MxTube and its future.
Posted on March 12th, 2008 by Max
In this post I plan to answer most of the commonly asked questions I have been receiving recently.
- At the moment, there is nothing I can do about downloads finishing prematurely. YouTube (Google) is closing the download connection on Wifi quality videos when on edge or another slow connection.
- I will not be adapting this application for any other movie playing sites. The only reason this works with YouTube is because mp4 versions of their videos are available via an xml based search which the YouTube app uses.
- Search results do not match those of YouTube.com exactly because not every youtube video has been converted to mp4. This is something I do not have control over.
- I will most likely not build this app for use in the app store being released by apple, I doubt apple will approve it for obvious reasons.
- Apps cannot just be placed into the iPod app. Not only do they have to be in the correct directory, but they need to be added to an SQLite3 db in the correct format. Also, upon syncing with iTunes, the database will be reset and the videos will disappear. If I can get videos to sync with iTunes you can expect this feature in a future version, but until then it doesn’t look like a possibility.
- Audio only download is not an option. This would require downloading the full video, stripping the video (Not possible on iPhone) and building an audio player inside of MxTube for playback.
- Negative comments and emails DO NOT help me make this app any better. If you have something negative to say about my application that is not constructive, don’t bother saying it at all.
Hope this clears up some confusion,
Max
I just wanted to be the first to compliment you on a job well done. Im eagerly waiting for your next update. Luckily for me, my mxtube has yet to crash.
With you.. about that negativity!
Keep up the good work!
you are the BEST!!
MXTUBE is the BEST APP for IPHONE! 
ps.
good work!
I am on WiFi connection not on Edge and the downloads finish prematurely. Another thing is that the App crashes very often only when i open it. Hope this helps you bugfixing.
Keep up good work!
EXACTLY the same problem here..
Im on WIFI with a fast connection and the downloads NEVER get the whole video… EVER.
I have Edge turned off all the time through boss prefs so there is no way it has anything to do with Edge.
And the app closes randomly for me also.
Not being negative here, this app is an awesome idea, I just want it to work
Sure it works with low quality, but meh, low quality = crap quality
Thanks for your effort.
I had exactly the same problem as you guys. But it seems that Max has no way to fix the problem. If he knew the problem at the begining,why did he still put this feature (Hi Quality) in this App?
I am using a 2 mbps connection, and it never finished a single download and as you can see, a lot of people are having the same problem, so it’s not true what you said that it crashes only when using edge. If you don’t know the real reason, just don’t say nothing, instead of giving lame excuses. I am a programmer like you, so it’s very lame to ask for donation for something that don’t do what it pretend to do. And last, if you don’t want negative review, just close the comments, nobody have to write what only you want.
I know google is closing the connection cause I can sniff the headers. The application downloads EVERY high quality video beautifully when I am on wifi. Also, if your a “programmer” why not build your own app??? You must know how to do it better. You might as wel considering my computer no longer works and I have to respond to comments on my iPhone. And being that I have no real source of income, besides donations it doesn’t look like I’ll get anything to work on soon.
Max
Hi there,
On my slow 256k ADSL connection at home in Mauritius, I can’t view the high-quality videos at all even by using all the hacks and firefox extensions. When I tried to download one directly by getting the link from Safari’s activity window, it failed halfway. I then turned the url into a TinyURL and tried it in Flashget on my PC. Flashget was able to download it without issues.
Max… How do you think Flashget does the downloading to prevent youtube/google from cutting the connection?
I hope someone can help you fix that by finding out how flashget does it.
Thanks a bunch for the great app that mxtube is max.
Cheers.
Hey, great app.
If I could add one feature to this app it would be a “rebuild” function in the downloaded videos section.
It would dynamically read the contents of the mxtube video folder, and add any files that do not have entries in the db list, so those files can be played back in mxtube again.
I am not sure if it is possible to implement, but if you can read folder contents it should be possible.
Anyway good luck and I personally wouldn’t worry to much about the nay sayers.
Sure your app crashes sometimes, but its not like they payed any money for it. Make the app do what you want, and make it work well for your own satisfaction, not anyone elses.
-Brian
great app and great idea… i like it and i can confirm the problem is google closes connection when you have a slow connection… i am able to download full videos in my house (fast connection) and the downloads never finish at my school (slow connection)… thanks
YEah me too, I was excited to ty it out but I never had any download finished
Its kinda useless for me but still the idea is awesome. I hope one day Ill be able to use this program for what it is.. downloading complete videos in utube and not just 1/3 of it. Keep trying and I know it will be fixed soon 
I will add myself to the list of people who are using a fast Wifi connection and is experiencing the problem. It typically takes 4-5 attempts in order to download a video correctly. Luckily, on my aforementioned fast Wifi connection (just a cable modem, really), it takes less than a minute for me to make each 20MB attempt ;P.
Even if YouTube is closing the connection prematurely, it seems like it would be a simple operation to just make a second request with a Range: header to get the rest of the content. You know how much data needs to be downloaded because you are renderinng a progress bar for the full size.
Isn’t this what the YouTube client is doing, anyway? It seems to be able to work even if the entire connection drops halfway through a download: it just resumes. I’d be happy to help you with such a code modification if it came down to it. I just recently wrote similar code when I redid the APT http method to use Apple’s CFNetwork library.
i have a touch and the same problem, so edge can’t be the problem, because the ipod touch hasn’t got edge
Best App ever. The nativest App ever! Thanx for the hard work!
\well all I can say is every video worked fine for me on 16 meg itouch.
Some videos are bad quality but thats just because the source is bad like live video from a cam etc.
How do you remove a video though as edit dont work I get this red no entry sign on all videos.
Great app really works well so thats.
As I said every video works fine even when dl 4 at a time the all dowloaded.
Thanks
Hobs
Man, I would like to ask a simple question!!!!
about the 6th thing u said its not able to download ONLY video.
Ok, but cant we just download the mp4’s and then rip them to mp3?? I asked a guy who knows a lot for converting directly on your iphone (the maker of ringtones) and Im waiting for response.
Now, when it comes to the external player, to play the song we can use MnPlight to import songs into ipod.app or use erica’s sadun application (cant remember the name right now) to play the mp3s.
hey for those of you guys who want your videos from mxtube in your ipod under the ipod.app or videos.app, you can openssh with winscp into it and go to private/var/mobile/media/mxtube and u shud see all the .mp4 video files. just copy them onto ur desktop or my documents and it shud show up. i love this app and i think anyone with an ipod touch or iphone (jb) shud have it. thanks mxweas and keep the updates comin.