Putting Non-YouTube Videos in MxTube

So, you have your Jailbroken iPod Touch or iPhone with 2.0 firmware running OpenSSH, and you have MxTube 1.5 or better, of course. What if you want one of those pesky videos that YouTube deletes all the time, like Paris Hilton For President? Or maybe you want a full movie on your iPod without having to sync to iTunes since you’re stuck in Linux Land. Well, here’s how:

Download the video

This can be done lots of ways, but somehow obtain a version of the video that ffmpeg can read. It can be just about any format. Let’s assume that we get a file called paris.flv.

Convert the video

ffmpeg -i paris.flv -b 500000 -s 176x144 -ac 1 -ab 64000 paris-high.mp4

This will make a nice movie for us to play. Let’s put it on the iPod:

scp paris-high.mp4 root@ipod:/var/mobile/Media/MxTube/

Make the Thumbnail

We need to grab a frame from the middle of the movie. Let’s use mplayer for that!

mplayer -vo jpeg -frames 1 -ss 30 paris.flv

This will make a file called 00000001.jpg. Let’s put that in the right spot:

scp 00000001.jpg root@ipod:/var/mobile/Media/MxTube/paris.thm

Add the video to the Library

Edit /var/mobile/Library/MxTube/VideoLibrary.plist on the iPod. Make a new dict entry in the list like so:

        <dict>
                <key>author</key>
                <string>hank</string>
                <key>duration</key>
                <string>01:50</string>
                <key>high</key>
                <string>/var/mobile/Media/MxTube/paris-high.mp4</string>
                <key>id</key>
                <string>64ad536a6dQ</string>
                <key>thumbnail</key>
                <string>/var/mobile/Media/MxTube/paris.thm</string>
                <key>title</key>
                <string>Paris for President</string>
        </dict>

Just fill in the right filenames for the thumbnail and movie like you used above. Also, change the author to yourself or the original director, and the duration accordingly. Keep the id something random. Also, you can change the display title as the last option there.

Other Pro Tips

Keep in mind that if you want to be able to delete the movie from the interface, you need to change the ownership on all the files to mobile:mobile using chown.

Results!

Well, it totally works, with sound even.

Good luck!