Download and watch youtube videos from the shell. The Script fetches the url from the clipboard, so that you only have to select the url in your browser and start the script. Works great when mapping "xterm -e youtube.sh" to a shortcut, e.g. Meta-Y.

youtube.sh

#!/bin/bash
 	
# Download and watch youtube videos from the shell.
# The Script fetches the url from the clipboard,
# so that you only have to select the url in your
# browser and start the script. Works great when
# mapping "xterm -e youtube.sh" to a shortcut, e.g. Meta-Y.

# requires the tools xclip, youtube-dl and mplayer
# it's probably possible to replace xclip with pbpaste on
# Mac OS X (not testet, yet).

videoplayer=mplayer

# read content of primary selection (select with mouse) and clipboard (ctrl+c)
url1=`xclip -o -selection primary`
url2=`xclip -o -selection clipboard`

yt='http://www\.youtube\.com/watch\?v=' 

# check for valid youtube urls and read url from stdin otherwise
if [[ "$url1" =~ $yt ]]; then
    url=$url1
else
    if [[ "$url2" =~ $yt ]]; then
        url=$url2
    else
        echo "enter youtube url"
        read url
        if [[ !( "$url" =~ $yt ) ]]; then
            echo "no youtube url found"
            exit
        fi
    fi 
fi


# make tempfile
tmpfile=`mktemp`
echo "temfile is: $tmpfile"
echo "youtube url is: $url"

# download youtube video
youtube-dl -b --output "$tmpfile" "$url" > /dev/null &
youtubePID=$!

# start mplayer with a short delay to buffer some data
echo "buffering..."
filesize=0
i=0
while [ $i -lt 20 ] && [ $filesize -lt 200000000 ]; do
    sleep 1
    let i+=1
    filesize=(`du "$tmpfile"`)
    filesize=${filesize[0]}
done

# start playing video
$videoplayer "$tmpfile"

# cleanup
kill $youtubePID 2&> /dev/null
rm "$tmpfile"