Youtube + Selenium ChromeDriver (Python) - How to know when a video ends?

python-2.7 selenium selenium-webdriver youtube

11,889

Solution 1

You can execute javascript API in context of youtube video page:

youtubePlayer = document.getElementById("movie_player");
youtubePlayer.getPlayerState();

So according to https://developers.google.com/youtube/js_api_reference?csw=1

state == 0 is when a video has ended

You can add an executor in a loop checking the state every N seconds.

You can also use the 'onStateChange' function of the Youtube iFrame API to print whenever the state changes.

function onPlayerStateChange(event) {
      console.log(player.getPlayerState());     // 1 = Playing || 2 = Paused || 3 = <<- O ->> || 0 = Finished.
  }

Solution 2

driver.find_element_by_class_name("ytp-time-current").text

it only works while the time and title are shown on the screen. Once a couple of seconds past, the titles disappears and the returned value is "".

Solution 3

You can get the length of video and current playing time as text and then convert them into seconds. Also, as a loop you can wait until the current time reaches the length of the video.

length_str = driver.find_element_by_class_name("ytp-time-duration").text
current_time_str = driver.find_element_by_class_name("ytp-time-current").text

import re
length = re.findall(r'\d+', length_str) # convert ['2:24'] to ['2', '24']
current_time = re.findall(r'\d+', current_time_str)

length_sec = 60 * int(length[0]) + int(length[1])
current_time_sec = (60 * int(current_time[0]) + int(current_time[1]))
remaining_time = length_sec - current_time_sec

11,889

Pythonic

Python user for financial, scientific and fun applications

Updated on July 13, 2022

Comments

Pythonic almost 2 years
[Edit: solved, see mid-way in text of question]

Quick question on understanding the contents of a Youtube page with a video playing in it:

In summary

I use Selenium to play videos on Youtube, as part of a browser-based GUI.

I need to know when the video has finished playing, for the GUI to do something else (e.g. feed local HTML into the browser).

Code snippet and question
```
import os, time
from selenium import webdriver

# [...]
chromedriver = 'path_to_chromedriver_binary'  # substitute as appropriate
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chromedriver)
youtube_link = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=somevideo'
driver.get(youtube_link)
```
At this point, I could time.wait() for the length of the video.

However, I wonder if I could query the YouTube page via the Selenium driver and gauge the time remaining for the play-through in a while loop (I am not familiar with how to extract this info from a youtube page)

Thanks!

[Edits with solution]

Selenium Solution

Thanks to Stanjer, and to this answer and this other answer, you can get the movie_player status through this method:
```
player_status = driver.execute_script("return document.getElementById('movie_player').getPlayerState()")
```
(don't forget to add "return" at the beginning of the script)

Selenium Alternative Solution

Less elegant but worth pointing out: driver.text returns a string representing the video timer in this string format '1:00 / 2:00'. Therefore you can check if the video has played through by something along these lines:
```
video_is_playing = True
while video_is_playing:
    time.sleep(1)
    video_is_playing = not(driver.text[:4] == driver.text[-4:])
```
[edit] As per Jose's comment, this info can also be accessed by:
```
driver.find_element_by_class_name("ytp-time-current").text
```
Complication and next question

I need to open up the video in maximised format, and with autoplay.

This means I call the following url:
```
youtube.com/v/<video_code>?rel=0&autoplay=1
```
However this returns a very short html which only contains an embed code, as per example here:
```
<HTML><HEAD></HEAD>
    <BODY leftMargin=0 scroll=no topMargin=0>
        <EMBED height="100%" 
        type=application/x-shockwave-flash 
        width="100%" 
        src=https://www.youtube.com/v/Fsc-oT9PsSQ?rel=0&amp;autoplay=1
        fullscreen="yes">
    </BODY>
</HTML> 
```
So I have no movie_player element here.

Approach 1 - can I extract the timer from the application/x-shockwave-flash?

Approach 2 - If I launch the youtube video in a classic Youtube page, how can I tell the movie_player to maximise itself?

(note: this answer and this answer probably contain info to solve approach 2, will post if I get this to work with Selenium)