AmiTube

Posted by ALB42 on 14. Dezember 2021

The first YouTube Client for m68k Amiga.

Did you every dream about to watch ordinary YouTube Videos on your classic Amiga? Now it is possible, with AmiTube. You can search by keywords or youtube URLs for your favorite short films then the Server will download them convert to CDXL(32 for OCS Amigas or 255 colors for AGA or RTG Amigas) or MPEG1 (for fast RTG Amigas) then the movie is downloaded to your Amiga where you can use any CDXL/MPEG Player to watch them.

The original Idea for this program is by Michal Bergseth, he wrote an dedicated article about what AmiTube is about.

I suggest you use AGABlaster for CDXL Movies and RiVA for MPEG movies.

Since Version 0.5 you can type in a typical YouTube URL to the search bar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxx or https://youtu.be/xxxx) and it will show the entry in the search list. If you activate the clipboard observation in Prefs it will automatically search the clipboard for such kind of URLs. For example if a friend sends you an URL via email or IRC you can just copy the URL and then download and watch the movie directly.

Since 0.5 you can share your most favorite movies (e.g. good looking in CDXL Format) with other AmiTube users. After successful download you get a „Share“ Button which adds this movie to the global shared list. To see list of shared videos (yours and from other people) use the menu entry „Project->Remote Shared“.

There is a second menu entry „Project->Local Files“ to show a list of already downloaded movies saved in the movies folder.

Since Version 0.6 you can use the MOVIEDIR tooltype to define a different location for the movies.

Since Version 0.7 you can use your own conversation server with the SERVERURL tool type, see further down on this page for instructions how to do it.

Since Version 1.0 it has an AREXX interface.

For the preview images you need a JPEG Datatype installed.

A little Video to show how it works:

Download the latest Versions here:


Your very own converter Server (via docker container)

All you need to get it, is to start:

docker pull alb42/amitubeserver

on your linux box with docker installed

and then to start the actual docker container:

docker run -p 1234:80 alb42/amitubeserver

here the 1234 is just as example the port you want to have the server running on (of 80 is free of course you can also use -p 80:80). Then go to your AmiTube icon and add the SERVERURL= parameter for example

SERVERURL=http://192.168.0.234:1234

An voila it should work

Tested on Synology DSM 7.1-42661 Update 2 and Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS

The more complicated hands on way (directly on your server)

Warning that manual is untested until now, I tried my best to recall what you need, but no guarantee.

Since Version 0.7 you can use your own Server to search/convert/download movies from YouTube, in principle the whole communication (except the update search) is done by your Server then.

What you need

  • A Linux server
  • Webserver with PHP 7+ (I advise Apache)
  • yt_dlp installed (with all requirements for it, python for example)
  • docker installed
  • ImageMagick installed (to convert the preview icons)
  • This AmiTube-Server files: AmiTubeAPIv1

How to install

Get the docker container with : docker pull alb42/agaconv

Make sure docker can be started by the user which starts the php script, usually something like www-data. dor more informations on starting docker as non root check out the docker documentation.

Copy the contents of the AmiTubeAPIv1 archive to the top of webpage (you can rename the folder of course or put that to a subfolder as you like, you need to find the URL later).

Use your Browser to http://your.server/atv1/ytsearch.php if php is working and you have the right URL it should show an „OK“.

Edit the ToolTypes of your AmiTube and add the new ToolType: SERVERURL=http://your.server/atv1/

If you now start AmiTube it should use your server. If not check the apache error log for messages.