YouTube Enhancement Pack

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In post http://www.wiimc.org/forum/posting.php?mode=edit&f=4&p=5697 some alternative Youtube and Shoutcast scripts were posted to replicate those used at wiimc.org but for which the source was not available. This allowed users to utilize their own php servers to access YouTube and Shoutcast.

This “YouTube Enhancement Pack” replaces those scripts and significantly extends the YouTube and Shoutcast search and access capabilities for WIIMC users as documented below. The attached zip includes this document, the 11 scripts and a sample onlinemedia.xml file showing how to invoke these features.

Since these scripts also form the basis of the integrated “YouTube Browse and Explore” feature available with V9 of the WIIMC+ Enhancement Pack, future updates to these scripts will only be distributed to registered users of the Pack.

Note that in the following document, due to the way this forum works, double quots (“) at the end of the sample onlinemedia.xml entries have been replaced by " If you copy these enties be sure to revert the " back to ” .

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YouTube/Shoutcast Enhancement Pack for WIIMC
============================================
Summary
=======
This pack contains a set of PHP scripts to enhance YouTube and Shoutcast Radio access for WIIMC users. They are invoked by entries in onlinemedia.xml and accessed from any EasyPHP server such as that installed by VLC-Shares. For YouTube they provide YouTube User Channel, Playlist, and Enhanced Video Search capability, access to the YouTube Standard Feeds and Most Viewed Channels, and the ability to either view the listed videos and playlists or access the uploads, playlists or favorites of the Users who created or uploaded those sources. These scripts are utilized by WIIMC+ to implement an integrated YouTube Explore capability, but they may be used by WIIMC users as documented below. The Shoutcast Scripts provide enhanced access to Shoutcast Radio Channels.

Some Background
===============
Standard WIIMC uses a set of .php scripts hosted on the WIIMC.ORG server to provide basic search and standard feed access to YouTube Videos and Shoutcast Radio and TV Stations. Since the authors of these scripts chose not to make them available so users could enhance them or run them on their own PHP servers (for example those with VLC-Shares installed) when WIIMC.ORG was out of service earlier this year, a set of replacement PHP scripts providing similar basic search and standard feed access were developed and released, so that users could again access YouTube and Shoutcast Radio via their own servers. Shoutcast TV was not addressed since those channels may also be accessed via NAVI-X which is independent of WIIMC.ORG.

The development of the alternative YouTube scripts was enabled by the availablity of a set of YouTube API’s, and during that development it became obvious that these API’s could be used to enhance WIIMC access to the whole YouTube library by providing the ability to search not only for videos, but also for playlists and user channels, and then provide access to the uploads, playlists and favorites of the authors of those found videos, playlists and channels.

While YouTube consists of individual videos, there is a wealth of material in user organized collections identified as channels, uploads, playlists and favorites. Unfortunately access to YouTube via the simple video search, and standard feed categories provided by WIIMC, only yields ad-hoc collections of videos without benefit of these organized collections. These enhancements extend YouTube access beyond that simple video search, and provide tools to access those user channels, uploads, playlists and favorites. These capabilities effectively allow the browsing of the YouTube library and locating of user organized collections of videos that may be played individually or with the WIIMC+ “Play Next YouTube” enhancement as a playlist to provide many hours of quality content playback.

The YouTube Scripts
===================
The 5 base scripts provide the ability to search by keyword, not only for videos, but also for playlists and channels, and the ability to acccess the YouTube Standard Feeds and Most Viewed User Channels. The displayed results in each case include not only the name of each video, playlist or user channel, but also the userid of the video uploader or channel or playlist author, plus any additional descriptive information provided by the author, and the count of uploads or playlist items as appropriate. This expanded listing allows informed decisions to be made regarding each item.

When the base scripts are used with standard WIIMC, an input m= parameter dictates whether the selection of an entry will play the found video or use the 6th “YouTubePlaylist” script to display the playlist, or use the 7th “YouTubeUserFeeds” script to load the author’s uploads, playlists, or favorites. Parameters are also provided to control the scope and order of the displayed results. This means with WIIMC that the type of output required must be decided before a script is run, and it will require separate runs to examine all the output types, and to chain thru the found items. A sample onlinemedia.xml file is included for use with WIIMC with entries to invoke each base script with the appropriate m= parameter, and requires only the search term or Standard Feed parameters to be entered for each. This means YouTube Exploring is possible but cumbersome with standard WIIMC, however the enhanced listings provided by the base scripts and the ability to search for playlists and channels by themselves provide meaningful extension of the WIIMC function.

