How ffplay deals with subtitles?

You can make droplets of scripts that point to FFplay as here:

2021 Youtube Player For G3 And Low End

This has been written specifically for @mectojic but will doubtless be useful for anyone trying to make Youtube work on a slow G3. The 'engine' for this is the excellent PPCMC by @alex_free which is an invaluable Swiss Army Knife of utilities all in one place. So, @mectojic after downloading...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[dextructor]

You can make droplets of scripts that point to FFplay as here:

2021 Youtube Player For G3 And Low End

This has been written specifically for @mectojic but will doubtless be useful for anyone trying to make Youtube work on a slow G3. The 'engine' for this is the excellent PPCMC by @alex_free which is an invaluable Swiss Army Knife of utilities all in one place. So, @mectojic after downloading...

forums.macrumors.com

Thanks for the suggestion. I think that it would facilitate, but I mean like an standalone player or file association because OSX doesn't allow "Unix Executable" to be opened outside of the Terminal app.

 

[Dronecatcher]

I mean like an standalone player or file association

I think file association is possible by creating an applet that calls FFplay - when I get time I will try and work it out.

As it is, I find drag and drop to dock links is still a quick way to play files.

 

[alex_free]

I know that I've been late to the PPCMC party because tha latest release that I used was before ffplay and I must say @alex_free that I'm more than impressed with the quality that this player have. Ok that I'm testing on the 20" iSight iMac G5, but even with mplayer the frame rate wasn't great and the CPU wasn't taxed above 30% but still wasn't the best experience with 720p. The moment I switched to ffplay of course that CPU was above 80% but even streaming 720p 60fps there's a few framedrop a couple times during the video. I tweaked your script to best fit my needs with support for the other sites that youtube-dl has (didn't have the time to test if all they work flawlessly but so far ok for download and streaming).
The question is: There's anyway to use ffplay directly to open files as CorePlayer or QuickTime besides using the PPCMC interface? How ffplay deals with subtitles?

Thanks!

That’s awesome, I’ve never used this on anything faster then Mac mini so to hear it can do so well with better hardware is great! I’ll try to do something like this in PPCMC 7.2.6.

 

[MacFoxG4]

Inspired by another thread on here, I updated PPCMC to 7.2.5 on my 700mhz iBook G3’s Panther partition and got pretty good performance streaming a video in FFPlay. Don’t know what the resolution was. I searched for the video using Links2 and copied the link via X11.