Minitube is a classic Unix program for the playback of YouTube films. Enter a keyword and the program will retrieve all relative URLs from YouTube and play them one after the other. With a binary of just 440KByte, Minitube does without Flashplayer, is advertisement-free and relies fully on the Phonon framework for audio and video support.

Made in Italy.

The QT programmed tool was created by the Italian Flavio Tordini. A binary for Linux, Mac OSX and as source code under the GPLv3 is available for download. A free BSD port also. QT in version 4.5 at least, is required. Playback on the KDE multimedia framework will call for the installation of the relative packages.

Once the tar-gz archive is unpacked, start the program via the console with ./minitube. Enter keyword and a list of suggestions (similar to Google) will be shown. A click loads the available videos and playback starts automatically.

Something with Linux? Minitube helps you choose.

Minitube remembers used keywords and provides a list for speedy access.

The Player.

The graphic interface is easily explained. In most cases, a simple click on the full-screen button will get things running. Tabs let you decide if you want to watch the newest, most-viewed or highest rated videos. The default QT mode will select highest rated videos.

Don't like the video? Click the skip button or press [Ctrl]+[Right]. With [Ctrl]+[Y] the video will open on the YouTube homepage. Here however, you will need the Flashplayer plugin to play the videos.

Type in the keyword and press enter. The playlist for the evenings viewing is quickly filled.

More than this, Minitube can't do, but generally speaking, if all you want to do is watch a couple of really good vids, what more do you need?

Conclusion.

It's been a long time since I found a program that works out of the box and does what the blurb says it should. Minitube belongs on every multimedia PC.