iRadar: Gmediafinder – Watch & Download YouTube Videos And Music Without Flash [Linux & Windows]

Friday, June 10, 2011

Gmediafinder – Watch & Download YouTube Videos And Music Without Flash [Linux & Windows]

What’s better than watching YouTube videos in your browser? Watching them on your desktop, minus Flash of course! That’s exactly what Gmediafinder for Linux and Windows provides – an Adobe-free solution to perusing the YouTube catalogue. With support for video downloads and access to some great content from some other lesser known sources, Gmediafinder hides plenty of tricks up its sleeve.
If Flash is too cumbersome for you, and you enjoy being able to download your favourite YouTube videos, then Gmediafinder might just be the perfect solution.

Streaming & Downloading

The application itself really couldn’t be easier to use. Once launched, the first thing you’ll see is the Playlist view and everything you need to get streaming. Pick a source from the drop-down box (more on sources later), enter a search query and any results that match will be displayed in the left hand column.

Then it’s just a single click to load the video (or audio) of your choice in record time – the video doesn’t take long to load as there’s no Flash video player to load first. I found using Gmediafinder much faster than browsing YouTube via a web interface, with the added ability to download too!
Once you’ve found a video you like and fancy downloading, a small drop-down box should appear next to the Download box under your search results. You can use this to choose your preferred quality of video, which is limited to the versions YouTube has available for streaming.

A simple click of Download takes you to your downloads page, and the video will immediately begin downloading to the location specified in the Download path drop-down box. It’s then up to you to decide what to do with your new FLV or MP4 video.
By default YouTube will only search for videos at the 640×320 resolution. If you’re after HD content and if your Internet connection can handle it, you’ll want to change this option in Settings. Here you can also turn the other search engines on or off; by default they’re all enabled.

Services

Gmediafinder doesn’t just embrace Flash-free YouTube, but a couple of other sources of entertainment – MP3 search engines. You know the rules by now – if you don’t own it, it’s not legal. Audio playback is pretty good too, as is downloading files you’ve searched for. You even get a decent selection of visualizations to enjoy whilst you listen.

In addition to YouTube, Gmediastreamer supports the following search engines:

Dilandau

A European-run MP3 search engine that allows you to “Download music for FREE”, though with a limited catalogue.

MP3Realm

Now pointing to azmp3s.com, another slightly shady looking MP3 search engine that offers streaming, downloading and a lyrics lookup service. I’ve noticed not all files will stream, for some unknown reason.

Skreemr

An MP3 search engine that claims to deliver music, remixes, podcasts and ringtones and works well.

Tagoo

A Russian MP3 search engine, quite possibly legal in Russia but probably not anywhere else. Some adverts on the site are probably NSFW (not safe for work) but accessing via Gmediafinder gets rid of those anyway!

Imusicz

Another questionable search engine that comes with its own status page that you can check if your results aren’t showing up.

Download & Install

To install Gmediafinder on Ubuntu Linux, simply paste the following into a new Terminal window:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:s-lagui/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install gmediafinder

There is a version available for Mandriva Linux at Gnome Files.
If you’re using another variant of Linux you can try to compile from source, you can find out detailed instructions regarding this at the Gmediafinder github homepage.

Windows users first must download and install this (32bit) or this (64bit) and then download and run the Gmediafinder installer from here (both 32bit and 64bit versions). The project doesn’t seem to have a dedicated homepage, though you can find out more at the Gnome Files website.

Conclusion

Gmediafinder is a fantastic little tool for those of you who appreciate a Flash-free YouTube experience and the ability to download your favourite video and audio files. The program is responsive, simple and not bogged down with unnecessary extras, making it the slickest streamer and downloader I’ve used in a while.
Download, stream and give Adobe the heave-ho with Gmediafinder; another fantastic piece of cross-platform freeware.

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