With WIIMC+ however, options are provided (as further defined below) to integrate these scripts by providing pop-up menus allowing the user to select the scope and order of results and then, after an item is chosen, allowing the video or playlist to be viewed or alternatively allowing the originating users uploads, playlists, or favorites to be displayed and selected. This allows the creation of a continuing exploration chain starting from a single search and allows organized collections of user material to be found and once found that material may be accessed, played, or the links saved (by WIIMC+) for future access.

In addition to the enhance listing, these scripts also return all the results of any search (up to the YouTube maximum of 1000) in pages of 28 entries (which fill 3 WIIMC pages), with the last entry in each page providing access to the next set of 28 results. The page size may also be set at any size up to the YouTube maximum of 50.

The 6th and 7th scripts, as referenced above, may also be used directly in onlinemedia.xml to list a playlist or to to access the author’s uploads, playlists, and favorites, by inputting a YouTube Playlist-id or an author User-id.

Shoutcast Enhancements
======================
The original alternative Shoutcast radio Scripts have also been improved and are included in this pack. The primary enhancements for the Shoutcast playlists are the display of the number of active listeners for each station, a script to search for stations by name or recently played songs or artists, a script for the currently most listened to stations, a script for just the major genres and a script for accessing sub-genres by name.

WIIMC+ Enhancements
===================
The WIIMC+ Enhancement Pack has a number of features that enhance these YouTube search and playback functions, most noteably the addition of WIIMC keyboard keys for search operators, the ability to clear or retain search terms on the keyboard for use in successive searches, the ability to autoplay successive YouTube videos, the ability to back out of multipage search results, as available with NAVI-X and now with YouTube, either a page at a time or jump directly back to page one by clicking the B-Button, and the ability to save whole playlists, and playlist and video links for the creation of custom playlists for future direct playback.

WIIMC+ also enhances the standard WIIMC “YouTube Standard Feeds” support, that uses multiple playlists to select the Standard Feed Options, buy jumping directly back to the first playlist by clicking the B-Button.

More significantly, the WIIMC+ Enhancement Pack provides two options to tightly integrate these Enhanced YouTube Scripts with WIIMC+.

The first option opens a second series of pop-up menus allowing the selective restriction of search results by time and/or category for video search results, and allows the remaining results to be ordered by most viewed, most recent or most liked. It also opens a second series of pop-up menus when the StandardFeeds script is selected allowing the selection of the Standard Feed options including order, time, category and geography.

The second option opens a pop-up menu whenever a YouTube video or playlist is selected after a video, playlist or channel search is performed. It allows users to select amongst the four display options to either play the video or display the found playlist, or to immediately list the originating users, uploads, favorites or playlists without needing to redo the search for that output as the separate scripts require. It also further enhances the WIIMC+ Enhanced Browser bar which currently tracks and displays the browsing chain, to also identify when these user playlists, favorites or uploaded videos are listed. Finally it reverts to prior playlist, favorite and upload menu results if the same request is repeated within 2 levels, rather than further extend the browser chain.

Together these enhancements bring a true YouTube browsing capability to WIIMC+.

Availability
============
This is a one-time release. The attached zip contains this text, the onlinemedia.xml for WIIMC use and the 7 YouTube and 4 Shoutcast scripts. Future changes will be made only as part of the WIIMC+ Enhancement Pack – YouTube Explorer feature and only distributed to registered users of WIIMC+.

Installation
============
The scripts have been designed to be installed in a “wiimcscripts” subdirectory of the “www” subdirectory of the directory containing the EasyPHP.exe (eg: C:Program FilesVLC-Shareswww) which is created when installing VLC-Shares 5.4. (See http://www.wiimc.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1181). Given the wealth of High Definition/AVC material now available, which can only be played on WIIMC using VLC-Shares, it is something everyone should install, with the side benefit of providing a local server for running these scripts.

The scripts are invoked by entries in the onlinemedia.xml file, both as search and predefined playlist links. An onlinemedia.xml file with sections containing the entries approprate to both WIIMC+ and WIIMC, in addition to the standard WIIMC.org links is included in the package.

The “onlinemedia.xml” file entries assume that EasyPHP the EasyPHP server is installed on “192.168.1.10”. If your PC Server Static IP is different, then edit these entries in the line 5 of each script and in the onlinemedia.xml entries accordingly. Also note that in all onlinmedia.xml entries any “&” characters must be represented as “%26”.

So:
1. Install VLC-Shares 5.4
2. Unzip the attached “YouTube&ShoutcastScriptsPack.zip”
3. Copy the enclosed wiimcscripts directory to your VLC-Shareswww directory
4. Edit the scripts and onlinemedia.xml to “192.168.1.10 ” if your PC IP is different.
5. Replace your existing onlinemedia.xml file with the enclosed onlinemedia.xml, or your own edited version.
6. Enjoy.

