If you ever tried to stream music vids from launch.com, you know that it "requires" IE or Netscape, and uses windows media player (FF support and/or other media players can be used using the "Play Launch" extension and the MediaPlayerConnectivity extension). You also have to go to their crappy site, and can't make custom playlists (and least not for free).

I got tired of this, so looked at how the play launch extension worked, and made my own program to allow users to create a "playlist" of the streaming videos, and then launch it in either mplayer (mplayer or gmplayer) or xine. However, every video must be hand-recorded, and a master text-file must have every artist/song manually added, along with the video ID number. This is a pain in the a, and i'd love some help in creating this file (currently, i'm only adding artists as i watch vids by em)

Here's what you can do if you want to help.

1) Go to an artists videos page, view the source, and record all the song names + video ID numbers. Here's an example: (at: http://music.yahoo.com/ar-296483-videos--Disturbed )



would translate to: "Disturbed - Stricken = 22995703" (spacing does matter) the number came from within playVideos(NUMBERHERE)

current video ID list can be found here: http://www.kllrnohj.com/blah/Launch/vididlist (its rather small at the moment, lol)

2) or you can help beta test/try out the program. Note: Requires Linux, FLTK (since its a prebuilt exec, it must be FLTK-1.1 w/ libraries in /usr/lib/fltk-1.1/ ) , wget, and xine or mplayer

Its available here: http://www.kllrnohj.com/blah/Launch/launchgui (right click->save as - its an executable)

a windows port may come in the future, but don't hold your breathe, lol (would require re-writing large chunks - not fun)

And for all you windows-only users, here's a screenshot to make ya drooool:



(i have no clue where that black dot in the screeny came from, but thats not part of the program, lol)

Sweet - but I don't think we have many Linux users here.

yeah, i'm not expecting many ppl to try it out....

but if windows users help add more to the vididlist, that'll make me want to port it to windows faster

a windows version *SHOULD* actually be smaller and easier to make than the linux one was, as windows media player and media player classic (only two media players i ever use in windows), both natively support the .asx format, whereas in linus i had to manually resolve the stream info from it (which is why wget is required) - but it means booting up into windows, and installing FLTK and such, a pain in and of itself, which is why i'm dragging my feet on it

It seems to me you could just make a PHP spider to automatically crawl the site and extract that info...

i COULD, if i knew PHP

i'm going to make a c++ one that'll do something similar, but thats AFTER i hammer out the program itself. one thing at a time, lol (working on the windows port now - the linux one works great)

Windows release!! (only tested on winXP - and even then, only on two diff boxes)

http://www.kllrnohj.com/blah/Launch/win32LaunchGUI.exe

Note: mplayerc seems to be having difficulty with streaming the videos, so i'll be looking for another media player soon (probably mplayer windows port) - at least, it is for me. lemme know if anyone else is getting probs streaming videos

Seems good to me!

http://www.kllrnohj.com/blah/Launch/win32LaunchGUI.exe

new version. Now has WMP10 support (in players->other), mplayer included, AND you can add your own media players (see \moreplayers\readme.txt)

mplayer can select vid drv and audio drv (see \mplayer\man_page.html for more info regarding what drivers are what)

thats mainly it, the core hasn't changed much (isn't really a need yet - although some temp files do get left behind in the root folder, no biggie, they are small anyway)

now i just gotta work on the video list

any suggestions? (layout, features, or otherwise)

Hotness. You should post some screenies though.

lol, just look at the original screen shot, its still mostly looking like that

good idea tho, i'll get some more - probably set up a basic website for it too...

Cool, I'm liking this project!

w00t!

now i'm back to working on the linux one can't let it get too far behind

Definitely. What kind of long-range plans do you have for this?

i'd love to actually build in a media player (probably would become a linux only feature, as i'd borrow heavily from the flxine project - xine is linux only), rather than relying on an externally called one, but i'm not that good - not yet anyway (also, i'd like to get alloooott of video's in the vididlist, and maybe add a list browser to one side, rather than having a pop-up selecter)

just added shortcuts to commands, along with the ability for custom vididlists (like a playlist type thing), and check all and check none buttons.

get the updated version at http://www.kllrnohj.com/blah/Launch/updates/ (i'm not going to keep re-packaging the whole thing for minor upgrades - the linux version is held up for a minute)

the folder there (usrlists) is an example of a custom vididlist - put your custom vididlists in \usrlists\ (note: you currently cannot have a space in the file name, eg: "my playlist.txt" is illegal, but "my_playlist.txt" should work)

screenshots of the latest (as of 9/14/05 7:20cst anyway) build:





things to fix: Keep boxes checked when searching

wweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

new, super-improved (ish) version!!!

things added: Rather than checking boxes, you now create a 'playlist' (bottom box). Also, custom playlists and artist browser now share a side pannel (custom playlists are the custom id lists in the usrlists\ folder)

of course, the playlist survives changing "browsing playlist", artist changes, and searches. It will even last after a program restart.



as always, grab the new exe at http://www.kllrnohj.com/blah/Launch/updates/launchgui.exe (the w32launchgui.exe installer/package is still the old, outdated, and for some reason, now unfunctional one - a launch, took me 2 hours to fix that)

so who all uses/tried this?

EDIT: windows source has been uploaded: http://www.kllrnohj.com/blah/Launch/w32launchGUI_Source/

this program is released under the GNU GPL - sorta (i haven't made a liscence text file/readme or any of that stuff, yet)

EDIT2: Oh, the file size for the launchgui.exe has shrunk to a tiny 248kb

EDIT3: The w32LaunchGUI.exe self-extractor is now updated. Its available here: http://www.kllrnohj.com/blah/Launch/win32LaunchGUI.exe (this has all the needed files)

Coll, but...why is someone like you using Yahoo! Launch? It really doesn't make sense...



Use libraries that have been implemented in both Windows and Linux (for example OpenGL).

lol, i'd probably just hack and slash mplayer into it, but i'd rather save that to be one of the last things done

also, i find windows media player is the best for streaming on windows, and xine is the best for linux - so i got no clue what i'm gonna do, but i'll probably just keep working on the core, and worry about a media player later

Dude...this program is amazing. Will we be able to add our own songs in the future? I'm confused...

So you're basically recording the music somehow and putting it in your own program? How the heck do you record it?

because downloading music vids is a pain in the a <-(so wait, "ass" isn't censored, but "h@ck" and "cr@ck" are????) (it is also more of a learning experience, to learn GUI programming w/ FLTK)

Oh, and I started using Yahoo! launch because i am a "premium" member or something like that (our ISP, SBC Yahoo! gives it to us as part of our DSL)



First, why thank you! its great to hear a compliment

Second, all the songs are streamed from www.launch.com (they aren't recorded), and any video there can be added (either by you, in a custom "playlist" - see the readme in the main folder, or by me to the main vididlist, which gets autodownloaded from my webserver). If you look in the first post, you can see a section of the source code from launch's website that shows how to get the needed info. If you still don't get it, PM me or hit me up on AIM, or Yahoo, or MSN (AIM: kllrnohj , yahoo: kllrnohj2000 , msn: kllrnohj@hotmail.com) - or e-mail me at kllrnohj@gmail.com , and i'll give you a more detailed explanation