Flash support for Linux is still lacking. Older hardware often performs only poorly when trying to watch youtube videos.
There are several external players (VLC, mplayer, minitube) that alleviate this problem by offering video playback without flash. But none of them support parsing Youtube playlists out of the box.
Is there any way I can play Youtube playlists without having to rely on flash?
It turns out there is:
Playing Youtube playlists using a playlist parser script for VLC
Installation
Instructions as per the source:
playlist_youtube.lua
)~/.local/share/vlc/lua/playlist/
(current user) or/usr/share/vlc/lua/playlist/
(all users)Usage
Open up VLC and hit CTRL+N to display the Open Network Stream dialog. Paste your youtube playlist link into the text field and hit Enter. Make sure the link you copied contains the youtube playlist identifier (
list=PLxxx
).Note: This script relies on VLC's inbuilt youtube parser. As youtube changes its system now and then, video playback in VLC might suddenly stop working. In that case you will have to update your youtube parser script. You can do so with the following commands (credit goes to phoibos):
(makes sure curl is installed)
(removes old parser)
(downloads new parser)