The easiest (fastest) way to get direct link to MP4 video on YouTube

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My Mac is rather old and has issues (many dropped frames) with playing YouTube videos in HD on fullscreen, whether in Flash or HTML5.

However, playing them in VLC makes no drops whatsoever, and what is even better, it plays them fluently even remotely, so I don't need to download those videos. All I need to do is open network file in VLC and paste here link to YouTube .mp4 or .flv file. Works like a charm.

Right now I get links by copying them and letting jDownloader pars YouTube urls. This gives me direct links to all available formats and sizes. Here I pick one I prefer, copy url and paste it to VLC.

Is there any faster way to parse those urls without the need of 3rd app like jDownloader? I tried some Safari plugins but none of them gave desirable results to me.

Best Answer

I don't think it's much faster. I use youtube-dl from MacPorts or Homebrew.

> youtube-dl -g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkmyLTPh3UY
http://r7---sn-nfpnnjvh-1gil.c.youtube.com/videoplayback?itag=34&expire=1357448601&source=youtube&factor=1.25&sver=3&ip=178.193.24.93&algorithm=throttle-factor&ms=au&key=yt1&mv=m&upn=tGspI9WJELc&burst=40&id=3249b22d33e1dd46&mt=1357423931&cp=U0hUTFRPVl9FS0NONF9MSVpHOlp2Yi1jNlUyeUdG&fexp=914501%2C919358%2C910207%2C929206%2C916611%2C920704%2C912806%2C928001%2C922403%2C922405%2C929901%2C913605%2C929104%2C929109%2C929110%2C913546%2C913556%2C908496%2C920201%2C913302%2C919009%2C911116%2C901451%2C902556&ipbits=8&gcr=ch&sparams=algorithm%2Cburst%2Ccp%2Cfactor%2Cgcr%2Cid%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Csource%2Cupn%2Cexpire&signature=910FFEBF23CC5F88185DB98028C346DF76EF83C3.2B57D82069876F73C1E8F886AEFFDF2F2039F7F5

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