FFAStrans forum

The Youtube processor is a front end for youtube-dl. Youtube-dl is designed to take URLs directly in the form https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blahblah. When using the Youtube processor it expects a "file" input in the form of a shortcut ( *.lnk *.url *.website) and FFAStrans deals with converting that shortcut/link into a url youtube-dl understands. This works great if you can access the watch folder as you just drag and drop the url directly from the browser bar. This doesn't work well if you only have access to the WebUI. You have to create a shortcut locally, upload the shortcut (it only seems to work with *.website) and then load that file into the workflow, which is a really long inefficient way of passing a URL to this workflow.

What would be very handy is to allow the youtube processor to accept URL addresses directly from the start processor drop down. In the current configuration I can already add a URL, but the watch folders expect files and the job fails. The youtube processor isn't in the Start Processor selection list. So maybe another way to word the feature request is allow direct URL submits to the youtube processor? Or maybe a special youtube only watch folder that can deal with URLs?

It's also very possible I've missed the easy way to do this that already exists!

Hey @crispyjones,

yeah, i tried the same and wondered... but the youtube decoder currently only accepts .url files as input, no direct url strings.
What you should do is to start with a generate text file processor and create the .url file for the youtube decoder like that:

Text Field: Text File name: Folder: Check "set text file as source" at bottom.

After that, connect the youtube decoder to the output of the text file processor.

By the way, i really need to push an update with a correctly sized version of the "french helmet", people may think that momocampo has a bigger one than steinar and me

Taking this one step further, you could use a browser extension like "add to any" for chrome, which gives you a custom button on the browser, near to the url bar. By pressing this button, the current url is taken and posted to a new website:
http://HOST_OF_FFASTRANS:3002/webinterface/components/jobstarter.html?file=${link}

This way, the jobstarter page opens in standalone mode, and the url is already "added" to the list of to be submitted files.

Hello guys,

To be honest I really don't know what is the problem with my "French helmet" ...
It's because I have a bigger head than Steinar and you Encodem

Hah, I did not realize it was a French helmet! I saw it as some oddly folded cowboy hat and wondered "who is the american working on this?"

The add to any chrome extension is a brilliant idea, thank you!

ohhhh myyy goodddd...
Poor Napoleon, I think he is crying from his grave. Napoleon, pardonne leur

I see it now
Just making sure this guy isn't on your dev team. Seriously though this is an amazing tool, thanks for all you do.

Cooolll, thanks a lot crispy
you're right, the mistake is possible but I really don't think it is French food....
See you friend !

B.

@crispyjones
actually i tested the "add to any" integration, it did not work because it was not foreseen to post url's as file parameter. Anway, in 1.0.1 this is soved. If you go to the webinterface thread and download the newest version of the webint (just replace server.exe), you will be able to use the "add to any" stuff if you wish to.

Upgraded to 1.01 and it now works with the extensions "AddToAny" perfectly.

Resurrecting this thread because a strange issue has popped up. In my "normal" youtube workflow a user drops a file (*.lnk,*.url,*website) into the watchfolder, this shortcut's name is the name of the web video like "Hilarious catvideo you won't believe what happens next!!!! " I have a populate variable processor that shortens/regexs it to create user variable %newname%. My folder processor drops the original filename and uses %newname% so the final file is something my downstream system can understand. In this example the final file would be named something like HilariousCatvideoYouWontBel.mxf.

In the websubmit version the "create text file" is the input instead of a watch folder. It creates a file named link.url with the hyperlink as the URL parameter, let's use this as an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7CZcd-UYmU. Instead of my downstream processors seeing the file name as link.url like I expected, it sees the URL as the name like this watch?v=U7CZcd-UYmU, so my output file has a name like Watchvu7Czcduymu.mxf, when I expected link.mxf. Things got a bit strange when I changed the folder processor and removed %newname% and unchecked "drop original name." The file output was One Eternity Later - SpongeBob Time Card #9 - YouTube.mxf which is the actual name of the video on Youtube. After poking around the JSON files it looks like there is a key called "pretty_name" and before the youtube processor its value is the URL and after it is the web video name. That's actually great, sort of, because I'd rather have pretty_name be the name of the output file as that would make more sense to the user *but* I can't access this as a ffastrans variable anywhere to parse it. I run the risk of an emoji laden cat video breaking my downstream system because I can't regex the variable.

I don't know if this is a feature request, help request, or bug report. I can't find that pretty_name variable anywhere, even from the API (even looked at the one at port 3003). It seems like the only way to get at this pretty_name might be with a custom processor?