The scripts, their functions and the onlinemedia.xml entries are as follows:
============================================================================

Note that any onlinemedia.xml entry ending with an “=” maybe changed to a prefilled entry by replacing type=”search” with type=”playlist” and adding the search term after the “=”.

SHOUTCAST
=========
These scripts obtain the latest station lists along with the number of listeners and the currently playing artist/song from http://www.shoutcast.com

ShoutcastGenres.php

---

– Returns a playlist with all the major genres as displayed at http://www.shoutcast.com
– Click on any Genre in the playlist to get the Top 10 stations by listeners for that Genre, along with the titles of the currently playing songs.

http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/ShoutcastGenres.php" />

ShoutcastGetGenres.php

---

– Used by ShoutcastGenres to access the top 10 stations in any Genre.
– May be used to access any Genre including SubGenres as listed under Major Gentres at http://www.Shoutcast.com
– Note that for this script the search term entered from the WIIMC keyboard or in the onlinemedia.xml entry can contain blanks eg: New Age

http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/ShoutcastGetGenres.php?q=" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/ShoutcastGetGenres.php?q=90s" />

ShoutcastTopStations.php

---

– Returns a playlist with the Top 10 Shoutcast Stations overall by listeners, along with the titles of the currently playing songs.

http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/ShoutcastTopStations.php" />

ShoutcastSearch.php

---

– Returns a playlist of 10 Shoutcast Stations where the Station Name or Recently Played Song or Artist matches the entered Search term.
– Note that for this script the search term entered from the WIIMC keyboard or in the onlinemedia.xml entry can contain blanks eg: Celine Dion

http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/ShoutcastSearch.php?q=" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/ShoutcastSearch.php?q=Elvis Presley” />

YouTube
=======

These scripts obtain playlists of playlists or videos from YouTube utilizing the YouTube Data API.

YouTubeVideoSearch.php

---

– Provides an enhanced YouTube Video Search capability. It will return a list of videos that match the entered searchterm.
– Each found video title includes the video name, the YouTube user-ID of the user who uploaded the video, and any additional descriptive text provided by that user.
– Based on the mode, the selection of an entry will either play the video(default) or display a list of the video author’s uploads, playlists or favorites.
– It facilitates the entry of standard YouTube API search options using the WIIMC keyboard by providing a set of lowercase option abbreviations that may follow the searchterm in any order as follows:

For Use
— —
&mode &m= v=view(default), p=playlists, u=uploads, or f=favorites.
&orderby &o= l=relevance(default), r=rating, v=view_count, p=published_date
&time &t= a=alltime(default), t=today, w=this_week, m=this_month
&category &c= m=music, n=news, f=film, s=sports, t=trailers, g=games, c=comedy, a=autos, e=entertainment, or v=travel, l=animals, p=people.

– Note that the scope of YouTube searches includes many YouTube tags and the video description as well as the title so results may be returned that appear invalid.

http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeVideoSearch.php?q=" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeVideoSearch.php?q=shania%26c=m%26o=v%26t=m" />

The searchterm may be multiple words separated by ‘,’ for ‘and’ or ‘&7C’ for ‘or’ or enclosed in quotes with , separators for an exact term, or preceeded by a – to exclude a term. These may all be entered with the WIIMC keyboard. Note that %7C must use a capital C.

WIIMC+ provides a modified keyboard containing ‘|’ for ‘or’ , and an = sign, and retention of the last term and to facilitate these entries. Note that ‘+’ cannot be used for ‘and’. It must be a ‘,’.

eg: celine%7Cbranigan,”power,of,love”-rush will return a list of those videos which reference celine or brannigan and “power of love” but exclude those referencing rush who wrote the “power of love”.

eg: celine&o=v&c=m&t=w will return a list of music videos in the order of most viewed which refer to celine and were uploaded this week.

eg: celine,”quebec 400″ will find no results because the comma separator in the exact term is missing. celine,”quebec,400″ returns all entries containing celine and the exact term “quebec 400”.

YouTubePlaylistSearch.php

---

– Provides a YouTube Playlist search capability which will return a list of the public YouTube playlists that match the entered searchterm.
– Each playlist title includes the playlist name, a count of the number of videos in the playlist, the YouTube user-ID of the playlist author, and any additional playlist descriptive information provided by that user.
– Based on the mode, the selection of an entry will either display the playlist, or display a list of the playlist author’s uploads, playlists or favorites.

