I love the album art feature in iTunes, but it would be cooler if you could see the music video to the song you are listening to. Well now you can!
YouTube has stacks and stacks of music videos on their website. I have written an OS X widget called iTube. iTube gets the artist and title of the song you are playing in iTunes. It then performs a search on youtube and plays the first hit in the widget window. Once installed iTube works by itself in the background, so start a song up in iTunes then check your dashboard and with a little luck you’ll be watching what you are listening to.
Checkout iTube on the Apple site.
Welcome iTube’s new family member Stereoclip.
Download
New features in version 1.23
- New method for accessing the youtube flv.
New features in version 1.22
- Fixed bug accessing the youtube flv
- Filtered duplicate videos from search results
New features in version 1.21
- Fixed bug where the track data from itunes is outputed in the incorrect format.
- Fixed parse error due to incorrect format of itunes track data
- Added remote debugging for developers
New features in version 1.2
- Youtube searching fixes.
- Changed iTunes script call to every 5 secs
New features in version 1.1
- Fullscreen mode.
- Audio/video time syncing attempt.
- Link to the YouTube page.
- Skip to next search result button.
- Stop button.
- Auto update check.
- New skin.
- Change the interval time for checking iTunes.
SVN
svn checkout http://itube-widget.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ itube-dev
Know Issues
- There is an issue accessing the url to the youtube flv. iTube is currently not working. Boooo!
- The search results are ordered by relevance which I think is more like popularity. So it is quite common that you will end up seeing a wrong video simply because it has more hits.
- Syncing. Right now the elapsed time of the song in iTunes does not sync with the elapsed time of the video. I have been messing around with getting the video to seek to correct point, but have not finished it yet. The other issue is the song on YouTube is frequently a different edit and length from the album version of the track you listen to in iTunes. I’ll be adding the syncing feature in the next version, but don’t hold your breath. The new beta version beta has a audio/video time syncing feature.
- Parse error : the Youtube search busted in version 1.1. This has been resolved in version
1.21.21. - Not tested on OsX 10.4
43 comments ↓
Absolutely Brilliant! I’m a huge fan of music videos and this is awesome. I’m freaking out right now. Two recommendations can you make it so that you can scroll through the music video results, and can you make a link so that it will take you to the youtube page? Other than that I found my new favorite widget!!! Thank you!
Both suggestions are great and I have thought about a scrolling list of results and even saving your choice so it remembers for the next time. There is a bit a work involved in it but it totally possible so look of for it in the future. As for the link to youtube, thats a no-brainer so I’ll include that in the next point release.
wow, this is an AMAZING app. very very cool. only very selfish suggestion i would make would be a PC version… sadly my tv is powered by a windoze media centre and would be very cool to be able to run the app.
also, if there is a way of playing fullscreen or at least increasing the windowsize of the widget- that would be great
[...] it out here: http://philipandrews.org/blog/itube 0 Comments | Posted in [...]
Hey Phil,
Love the widget, glad to see you actually got it online also – v. impressed. I did however notice that after having it running all day today, my dashboard-client was running at 158% cpu usage and my machine basically died.
Probably due to the music I was listening to
or the fact that I only played a couple of songs and then just closed iTunes?
I hope you’re enjoying Canada.
This widget sounds brilliant, if only i could get it working. For some reason there seems to be a problem playing the videos because it shows the loading symbol and the artist/song name and says that the video has been found, but the video never starts playing! I dont know if this is a common problem, but any ideas? I’m running OSX 10.4.11, thats not a problem is it?
very, very cool. thanks – great job. however – when i change songs it appears that the previous song video does not change – just keeps going. am i doing something wrong. also a larger screen would e awesome. thanks again. peace!
andy
If the widget shows the song name, but no video, generally it means nothing was found on youtube. If you want need to test the widget try katskills from the orb, http://www.mp3.com/artist/the-orb/summary/
okay – have been fooling around with this and it is by far the coolest. freakin’ amazing. sorry to ask again – but any chance of larger screen and how will we be informed of updates?
andy
myasg@aol.com
a fullscreen feature is coming real soon. Maybe add the rss for this blog to check for updates.
[...] erstaunlich gut. iTube ist ein Mac OS X Widget und kostenlos hier zuhaben. Kann man das nicht als Plugin direkt in iTunes [...]
Great widget. My feature wish would be to toggle the window decoration (those grey borders) off and on, because dashboard space is really crucial.
