PPCMC 7 is now 1.5 years old, and has seen 25 updates since version 7.0.
Recently it has come to my attention that something weird is going on with using VLC and QuickTime to watch YouTube livestreams. Apparently Google changed something, I think it’s to do with the codec/format somehow although it’s still H.264 MP4 from what I can tell.
However FFPlay, with its 100% up to date dependencies and supported codecs still works perfectly!
R.I.P. VLC and QuickTime live-streaming of YouTube videos on PowerPC, and hopefully long live FFplay and it’s ability to stream them. The FFplay is just as modern if not more then any Linux distro/package manager provides currently (v4.4 is in PPCMC 7.2.5). VLC and QuickTime on even Leopard are getting up there in age, and this was inevitable at some point. And FFplay even works on Mac OS X 10.3.9!
Thanks to @B S Magnet for first bringing up this issue and providing an example live stream for me to play with, this made it incredibly easy to debug the issue. I also saw someone post on the Macintosh Garden PPCMC 7 page comments that they managed to get a live stream to work in FFplay after failing to use VLC.
They even posted a GitHub issue on YouTube-DL! Amazing, the YouTube-DL developers read a log with this in it (they were using an older PPCMC version before switching to the latest 7.2.5):
ffmpeg version 4.3.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2020 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 4.0.1 (GCC) (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5363)
configuration: --prefix=/Applications/PPCMC.app --enable-altivec --extra-libs=-L/Applications/PPCMC.app/lib --extra-ldflags=-L/Applications/PPCMC.app/lib --extra-cflags='-arch ppc7450 -I/Applications/PPCMC.app/include/SDL2 -D_THREAD_SAFE -I/Applications/PPCMC.app/include' --enable-libmp3lame --enable-zlib --disable-iconv --enable-openssl --enable-static --enable-sdl --enable-outdev=sdl2 --disable-htmlpages
libavutil 56. 51.100 / 56. 51.100
libavcodec 58. 91.100 / 58. 91.100
libavformat 58. 45.100 / 58. 45.100
libavdevice 58. 10.100 / 58. 10.100
libavfilter 7. 85.100 / 7. 85.100
libswscale 5. 7.100 / 5. 7.100
libswresample 3. 7.100 / 3. 7.100
QuickTime and VLC appear to still work for normal YouTube video uploads, by the way.
Now on to the next issue, it appears at least from other users of PPCMC7 that the only way to watch YouTube live streams now is with PPCMC7. TenFiveTube apparently does not work anymore for livestreams at least. This isn’t great as now there is one single point of possible failure for the entire community if PPCMC7 breaks. I love our forum’s little PowerPC Mac OS X YouTube app war. Just a reminder, PPCMC7’s AppleScript code is available and is public domain, you don’t even need to credit me in using it because the public owns the copyright (at least in the US, some countries are weird with not allowing this kind of thing). I’d love to be credited if the code helps you, but you don’t have to. Hopefully this helps other PowerPC YouTube app developers here to make YouTube livestreams work again with their software:
Feel free to open a GitHub Issue on PPCMC7, message me directly on the forums/leave a post on the official MacRumors PPCMC7 thread, or a comment on the PPCMC 7.x Macintosh Garden the page about errors or feedback on PPCMC 7.
Lastly, the age gate issue. I don’t understand what’s going on with YouTube-dl not fixing this for MONTHS. This is incredibly frustrating as age gated videos require you to make a YouTube account. Which requires you to give Google your phone number. Which ends with car warranty scam calls (yes I know that my car which is older then me has an expired warranty). Age gated stuff used to be bypassed in PPCMC7, but around February or so of this year that broke and just hasn’t been fixed. I’m going to look into other YouTube-dl forks which may fix this (like YouTube-dlc, which I switched too when YouTube-dl got DMCA’d on GitHub, and then YouTube-dlc died in development, only to return recently to active development status). I will add an option to even allow any YouTube-dl hit repo to be used to make this even more future proof.
I am hoping to get a PPCMC 7 update out this month. The goal is every 2 months, every month is more ideal but things have been slightly chaotic for me.