– For mode, Use &m= v=view(default), u=uploads, p=playlists, or f=favorites.

http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubePlaylistSearch.php?q=" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubePlaylistSearch.php?q=shania" />

YouTubeChannelSearch.php

---

– Returns a list of YouTube channels that match the entered search term.
– Each channel title includes the Channel Name, the YouTube user-ID of the channel author, the count of uploaded videos by that user, and any additional channel descriptive information provided by that user.
– Based on the mode the selection of an entry will either display a list of the video author’s uploads(default), playlists or favorites.

– For mode, Use &m= u=uploads (default), p=playlists, or f=favorites.

http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeChannelSearch.php?q=" />

YouTubeChannelViewed.php

---

– Returns a list of the most viewed YouTube channels.
– Each channel title includes the Channel Name, the YouTube user-ID of the channel author, the count of uploaded videos by that user, and any additional channel descriptive information provided by that user.
– Based on the mode the selection of an entry will either display a list of the video author’s uploads(default), playlists or favorites.

– For mode, Use &m= u=uploads (default), p=playlists, or f=favorites.

http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeChannelViewed.php" />

YouTubeStdFeeds.php

---

– Returns the YouTube “standard-feeds” video lists.
– Each video title will include the video name, the YouTube user-ID of the user who uploaded the video, and any additional descriptive text provided by that user.
– Based on the mode, the selection of an entry will either play the video(default) or display a list of the video author’s uploads, playlists or favorites.
– Time and Category restriction options are supported as defined under VideoSearch.
– Geography restrictions are supported as defined below.

For Use
— —
&mode &m= v=view(default), p=playlists, u=uploads, or f=favorites.
&feed, &f= mr=most_recent(default), tr=top_rated, tf=top_favorites, mv=most_viewed,mp= most_popular, or rf=recently_featured.
&time &t= a=alltime(default), t=today, w=this_week, m=this_month
&category &c= m=music, n=news, f=film, s=sports, t=trailers, g=games, c=comedy, a=autos, e=entertainment, or v=travel, l=animals, p=people.

http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeStdFeeds.php?feed=" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeStdFeeds.php?feed=tr" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeStdFeeds.php?feed=tf" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeStdFeeds.php?feed=mv" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeStdFeeds.php?feed=mp" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeStdFeeds.php?feed=mr" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeStdFeeds.php?feed=rf" />

addr=”http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeStdFeeds.php?f=mp&c=m" />

– The feed may also be restricted to videos that are region specific by adding &g=RegionCode to the feed. Region Codes are: Argentina AR, Australia AU, Brazil BR, Canada CA, Czech Republic CZ, France FR, Germany DE, Great Britain GB, Hong Kong HK, India IN, Ireland IE, Israel IL, Italy IT, Japan JP, Mexico MX, Netherlands NL, New Zealand NZ, Poland PL, Russia RU, South Africa ZA , South Korea KR, Spain ES, Sweden SE, Taiwan TW, United States US

addr=”http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeStdFeeds.php?f=mr&c=s&g=GB" />

Note that some regions may use a different character set in the video title than is installed in WIIMC such as this Japanese playlist where the Japanese characters display as blanks:

addr=”http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeStdFeeds.php?f=mr&c=n&g=JP" />

YouTubePlaylist.php

---

– Returns a list of the videos in any single public YouTube playlist based on the entered 16 character YouTube Playlist-ID.
– Each video title will include the video name, the YouTube user-ID of the user who uploaded the video, and any additional descriptive text provided by that user.

http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubePlaylist.php?playlist=" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubePlaylist.php?playlist=FACA14DA684096BA" />

YouTubeUserFeeds.php

---

– Based on the mode, returns a list of the videos uploaded by by(default), the playlists created by or the favorites of the entered YouTube user-ID.
– Each video title includes the video name, the YouTube user-ID of the user who uploaded the video, and any additional descriptive text provided by that user.
– Each playlist title includes the playlist name, the YouTube user-ID of the playlist author, a count of the number of videos in the playlist, and any additional playlist descriptive information provided by that user.
– The same search options are supported for uploaded and favorites mode listings as with the VideoSearch script as follows:

For Use
— —
&mode, &m= u=uploads (default), p=playlists, or f=favorites.
&orderby &o= l=relevance(default), r=rating, v=view_count, p=published_date
&time &t= a=alltime(default), t=today, w=this_week, m=this_month
&category &c= m=music, n=news, f=film, s=sports, t=trailers, g=games, c=comedy, a=autos, e=entertainment, or v=travel, l=animals, p=people.

http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeUserFeeds.php?m=u&user=" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeUserFeeds.php?m=p&user=" /> http://192.168.1.10/wiimcscripts/YouTubeUserFeeds.php?m=f&user=" />

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