Friday, December 18, 2009

Minitube: YouTube Without Flash

Minitube is a native YouTube client that does not require the Flash Player. It's currently in a "Technology Preview" release but has come a long way since I first started using it a couple months back. Minitube aims to create a new TV-like experience by allowing you to type in a keyword and have an endless video stream of content play.

Minitube

I like using Minitube to watch or listen to videos while I work in Firefox. It's much lighter on resources than flash in Firefox/Chrome and I no longer have to worry about my browser crashing and losing data because I want to check out a link my buddy sent me or listen to Jermaine Stewart.

To install Minitube in Kamric or higher,
in a terminal type:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neversfelde/ppa
- to add the Minintube PPA and GPG Key

sudo apt-get update
- to update your repository

sudo apt-get install minitube phonon-backend-gstreamer
- to install Minitube and the photon backend to gstreamer

If you are using Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope or older you must add the Minitube PPA manually.

If your having problem with video playback, make sure you've installed the necessary codecs.
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
- will take of of all your codec problems.



Have a question or problem that this article doesn't cover?
Ask our Ubuntu Mini 9 Google Group for help.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

For those of us unfortunate enough to have a low-bandwidth internet connection, note that Minitube does not buffer the video, so it will be really choppy. In that case, you're stuck with the traditional flash-based youtube.

Unknown said...

YouTube HTML5-ifier is an extension for chrome that will convert the video from a youtube page to an html5 embedded video that will play right in Chrome without flash. Seems to work pretty good for me, although full screen doesn't work. Otherwise Boxee is still my choice for watching video, even hulu plays well with it.

redDEAD said...

kpprom,

It's been a while since I tried Boxee, I think I'm going to have to give it another go now. Didn't realize Hulu worked on it.