So, by far the best solution I could find for Ubuntu 14.04LTS and later is the software called GTK Youtube Viewer
it has rich set of features and the ability to login to Youtube account.
To install GTK Youtube Viewer
:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install youtube-viewer
It reproduces all videos despite of new Google restrictions on Vevo etc. Also I did a few tweaks to it, by default it uses mplayer
engine so you can substitute any front-end player that uses mplayer
engine just to get a nice GUI. This is how you can do it: in Youtube Viewer navigate to "Menu" -->
"Preferences", you'll get a script opened, find these lines:
video_player_selected => "mplayer",
video_players => {
mplayer => {
arg => "-prefer-ipv4 -really-quiet-cache %d -cache-min %d",
audio => "-audiofile *AUDIO*",
cmd => "/usr/bin/mplayer",
fs => "-fs",
srt => "-sub *SUB*",
},
mpv => {
arg => "--really-quiet",
then simply change the line:
cmd => "/usr/bin/mplayer",
to e.g.:
cmd => "/usr/bin/smplayer",
Next open SMPlayer and navigate to "SMPlayer Preferences" -->
"Network" tab and put the marks at Enable Youtube internal support
and Enable MPV's support for streaming sites
that's it. Now go back to Youtube Viewer and click on any video it will launch it with SMPlayer.
Edit
A small fix/improvement when using SMPlayer if you want to avoid breaking a link into threads when clicking on the video to play remove this argument line from mplayer
section:
arg => "-prefer-ipv4 -really-quiet -cache %d -cache-min %d",