Be able to do video analysis of youtube videos directly by entering the url

[noahkra]

I think title says it all. Instead of entering file path give the option to enter the youtube URL so you don't have to download the video to analyse it.

[roninpawn]

Love the idea. It would be a major convenience for moderation if it were possible.
Feasibly though... it seems unlikely.

I use 4k Downloader to pull YouTube videos when I need to, and once every two or three months there's an update to that app. I only ever pull down the updates when 4k has stopped working consistently, which it does frequently.

So, I'm led to believe that YouTube employs a number of security methods to obfuscate direct access to the video files they host. If it were as simple as grabbing a complete video file from browser cache, this would be a no-brainer. But YouTube's player surely pulls down X-second chunks as needed and strings them together, rather than caching the whole file. And if 4k has trouble keeping YouTube from blocking it's downloads / detecting fast-download of an entire file rather than second by second playback, I doubt I could replicate the magic 4k is doing to beat the system. And I definitely wouldn't keep up with YouTube's attempts to thwart direct download the way the 4k devs do.

All that said, I DO like the idea. And if it can reliably be done, it would make a great QoL feature. I'll keep it in my back pocket. And if anyone wants to try tackling direct YouTube / Twitch download in-app, it'd be an awesome addition to splitRP!

[noahkra]

Found a lightweight python library for reliably downloading youtube videos.
https://github.com/nficano/pytube
I don't really do python so I don't know if it's any good, but it could be a start.

[RoundTab1er]

I've implemented a basic loadVideo method that <should> (might?) be able to prompt the user for a url and download the highest resolution video available (using pytube). Basic proof of concept is working.

The next question is what to do once it's downloaded. loadFile does not currently take a path as an argument, instead it prompts the user with a file select dialog. I could duplicate the loadFile logic in the loadVideo method, or we could modify the loadFile logic to take a path, and only prompt the user if the path is null or something. Thoughts?

Another thing to address is how do you want users to access this feature? Should it be a separate button, or should the load file button choose loadFile or loadVideo somehow?

Also, not currently able to test in the gui, because I don't know the key combo to open the video analysis gui

EDIT: changes are live on my fork at the bottom of GUI_v2.py

[roninpawn]

Hey! Great to get your involvement.
The reason the key-combo isn't working is you've cloned off the master build -- the old one. The 'Rebuild' branch is where I've been working on the new stuff, including the video analysis GUI.

You'll find the same issue you raised in the code of this one as well, though. In ui2.py, the function is openfile() and when called it just spawns a filedialog window. I like your proposed solution. Just give the function a an optional parameter...

openfile(self, filename=None)
if filename is not None:
do thing
else
do the other thing

[RoundTab1er]

I believe I have a working implementation. downloadVideo() prompts the user for a URL and then prompts the user for a save location. It then downloads the YT video and passes the save location to loadFile(), which now contains the logic that used to be in openFile(). openFile() only contains the open file dialog now, and calls loadFile() with the file path. loadFile() now contains the logic that openFile() used to have, but now takes a file path as a string. I've tested it with a couple of youtube videos, and it appears to be working.

We can probably make some QoL improvements, but if you like how it looks, I can create a PR.

A couple notes:

• when entering the file name in the save file dialog, adding the file extension to the end will cause the code to break currently
  (pytube drops any internal periods in the file name, which results in the path being passed to loadFile(path) incorrectly)
• if a file with the same name exists, pytube refuses to overwrite, and the code gets stuck
• I've done some basic exception catching, but the code doesn't fail super gracefully

EDIT: code is live on the Rebuild branch of my fork