Wayne's blog

I've disabled the old CVS repository on Sourceforge and enabled a Subversion one, which now contains the latest working copy of Tubecaster. I will be working on this copy more often intend to make regular commits this time, unlike on the old CVS repos!

Anyone interested in doing any development on the source is more than welcome, just send me an email if you're interested (details on the contact page).

You can view the SVN repository here:
http://tubecaster.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/tubecaster/

-Wayne

I've made the first Linux version of Tubecaster available now. Grab it from the Downloads page. Be sure to read the enclosed readme file for "installation" instructions. Feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Please see the readme file within the archive for dependency details. Basically run “python tubecasterWX.py” after installing the “ffmpeg” and “python-wxgtk2.8″ packages from your distro’s package manager. Tested on Ubuntu 8.04.

It pretty much works 100% except for a bug I get on my system which I haven’t had a chance to fix yet:

- After downloading one video and the interface resets itself the window doesn’t refresh properly anymore. It’s hard to explain but basically the app keeps working in the background but the window and its contents don’t “repaint” themselves so you just see the outline of the window. Very bizarre and I’m hoping it’s just because I’m running my test box in a virtual machine and I have a dodgy ATi video card.

Enjoy!

-Wayne

I've just noticed (actually I have been checking regularly since Tubecaster has been listed on Uptodown.com ;-) that Tubecaster has now been downloaded over 2000 times! This may not be a lot compared to some big name open source projects but I'm absolutely thrilled that people have found it useful and that some use it as their regular YouTube video downloader.

What surprised me even more is that I've barely even told people about this software - there is so much I want to add to it still, it only has about half the functionality I have in mind for it.

October will be a year since I released the first working version of Tubecaster and I'm feeling inspired to do some more work on it. The Linux version is 99% ready to go but I am just ironing out the last little bug or two then I just need to go ahead and create the packages (just an Ubuntu .deb package at this stage).

Version 1.9.4 will be ready soon, hopefully within the next couple of weeks, and will have the following key features:

- Linux support
- Proxy server support
- Ability to remember the last file format used (i.e. if you choose MP3 this time it will be the default for next time)
- New video format: MPEG

I'm not aware of many (I haven't found any but surely there must be at least one?) Linux apps like Tubecaster so I'm hoping that it will fill a need in that space.

-Wayne

I've added a Forums section to the website now where you can post technical issues and bugs.

-Wayne

New version out today, adapted to YouTube's new video page layout. Also in this release WMV support. This is experimental and I didn't want to include it yet and yes I realise WMV isn't the best format but it works well for getting whole videos for now.

-Wayne

It seems that YouTube has changed the layout of their video pages in such a way that breaks Tubecaster. Not to worry as I have found a way to fix it. Just had to change the t: parameter regular expression pattern (thanks to Ricardo Gonzalez' youtube-dl again, he found the fix before I did :-)

I'll release a new version when I get home from work tonight.

-Wayne

I was really in the mood for some coding today so I have made even more changes. Highlights for users:

- None really :-) Some minor usability improvements which may not be noticed by most. The app should "appear more solid" with this release.

For developers:

- Split the main tubecaster file into two files to further align to MVC architecture. The source now consists of two files, tcCore.py containing core functionality and tubecasterWX.py containing the wxPython GUI stuff and associated controller.

I'm probably going to redo the whole download mechanism starting from something more generic. I think I'll turn the MovieDownload class into a more generic fileDownload class and subclass from there into specifics for YouTube and then it should also make it much easier to add support for other movie sites at a later stage.

Stay tuned...

-Wayne

I have just released a new version of Tubecaster today. If you have 1.9.0 then you don't need to download this one as it functions exactly the same way. All of the changes have been under the hood. Latest source code also uploaded now. Non-developers don't need to read any further...

I have virtually completely re-written TC to have a Model-View-Controller design and even though this is the first early release of this version it should already be easier to maintain as a result. There is a lot of cleanup work to be done and many things need to be streamlined. I will very likely release another new version within the next couple of days.

I am also working on a build system to make modification of the software much easier for anyone other than me (right now it's a fairly manual process which might be a pain for anyone else).

So lots happening in the background, stay tuned - that proxy support etc. is now very close, I mainly wanted to get the basic MVC design structure working which is what this release has achieved.

-Wayne

I'm extremely please to announce that Tubecaster is now working again. I have adapted portions of Ricardo Gonzalez' youtube-dl program to enable the new download methods so thank you to him for helping make this release possible.

Please note there are many things still missing from this release but now TC is at least as functional as it was in the original beta release. It should work for most public YouTube videos.

In the next release (hopefully this weekend still):

• User account support so that you can download private videos
• Proxy server support
• Age confirmation for flagged videos

If you have an older version of Tubecaster installed then please remove that before installing the new version.

Also yes the version numbering is weird. The reason is because I started my numbers too close to 1.0.0 initially :-) Now the next final version will be 2.0.0 because there has been such a major overhaul of the code.

Get it while it's hot!

-Wayne

Sorry I haven't released anything lately. I promise I am working on it. Just finding the time... ugh - will get there I promise.

-Wayne