Project Idea: Video Extractor And Player for Firefox 38

Dev Zone Code
1

I want to make a firefox extension for PPC mac to pull videos, video streams from websites such as youtube, kissanime, twitch, or other such sites, through HTML5 to run in VLC or Windows Media Player. My OS candidate is OSX 10.5.8 though linux may be a candidate in the event I can get it to run on my hardware.

My ibook is all I can really test with and its not that great in the first place.

IBM 7447-A 1.07 GHz
1.25 GB Ram
ATi 9200m

And I have TenFourFox, a split off of Firefox 38 that is kept up to date. There are few overclocking tools for this hardware so testing that area is difficult if not impossible.

My premise is I know many people that have this hardware. In fact I use it for a work machine. I have helped a homeless shelter / network recently by providing them sources of OS images and software for the homeless not only in the US, but in Bosnia, Germany, and South America. Knowing that some of them are kids that I have helped, this would be a great way for them to be able to use their hardware for the most of what they can do and want to do.

I have a bunch of testers available, but I want to know how difficult this would be, and if any of you know what video downloaders have been made out of in the past. I know python and LUA, but I have a feeling C++ or CBasic is going to be a better framework to use.

Thanks

Edit: And yes this is aimed at a younger audience to be used, though I do know for a fact that Algezeera, CNN, CSPAN, UKWide (I think it was called that? something like that. Someone from britain can let me know) and many other news networks STILL use HTML4 players! Though many have been getting up to HTML5. This excites me. I hate Java and Flash players ^o^

I don't really have a design concept yet, though I think it could be a mix of PopcornTime for useability sake, and the python tool Livestreamer. If you know the tool, great, but essentially it pulls a livestream from twitch, Livestream, or the shoutcast DNAS networks and pushes it to your favorite player. Even on a shitty PPC machine like mine I can watch at medium video, 720p 60FPS. But its also running natively to decode and thats kinda the point I am trying to make. Inside the browser is VERY slow. Simple HTML stuff is best, though youtube can be done if you limit it to 360p and let the video load all the way.

Anyways any ideas would be great. Other projects I could look at, suggestions for what could be done. Are there open video decoders? Let me know!

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ugg, PowerPC Macs. Sure they were great by standards of 13 years ago. Hell, they were even good by standards of 8 years ago. But I think it's time for PowerPC Macs to rest. Though I'd like to see the TALOS Workstation to be Hackintosh'd to run a modified version of Leopard that had the skeleton of Snow Leopard ported to PowerPC via static binary translation.

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Even so, I think its a great dev area still. More or less its been let go by apple so really I don't get why more people don't hack these things. I've just been helping a couple shelters out over the last year as they have posted to my forum on G+ and I thought "Hey, why isn't this a thing?"

I just want to help and they have all of these PPC machines around from way back. They've gotten them reurbished and are giving them out to families.

Say what you like, btu I think it would be a big benefit.

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Well, I don't think they'll be usable for much longer with the h265 codec coming out and smart phones can do most of the computing that most people want.

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....... Did you not read the original post?

I'm mostly making this tool because it was a question someone asked. If such a thing existed. They are people that don't have 300 bucks to blow on a stupid phone. They have 40 bucks to buy food and live in a shelter. At that theres the option of re-encoding or porting a newer version of VLC.

So if you have any ideas, even if generic, please share. If not, please don't de-rail the post. My hardware candidate is PPC macs because this is what is available to the people I want to offer such a tool to.

Thanks.