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Frequently Asked Questions

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Calvin Montgomery edited this page May 11, 2018 · 46 revisions

Frequently Asked Questions

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Don't see your question here?

Community support for CyTube is provided on irc.esper.net#cytube. Please be patient; users in the support channel may not respond immediately. Most of the users in the channel are in the United States, so if you have trouble getting a response, please try to come during USA daytime hours.

You can also get support for CyTube via email. CyTube is developed by calzoneman/cyzon, but nuclearace is also an administrator, and can help with common problems and questions.

Which media providers are supported?

Video Providers

  • YouTube:
    • Single video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=(video id) or https://youtu.be/(video id)
    • Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=(playlist id)
  • Vimeo
  • Vid.me
  • Streamable.com
  • Dailymotion
  • Google Drive: https://docs.google.com/file/d/(doc id)/edit or https://drive.google.com/open?id=(doc id)
    • Due to continual breaking changes, playing Google Drive videos now requires a userscript.
    • Find the video in your drive, right click it, click "Share...", then click "Get shareable link".

Audio Providers

  • Soundcloud

Streaming Providers

  • Twitch
    • Recorded videos on Twitch are also supported
  • Hitbox
  • Livestream.com
  • Ustream
  • RTMP streams: rtmp://(stream link)

Misc

  • H.264 encoded MP4 and FLV, VP8/VP9 encoded WebM, and Ogg/Theora videos can be added as a direct link to the video file.†
    • If you are trying to share a video that's on your computer, you will first need to upload it to a suitable host. Unless you are running your own webserver (most public file hosting sites will not work), you are better off using one of the other video providers listed above.
  • MP3 and Ogg/Vorbis audio files can be added as a direct link to the audio file.†
  • <iframe> embeds from other websites can be embedded, however these cannot be synchronized.

† Direct links can only be added when ffmpeg is installed on the server and enabled in the CyTube configuration file. Additionally, these are just the codecs that are accepted by CyTube; if you are using an old version of ffmpeg then some of these supported codecs may result in errors (e.g. VP9 is not readable by the version of libav-tools in Debian wheezy stable).

For direct links, why can't I add MKV, AVI, or some other video format?

While the server backend could potentially support a large number of formats for raw video files, CyTube is limited by the kinds of videos that can be played on modern browsers. Without requiring special plugins, most HTML5 compliant browsers can only play MP4/H.264, WebM/VP8, WebM/VP9, and Ogg/Theora videos. See MDN for a table of browser support.

For best results, use MP4/H.264 videos as these are supported by most browsers and can also be played by the fallback flash player.

Why can't I add a direct link from Putlocker?

Some websites, such as Putlocker, restrict access to the video link to your specific IP address. These links cannot be added to CyTube, since CyTube is not able to access them.

How do I pause or seek the video?

CyTube controls the video playback with a timer on the server in order to provide smooth playback and prevent accidental clicks by channel moderators from interrupting the video for other people. However, if you need to control the video, you can right click your name in the userlist and click "Give Leader". While you are leader, you will be able to pause/unpause and seek the video. When you're done, right click your name again and click "Take Leader".

Why does every video come up as "youtube.com/devicesupport"?

You may see this message if you are running an outdated version of CyTube, or have not updated your configuration since the YouTube API switch. YouTube deprecated version 2 of their API in April 2015. CyTube needs to be updated and configured to use version 3 of the API.

Can you add a new media provider?

Probably not. Most media providers that are requested do not have a synchronization API, hence they cannot be synchronized on CyTube. However, if a provider does meet the requirements and has sufficient demand, I will consider adding it.

How can I set a background image/customize my channel?

CyTube channels are customizable with CSS. Click on Channel Settings, then click the Edit drop down and click CSS. Mozilla has an introductory tutorial about CSS here. If you're not concerned about other customizations and just want a background image, you can use the following CSS:

body {
    background-image: url(http://link-to-image);
}

(replace link-to-image with the full URL of the background image)

Why does the video show "Video format or MIME type not supported"?

This error message means the video codec being embedded is not able to be played by your browser. For best codec support, try loading the website with Firefox or Chrome.

Why don't chat and the video load when I join a channel?

If you don't see a green box in chat with the text "Connected", then your websocket connection could not be established. This is often caused by antivirus or firewall software on your computer that detects the websocket connection as a false positive and blocks it.

Try disabling your antivirus or firewall temporarily and connecting again. If it works, then the antivirus or firewall is the problem. You should check the manual or customer support for that specific software to figure out how to allow websocket connections without completely disabling the software.

How do I enable subtitles on Google Drive videos?

As of July 28th, 2015, it is now possible to use Google Drive subtitles on CyTube. Please see here for instructions on adding subtitles to your Google Drive videos.

Is there a mobile app available for iOS/Android?

Not at this time. nuclearace created a chat-only app for iOS, but this is no longer actively developed. Right now I don't have any plans to work on iOS/Android apps since most of my free time that I dedicate to CyTube is spent keeping the lights on for the website.

If someone wants to take a shot at creating a mobile application, I'm open to contributions :)

Can you add support for Kisscartoon/Kissanime?

Unfortunately no. The creators of those website have gone to great lengths to prevent other websites from embedding their content, including encrypting their video links so they can't easily be extracted from the page.

Why do direct links have to be HTTPS?

Since CyTube's page is loaded over HTTPS, browser security policy prevents loading any non-HTTPS "active content" on the page. This means that if CyTube were to allow you to add a plain HTTP video, it simply wouldn't load for anyone.

In January of 2017, the decision was made to migrate CyTube fully to HTTPS pages due to announcements from browser vendors such as Chrome and Firefox that they would begin flagging non-HTTPS websites with login forms as "insecure" and display scary warnings to users. At that time, an analysis of video content played on CyTube showed that less than 1% of all videos played would be impacted by the move to HTTPS-only.

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