Google Video Player For Linux
Friday June 16, 2006
Got your attention, did I?
I run Linux on my Apple G4 Powerbook, which means that I don’t have the luxury of such niceties as… oh, I don’t know… FLASH!?!?! So I was happy to find that even though I can’t view Google Video’s Flash-based movies, I can easily enough still play them on my G4 Powerbook running PPC Linux. I whipped up a very simple and quick little script for it, as follows:
#!/bin/bash
PLAYER=kaffeine
INFILE=$*
TMPFILE=”/tmp/$(basename $0).tmp”
echo “got->${INFILE}< -... going to work..." cp "${INFILE}" "${TMPFILE}" URL=$(grep 'url' ${TMPFILE} | sed 's,url:,,' ) ${PLAYER} "${URL}"
I then saved in in ~/bin/google-video-player.sh and chmod +755’d it. I then clicked on the download link on google video’s pages, told Konqueror (or Firefox, Opera, etc., etc.) to open the file with my little script, and sat back and enjoyed as kaffeine (or xine or whatever you like to use) opened up and played the video for me.
Now, Google, don’t you think it would be very non-evil of you to provide a player for Linux PPC yourself? =;)
Trying to view this in Linux, offline, not using a web-browser.
In Windows its possible using Google Video Player, but what would I need in Linux to view gvi files ?
Hey there.
Um.
Well, you’ll need a Linux video player, like xine, kaffeine, mplayer, totem, etc. But I believe that gvi files are nothing more than text files which point to the real .avi/.mpg/.wmv/.etc files, which is why I needed this simplistic script.
When I do a manual download from google videos, I get a tiny .gvp file that contains the url, duration and docid info. When open the gvp file, Google Video Player downloads the entire .gvi file to My Documents and I can later view this gvi file offline using Google Video Player.
Actually, when you open the gvp file for the 1st time, it allocates space for the entier gvi file storing the info in the gvi itself. So if you delete the gvp file, you can still continue downloading the gvi, even part-download and download later.
I thought this format is google’s-only format, which is why I dont understand how any other video player can open this file. Media Player Classic couldnt open it.
Right. The problem I had is that I use Linux on the PowerPC platform (not Intel x86), and there is no Google Video Player for Linux PowerPC. That’s why I wrote the little script above. No other video player can open the google video format file.
Did you look at the script I wrote?
I opened the gvi in Media Player Classic and it worked ! Its no Google-only video format. These seem to be divx files though.
So any player on linux able to read divx should be able to play gvi files.
Gvi2Avi seems to convert them to avi in a simple manner.
I had to modify your script to make it work, you used the character ” instead of ” some places in your script, else it works splendid, here is the updated script:
#!/bin/bash
PLAYER=kaffeine
INFILE=$*
TMPFILE=”./$(basename $0).tmp”
echo “got->${INFILE}
#!/bin/bash
PLAYER=kaffeine
INFILE=$*
TMPFILE=”./$(basename $0).tmp”
echo “got->${INFILE}
Well.. apparently I can’t paste the whole updated script, I guess you understood what i meant.
Heh. Yep, I get the idea. =:)
Thanks Robert!! =:)
Google video now lets you download the movie in .avi format so theres no need for this any more. Nice idea tho! 😀