Yeah, that tutorial is out of date--
What seems to be going on is that Google/youTube changes how they handle the video IDs on a regular basis. The standard way to get a youTube FLV is to use a PHP file to parse the return of the query using "curl" (for instance,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o) and it will give you the real, actual FLV file.
There's a lot of "download any file from youtube" sites out there that do just that-- unfortunately, all youTube has to do is change the name of the argument that holds the FLV. Since I first wrote that 'tute, the arg has been called "swf_args", "swfArgs", etc-- meaning I have to rewrite the PHP file to search for the correct argument. As you can imagine, trying to "google" a solution to hacking a google-owned site (youTube) is not so successful!
Since I wanted to write something stable, or at least something that I wouldn't break every week, I went ahead and started using the official Google chromeless player API. The documentation sucks, but at least it's stable and supported by google. Unfortunately, I can't really use it to download a video-- just play it. And it skins the stupid youTube logo on top of it as well. Works for the Rez player utility-- but that's about it. If anyone has another, more elegant solution, let me know!
Regards,
MkUltra