[...] Source: http://philipandrews.org/blog/itube/ [...]
[...] have added the iTube source files to googlecode [...]
[...] DOWNLOAD | iTube Aggiungi a del.icio.us 1 – Visite. ZN utilizza WordPress Revolution v5.2 [...]
Sounds great, but it says:
“Error connecting to server. (SyntaxError: Parse error)”
running on osx 10.5.5, is there anything i can do?
Very cool widget..Alot of people are going to want to get thier hands on this..A couple of bugs to work out but none the less, its very cool….good job. I’ll keep track of the rss feed to keep updated.
That’s amazing
it does not work for me:(
it says error connecting to server(syntax error: parse error)
even though i change the current playing itunes song
how can i encounter this problem.. please help
this app is cool
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Hi, I still have the SyntaxError Parse error with version 1.2, any suggestions?
Thanks, Dan.
great idea!!!!!
Unfortunately, there is the error already mentioned: Error connecting to server. (SyntaxError: Parse error).
Some possibilities to see this bug soon solved?
All the best!!!
The update in version 1.21 should fix this parse error. Thanks Alex for your help debugging this issue with me.
It will not load on my system it says, “Starting iTube.” for almost five minutes and will not start. I have a Mirrored door PowerMac G4 with system 10.4.11. Any suggestions?
I haven’t had a chance to test this on tiger. Although I have had reports it does not run as expected. Sorry Steve time for an upgrade.
brilliant widget. the one suggestion i have is to be able to add a feature to change the selection from youtube, as the first choice isn’t always the music video. I’m no programmer, but something as simple as adding a preference to view the youtube video link and edit the video ID code thing. Unsure if this is possible, but add something along these lines and you’d have my vote for the absolute most essential music app.
This is absolutely genius! I’m a real fan of music videos so kudos to you. The only thing I’ve noticed is that the music video sometimes continues after i’ve gone on to another song in ITunes. Apart from that, its really brilliant. Thanks again!
It just says “starting iTube”, and just sits there. This sounds like a fun app, so if you fix this problem, let me know, and I will use this. I’m using a MacBook running OS X 10.4.11
[...] iTube ve ne da la possibilità: si tratta di un widget gratuito che cerca su YouTube il titolo e l’autore della canzone suonata da iTunes e riproduce il primo risultato della lista. Certo l’affidabilità non è totale, non per colpa dell’autore ma per la gran mole di video contenuta da Youtube ma con un po’ di fortuna riuscirete molto spesso a vedere il video di quello che state ascoltando! [...]
Hey, i’ve found that it works if the title’s in english ONLY. it would be great if you can fix the code slightly so it can search up youtube videos if the title/artist is in another language.
Hi, i think this idea is awesome, only problem is i cant get it to play. I’m running mac osx 10.5.8, and the widget installs, but the video won’t play. it will find the artist and song and say ‘video found’ but then it will just display a black screen that says the artist and song title, no video. any help would be appreciated
I love this, it is a great concept and idea. However, I have two suggestions.
1) Add an option go open the video on it’s youtube page in safari.
2) Though slightly harder, add an option to show it full screen without all the other dashboard clutter.
[...] the music video in the corner of the screen like it does the album art. Checkout itube at their website for more information on the Mac Widget. by willburns1 Filed under: Youtube, itunes, music [...]
those features are already there. The title links to the youtube and when you rollover the video there is toolbar which has a fullscreen button.
Just download the application and i think its the best thing since slice bread
Seriously just wondering if this would work while using apple TV? Then i would for sure cancel my cable TV subscription?
This widget is fantastic! I would also love to see it as a iphone app. My ipod dock is connected to a TV so this would be awesome. ..Maybe the iphone is not powerful enough???
ya id love to make it an iphone app too but unfortunately there is no flash support on the iphone
Wonderful! I really like this widget.
It just looses the setting “Play when hidden” after a reboot. OS 10.6.1
Works great in Snow Leopard 10.6.2.
Has a little jerkiness when in full screen mode, but I am running my dashboard in developer’s mode to allow widgets to sit in my desktop so I can watch the video on top of Itunes w/o having to go to dashboard mode.
Great app, look forward to future improvements.
Loved it! Loved it! Loved it!
is there anyway of improving the quality in full screen?
iTube hasnt been working for quite some time (10.6) This was my favourite widget too
Any idea if and when its gnna be working again? It just shows the song name and the loading thingy.
[...] iTube [...]
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