Gnash Youtube
February 25, 2010
I love to test new GNU/Linux distributions. Some time ago i was playing around with Trisquel GNU/Linux, a very nice linux distro. The main goal of that distribution is to have ONLY free software in there, and to have a complete and good OS at the same time.
Now, as we all know, flash is a big issue on Linux systems. The complete open solution to play flash videos is Gnash, the GNU flash player. That is also the flash player you can install on Trisquel. I had some problems viewing youtube videos though, but i found out that the embed player did work! So i made a greasemonkey script to replace the default youtube video player by the ’embed’ player. here it is:
click here for the script (version1)
click here for the script (version2)
click here for the git repository
You’ll need Firefox, IceCat or IceWeasel (completely free versions of Firefox) or Abrowser (UI-stripped and completely Free Software version of Firefox) with the add-on ‘GreaseMonkey‘ for this to work.
Toon
Toon's UNIX recipes and nasty computer thoughts 
April 26, 2010 at 8:33 am
I’m having the same problem. But I can’t get your script to work. I think the problem might be that youtube updated the interface. Are you still using this?
April 26, 2010 at 10:10 am
I wrote a new version of the script because of your comment, it should work:
http://muziekkamp.vndv.com/turanct/YouTube%20Gnash%20Script%20v2.txt
regards
Toon
April 26, 2010 at 10:35 am
It works. Thanks a lot.
April 26, 2010 at 11:57 am
you’re welcome
regards
Toon
May 20, 2010 at 11:24 pm
Hi! I recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 on an old iBook G4 of a friend of mine. With your script I was able to view Youtube videos using Gnash but they are really slow. Have anyone had a similar issue?
The computer is old but not as that old to not properly display Youtube videos. It works without problem in Mac OS.
I also tried to locate the video to play it with a external player. In my Ubuntu 10.04 64bits running with Flash the video is saved in the /tmp but apparently the same does not happen with Gnash. Does anyone knows where Gnash saves the videos?
Thanks, Rodrigo.
June 19, 2010 at 12:27 pm
[…] support is brought by a Greasemonkey user script available at: https://turanct.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/gnash-youtube/ The only tiny drawback is that the videos load in pause mode. For now, everything else seems to […]
June 19, 2010 at 9:39 pm
Thanks!!! 😀
July 3, 2010 at 9:20 am
Hello.
I’ve slightly modified your script and added the support of system’s locale. Now the player, for example, shows the button “Replay” at the end of the video in your locale’s language.
// ==UserScript==
// @name YouTube Gnash Script
// @namespace http://*.youtube.com/watch?v=*
// @description Enables Gnash Playback On YouTube
// @include http://*.youtube.com/watch?v=*
// ==/UserScript==
var goodlink, goodlink2;
var player_language;
if ( navigator ) {
if ( navigator.language ) {
player_language = navigator.language;
}
else if ( navigator.browserLanguage ) {
player_language = navigator.browserLanguage;
}
else if ( navigator.systemLanguage ) {
player_language = navigator.systemLanguage;
}
else if ( navigator.userLanguage ) {
player_language = navigator.userLanguage;
}
}
goodlink = document.getElementsByTagName(“link”).item(4).href;
goodlink2 = goodlink.replace(/.*watch\?v=(.*)/i, “$1”);
goodlink2 = “http://www.youtube.com/v/”+goodlink2;
goodlink2 = “”;
document.getElementById(“watch-video”).innerHTML = goodlink2;
I’m sorry, but I’m too lazy to describe the modifications made. It’s really easy to see, and even easier if you compare the old and the new versions using ‘diff’ on a *nix system.
I am very grateful to you for your script, it really helped me to get rid of the problem which plagued me about a month or so! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Best regards
Stanislav
July 4, 2010 at 7:16 pm
interesting, Stanislav. Thank you for your input
regards
musictoto
August 18, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Hi,
I do have a lot of troubles using youtube on linux (currently using ubuntu 10.04) on my eeepc (1201n). The reason is pretty simple, (adobe’s) flash for linux does not support GPUs at all.
because of this article http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzU1MA I found out that gnash now supports VA API and I will give it a try today or tomorrow using your script.
I hope it works, because I’m kind of youtube adicted 😉 and that keeps me using windows 7 which … nja
Thx for the script in advance
kajdo
January 30, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Hi,
Stucked in the same kind of problem I tried to get your script instead I received an 404 error?
Would you mind to actualize the link once again, it should help many people around! trying to get out of Flash player and their so many update.
HTML5 will clean all this mess :o))
August 4, 2013 at 5:08 pm
[…] you could already read in the past, I’ve been experimenting with Flash Player and YouTube for some time now. The conclusion is: […]