stov/README

=== ABOUT ===

stov is a program which allows you to subscribe to channels, playlists and search results on youtube. (More platforms may be implemented later) You don't need a youtube account for the program to work since it uses read-only access to the youtube API or retrieves the needed data using youtube-dl. You can for example run it as a cron job to automatically download your favourite videos.

=== USAGE ===

see ./stov --help

=== DEPENDENCIES ===

stov depends on the following software to be installed:

	* Python 2.7 or higher (python 3.x should work but is not officially supported, this is a release goal for 1.0)
	* youtube-dl (get it from http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl/ if you don't have it yet, it is needed to download videos and also for the "no API"-mode)
	* lxml module for python

=== COPYING ===

see LICENSE

=== CONFIGURATION ===
By default, the configuration is defined in ~/stov/stov.json in the json format. A default config file is created for you when you run the program for the first time. The following parameters are currently available which you can alter manually:

mailto: Recipient address used for notitifications
mailfrom: Sender address used for notifications
mailhost: Host name or ip address of the mail server which is used to send notifications
auth_needed: Define if the smtp server need authentication (yes or no)
user_name: User name to use for smtp authentication if defined
password: Password to use for SMTP authentication
youtube-dl: Path to the youtube-dl binary if not found automatically
downloaddir: Path the downloaded videos are saved into
database: File name to use for the database
smtpport: Port used to connect to the mail server
maxvideos: Maximum number of videos to retrieve from the youtube API for each subscription,
	default 25, maximum 50, reduce this parameter for better parsing performance
notify: Define if you want to be notified via email about new episodes of your subscriptions,
	valid values: yes or no
db_version: Database version (Do not change!)
config_version: Configuration version (Do not change!)
videocodec: Video codec used for downloaded videos (valid values: h264, webm or flv)
maxresolution: Maximum resolution to use for downloaded videos, please note
	that not all codecs and resolutions might be available so a lower resolution
	or other codec might be used in these cases
maxfails: Number of times the download of a video may fail until it is marked as failed
	and won't be tried again
check_title: Define if stov should check the title of each video in a search or channel
	with search string subscription. This works around some deficits of the youtube
	API which sometimes also returns video completely unrelated to your search.
	Videos whose titles don't match the search string will be entirely ignored.
	valid values: yes or no
use_api: Define if you want to use the Youtube Data API v2. If this is set to false,
	a fallback mode using youtube-dl will be used. This is generally much slower,
	so using the API is recommended. However Google will cease offering the API 
	without authentication in the foreseable future, so using the fallback mode
	will be the only option then.

=== KNOWN ISSUES ===

Currently none, contact me if you find any.

=== INSTALLATION ===

You can just run the main file "stov" directly from this directory by calling
it from the shell or with the python interpreter ("./stov" or "python stov").
Furthermore, stov uses python distutils as default installation method. Just
run "python setup.py install" to install it into your system. For further
information an options run "python setup.py --help".