Monday, September 30, 2013

GMediaFinder, a Minitube like Youtube player


Playing YouTube videos on a slow country internet connection that barely resembles broadband, I decided to hunt around for an alternative.

Playing the videos through a standard Chrome or Firefox browser window just wasn't going to cut it.

I needed something that would cut out all the other "fat" on the page, and just give me the stream. I had success earlier with a program called Minitube, but only if I downloaded the newest deb myself, and installed it with something like GDebi.

I wanted something with a ppa so I could get updates.

I will tell you now, that in ways, Minitube in it's heyday was far better. It currently doesn't work for me at all, so I am introducing an alternative.

GMediaFinder is a little clunky, has timed out from errors unbeknownst to me on rare occasion, as is just not polished.

All that said, it actually works well. It's faster than YouTube from a browser window, and actually can play video very well for me. Minitube refused to even give me search results last time I fired it up, which was several months ago.

Here's a shot of GMediaFinder playing a children's YouTube video fond to my nephews:


This article may seem negative toward GMediaFinder but it's not. It's still the best option I have found for playing YouTube.

I just want to be honest in my portrayal of the software.

To install GMediaFinder, open a terminal and then type each of these lines in (or copy and paste):

 sudo apt-add-repository ppa:s-lagui/ppa
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install gmediafinder

-Denny

(P.S. In case you where wondering, the video is called the "Elephant song".)

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