YouTube Lens Adds MiniTube Playback Option

By , Published January 10, 2012

Remember that YouTube Lens for Unity we showed you last week? It’s just gotten a little bit better. 

The Lens lets you browser through YouTube’s extensive video library without having to open your browser. When you want to watch a video you just click on the thumbnail and out pops VLC ready to play the video right away.

It’s all very neat, and all Adobe Flash free.

But in the comments of our previous posts many of you suggested that you would prefer the Lens top open and play videos in Minitube – the YouTube desktop app – rather than VLC.

And the goods news is that in the latest update to the Lens and Scope set the developer has added just that.

YouTube Lens + Minitube

Minitube is a fantastic application capable of browsing, searching, playing and downloading YouTube videos without the need for a browser – or a a Flash plugin. This makes it a logical pairing for use with the Unity YouTube Lens.

To set ‘Minitube‘ as your preferred player for YouTube videos launched in the Lens you will need to use the ‘YouTube Scope Configurator’ tool.

Open the Dash and enter the term ‘scope’

In the tool check the box next to ‘MiniTube’. Note: only applications you have installed will be selectable.

YouTube Scope Options Lets You Choose Minitube

Click OK.

That’s it – clicking on a video result in the YouTube lens will now launch Minitube with the video ready to play.

How to install the YouTube Lens in Ubuntu

Don’t have the Video lens? It’s easy enough to install in Ubuntu using the developer’s PPA.

Open a new Terminal window and enter the following commands: -

  • sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/lenses
  • sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install lens-video scope-youtube

You will need to log out of Ubuntu and back in before the Lens becomes enabled.

Via Atareao (Spanish)

Related posts:

  1. Unity YouTube Lens Updates with Browser Free Video Playback
  2. So Long Productivity – YouTube Lens Puts Browser-free Searching of Videos in the Unity Dash
  3. Minitube 1.3 restores youtube playback but loses seek support on Linux
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  • Ross Fleming

    Brilliant! :)

  • Piotrek M.

    What needs to be configurable is default result filter – In order to search anything I need to hit “By revelance” first. Otherwise at the top I can see the movies which have actually nothing to do with the phrase I’ve entered.

    • Anonymous

      Same occurs with me. Seems counter intuitive to even have this filter? Of course I want the returns to be relevant to what I’m searching. But besides that it’s a great lens. 

      One thing I would like to see is some way of linking to your account? Ie. Your subscriptions are there, you can like videos etc.

      Is this possible?

      • Aidan Sheridan

        I have this problem aswell… and a few others…

        it took me about 5 minutes to find and open “Time” By Pink Floyd… every time i searched it some stupid stuff about justin bieber would come up, then when i finally came up with a combination of required filters to actually get my desired results, (though i had to scroll through a few rows of something called “LMFAO” and a few floyd songs that were (not surprisingly) not what i was looking for, then when i finally found and opened the video i wanted, it came up with some horrible music video of justin bieber prancing around in my minitube… disgusted i closed minitube and tried again, this time “Wish you Were Here” opened up in minitube instead of “Time” – I tried one more time and was successful…

        On top of those issues this particular lens suffers from noticeable lag, which adds to the frustration, I think i’m just going to delete it and wait a few months in hope that these problems will be solved

  • Bjartur Mortensen

    Oh man oh man this is purdy cool!

    I really like the video, too!

  • http://twitter.com/arescobar Ariel Escobar López

    E: No se ha podido localizar el paquete video-lens

    el paquete se llama lens-video

    sudo apt-get install lens-video scope-youtube

  • Anonymous

    Wow. It seems that they keep adding exactly what is asked for on OMG!

  • Jógvan Olsen

    http://www.youtube.com/html5 is great for flash haters :P

    • Anonymous

      Except that it does not always work. :/

    • https://launchpad.net/~exeleration-g Exeleration-G

      Or for HTML5 lovers. I just love the fact that I can right-click, and a normal contextmenu will pop up, with the normal options in it, instead of the Flash settings :-). Very geeky, I know :-P

  • http://twitter.com/xSpectrumGaming Isaiah Bugarin

    The installation didn’t work for me.  I’ve logged out and back on, and there isn’t a youtube lens.  Can someone help?

  • Anonymous

    Maybe not a big deal as once minitube is open most people wont use the lens to search but if you do use the lens to search while minitube is open and click on a video to play nothing happens. It doesn’t open another minitube or cancel the video you were watching. 

    This happening for anyone else?

    • http://twitter.com/flaviotordini Flavio Tordini

      This should be fixed in Minitube version 1.7

  • Derek Karpinski

    My only gripe about this scope, is that when I start it, 3 thumbnails flash up for an instant.  One of them is Justin Beber.  It makes a great feature look a bit unpolished.  Anything but Beber!

    Does anyone else see this?

    • http://twitter.com/howythegeek Howy

      What if there were kittens instead..?

  • Anonymous

    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install video-lens scope-youtube
    should read as:
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install lens-video scope-youtube

    • Yogotiss .

      Thanks

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SXLUWQ3YV2DH7ZMA55XE4VM4FY Kizer

    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install video-lens scope-youtube

    should be

    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install lens-video scope-youtube

    • Anonymous

      Somebody beat you :P

  • Daniel Rhodes-Mumby

    I don’t suppose there’s any chance that this could have an option to play in the lens itself? I must admit to not knowing entirely what’s possible with the lens API.

  • Anonymous

    Can someone create a Wolfram Alpha lens for Unity please…..

  • atarixle

    great! I just discovered Minitube as my new favorite youtube viewer, so I might give youtube lense a testdrive

 
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