Friday 13 January 2012

How to install & fix Macrotube for MCE

A quick write up on Macrotube which adds YouTube, YouTube HD, Daily Motion and MSN Soapbox videos and more into Windows Media Center.

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Go to this page download either the 32bit or 64bit installer file, run it and install the add-in.

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Now YouTube will NOT work out of the box and we want to add YouTube HD content as well. You need to update and replace a couple of XML files to get it to work.

Example of Youtube not working:

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Go to this page and download the two XML files to a temp folder. Now renamed the files as shown below:

YouTubeHD_20110830.xml –> YouTubeHD.xml

YouTube _20110827.xml –> YouTube.xml

Now move your renamed XML files in to the following folder:

C:\ProgramData\Jasmio\MacroTube\Providers

When you open Macrotube again you see now that YouTube HD has also been added

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The YouTube videos will now play as expected.

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Tip: I find that selecting Relevance rather than Date on the pivot menu will yield better search results.

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17 comments:

  1. A W Malloy13 January 2012 at 22:51

    Fantastic, thanks for this. My wife has been hassling me for ages to get YouTube through WMC.

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  2. Ray Cunningham19 January 2012 at 07:35

    Hi, I followed your instructions exactly. I get the macrotube menu but if I click on any of the providers I receive an error saying it is an invalid application unable to launch "MacroTube"
    Any ideas? I am running windows 7 ultimate 64 bit

    ReplyDelete
  3. CW-KID19 January 2012 at 07:41

    Not sure I have two 64 bit Windows 7 PC's. On the one upstairs MacroTube works perfectly all the time, on the one in my living room macro tube can bomb out back to the MCE start menu after a video has finished playing, I get a similar message. Are you launching the add-in from within the Extra's library in MCE or from the default menu strip that the Macrotube installer creates? I have a feeling if you move the icon to another menu strip using Media Center studio that could be problematic. But I am not sure what the problem is. Have you rebooted? Is your MCE user an administrator on the PC? Just guessing.

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  4. CW-KID19 January 2012 at 07:46

    Did you follow the guide exactly? Did you rename the downloaded XML files and put them in the correct directory? Its strange if when you click on Daily Motion or Soapbox it crashes?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ray Cunningham19 January 2012 at 08:07

    I uninstalled everything and tried again including a reboot. still no success at all. I have a couple of other addins but they don't do youtube.

    One is iplayer and the other is a media browser which I am going to remove. The downloaded files already have a .xml extension so I assume I am just renaming them as I would any other file?

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  6. Ray Cunningham19 January 2012 at 08:10

    I figured it out! Even though I am the only user on this PC and it says my account is an administrator account, it obviously isn't. How can I ensure my account has full blown administrator privileges?

    ReplyDelete
  7. CW-KID19 January 2012 at 08:11

    In the guide I say:

    Go to this page and download the two XML files to a temp folder. Now renamed the files as shown below:

    YouTubeHD_20110830.xml –> YouTubeHD.xml

    YouTube _20110827.xml –> YouTube.xml

    Now move your renamed XML files in to the following folder:

    C:\ProgramData\Jasmio\MacroTube\Providers

    Just right click the XML files and select rename ensure you retain the .xml at the end.

    Have you got another Media Center PC you can install Macro Tube on as a test?

    ReplyDelete
  8. CW-KID19 January 2012 at 08:16

    That might not be the problem, I always set my Media Center PCs up so the user is an administrator.

    You can right click Computer from your windows start menu, select Manage. Then in the tree on the left select Local Users & Groups expand and go in to the users folder, find your user account and right click it, select Properties and then select the Member of tab. It will then list what groups you are in? Administrators group etc

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ray Cunningham19 January 2012 at 08:18

    Thanks for taking the time to help Stuart. I can get it to work with youtube now but Dailymotion doesn't load any content. I can live with that though.

    It's good to be able to add things into media center and it's far more functional and enoyable to use than I remember when I had a Windows Media Center version of XP installed on an old PC.

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  10. Ray Cunningham19 January 2012 at 08:26

    I checked my account and it says member of Administrators. Windows Media Center does not run as administrator though unless I right click the menu and select run as administrator. I wonder if I can find the file that is run when I press the media center button on the Microsoft remote that I use.

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  11. Ray Cunningham19 January 2012 at 08:36

    Thanks for all your help Stuart. I find a lot of the HD videos won't play but not to worry. Many thanks for your help.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Diego31 March 2012 at 04:34

    VideoError: This video is either no longer available, or unplayable for technical reasons.

    It always shows that message if I try to watch Uoutube/YoutubeHD videos. Dailymotion works perfect.

    ReplyDelete
  13. CW-KID31 March 2012 at 05:01

    You need to download a new XML file for Youtube, try this one:

    http://macrotube-providers.googlecode.com/issues/attachment?aid=10027000&name=YouTube.xml&token=ROB8i4sWLBsfntsoc1EfDqlcreA%3A1333195238205

    ReplyDelete
  14. Diego31 March 2012 at 06:21

    Thanks, it was my fault. I was moving the xml files to "Program files\..." not "ProgramData\...". But now it crashes WMC totally every time I try to play a youtube video, either normal or HD, with the classic message "WMC stopped working". Bleh.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Unknown23 September 2012 at 19:44

    For anyone interested, I have updated the Twit.tv and Revision3 files and they can be found on my blog Boondok's Adventures

    ReplyDelete
  16. Unknown23 September 2012 at 19:46

    For anyone interested, I have updated the Twit.tv and Revision3 channels for Macrotube. They can be found on my blog:

    Boondok's Adventures

    ReplyDelete
  17. basik4 August 2014 at 13:54

    The MacroTube Helper application is up and running again after being down due to changes to YouTube content policies and general failure of the hosting service for the MacroTube Helper App.

    Here is a link to the project page - its free!
    https://code.google.com/p/macrotube-providers

    So if you need your Macrotube fix give it another try!​

    ReplyDelete