For historical reasons, here’s the YouTube NASA livestream on Panther using VLC:
Recently it has come to my attention that something weird is going on with using VLC and QuickTime to watch YouTube livestreams. Apparently Google changed something, I think it’s to do with the codec/format somehow although it’s still H.264 MP4 from what I can tell.
However FFPlay, with its 100% up to date dependencies and supported codecs still works perfectly!
R.I.P. VLC and QuickTime live-streaming of YouTube videos on PowerPC, and hopefully long live FFplay and it’s ability to stream them. The FFplay is just as modern if not more then any Linux distro/package manager provides currently (v4.4 is in PPCMC 7.2.5). VLC and QuickTime on even Leopard are getting up there in age, and this was inevitable at some point. And FFplay even works on Mac OS X 10.3.9!
Thanks to @B S Magnet for first bringing up this issue and providing an example live stream for me to play with, this made it incredibly easy to debug the issue. I also saw someone post on the Macintosh Garden PPCMC 7 page comments that they managed to get a live stream to work in FFplay after failing to use VLC.
They even posted a GitHub issue on YouTube-DL! Amazing, the YouTube-DL developers read a log with this in it (they were using an older PPCMC version before switching to the latest 7.2.5):
ffmpeg version 4.3.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2020 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 4.0.1 (GCC) (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5363)
configuration: --prefix=/Applications/PPCMC.app --enable-altivec --extra-libs=-L/Applications/PPCMC.app/lib --extra-ldflags=-L/Applications/PPCMC.app/lib --extra-cflags='-arch ppc7450 -I/Applications/PPCMC.app/include/SDL2 -D_THREAD_SAFE -I/Applications/PPCMC.app/include' --enable-libmp3lame --enable-zlib --disable-iconv --enable-openssl --enable-static --enable-sdl --enable-outdev=sdl2 --disable-htmlpages
libavutil 56. 51.100 / 56. 51.100
libavcodec 58. 91.100 / 58. 91.100
libavformat 58. 45.100 / 58. 45.100
libavdevice 58. 10.100 / 58. 10.100
libavfilter 7. 85.100 / 7. 85.100
libswscale 5. 7.100 / 5. 7.100
libswresample 3. 7.100 / 3. 7.100
QuickTime and VLC appear to still work for normal YouTube video uploads, by the way.
Now on to the next issue, it appears at least from other users of PPCMC7 that the only way to watch YouTube live streams now is with PPCMC7. TenFiveTube apparently does not work anymore for livestreams at least. This isn’t great as now there is one single point of possible failure for the entire community if PPCMC7 breaks. I love our forum’s little PowerPC Mac OS X YouTube app war. Just a reminder, PPCMC7’s AppleScript code is available and is public domain, you don’t even need to credit me in using it because the public owns the copyright (at least in the US, some countries are weird with not allowing this kind of thing). I’d love to be credited if the code helps you, but you don’t have to. Hopefully this helps other PowerPC YouTube app developers here to make YouTube livestreams work again with their software:
powerpc-media-center/PPCMC.applescript at master · alex-free/powerpc-media-center
Contribute to alex-free/powerpc-media-center development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
Feel free to open a GitHub Issue on PPCMC7, message me directly on the forums/leave a post on the official MacRumors PPCMC7 thread, or a comment on the PPCMC 7.x Macintosh Garden the page about errors or feedback on PPCMC 7.
Lastly, the age gate issue. I don’t understand what’s going on with YouTube-dl not fixing this for MONTHS. This is incredibly frustrating as age gated videos require you to make a YouTube account. Which requires you to give Google your phone number. Which ends with car warranty scam calls (yes I know that my car which is older then me has an expired warranty). Age gated stuff used to be bypassed in PPCMC7, but around February or so of this year that broke and just hasn’t been fixed. I’m going to look into other YouTube-dl forks which may fix this (like YouTube-dlc, which I switched too when YouTube-dl got DMCA’d on GitHub, and then YouTube-dlc died in development, only to return recently to active development status). I will add an option to even allow any YouTube-dl hit repo to be used to make this even more future proof.
I am hoping to get a PPCMC 7 update out this month. The goal is every 2 months, every month is more ideal but things have been slightly chaotic for me.
For historical reasons, here’s the YouTube NASA livestream on Panther using VLC:
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