BrainStorming: making our quality/resolution feature more meaningful.

[ImprovedTube]

a) People want "Auto HD" (sometimes it can be useless/bad that we (and @youtube) currenly allow to set a resolution much higher than the user's current video size, let alone physical display and even if CPU / GPU wont keep up (#1211 2.)
b) Also, sometimes it is useful to force a low resolution (usecase: Minimalism or expensive bandwith in poor remote locations (and ships)

• the "auto HD" or "highest resolution to select", shouldnt always be far/much more than the viewport ( https://github.com/code-for-charity/satus )
  • + highest might only makes sense when in full screen ( Issues1563-1 ) - Forcing higher resolution in full-screen, but again might not make sense to be much more than pixels (Scaling down is not always any better than scalling up).
    • So for any/rare sizes / the highest resolutiuon available could usually be a above 30% the way between the neighboring video resoutions (physicalScreenSize - next SmallerResolution ) > (30% * (nextBiggerResolution - nextSmallerResolution) / _avi12/youtube-auto-hd/issues/40#issuecomment )
      • on the contrary, consider @raszpl's point below

more:

• 3. when playing in a background tab, then temporarily chose a low qualty** (audio only, 144p 240p 360p 480p) #1040

• (while for fullscreen we could offer a Minimum like 720p (just in case youtube mistakingly set something else when connection seemed slow etc) #722

• IDEA: option to play low-resolution videos in a smaller player #528

[raszpl]

Setting resolution above monitor physical max is often used when watching something that YT compression is not good at. For example drone racing in the forest is unwatchable in normal 1080p, so youtubers take their own 1080 footage and encode it in 4K, then if you watch tht 4K version you will get better bitrate thus better quality. Blocking users from watching higher res than monitor is imo not a good idea.

btw the quality setting #1666

[ImprovedTube]

good point

• 0. bitrate- & visual comparision of an upscaled frame (1440p, 4k, 8k) of drone racing in forests, next to the same frame in native resolution (1080p)

[avi12]

Setting resolution above monitor physical max is often used when watching something that YT compression is not good at. For example drone racing in the forest is unwatchable in normal 1080p, so youtubers take their own 1080 footage and encode it in 4K, then if you watch tht 4K version you will get better bitrate thus better quality. Blocking users from watching higher res than monitor is imo not a good idea.

That's interesting, I did not know about it

[ImprovedTube]

Another possible feature is to lower the quality automatically when the video is not visible on the screen, to save some computing power and electricity. But this could also affect the user experience, because changing the quality would make YouTube reload the video, which could cause delays or buffering issues, especially for users with slow internet connections

👍 yes, for this hypothesis one should consider how much is already buffered & dont needa change within the last few seconds of a video. could be optional opt-in.

• A delay leaving the playing tab can be a good thing :D
  • Off-topic: wondered about another feature: 10 seconds pause when leaving the tab
    • Also pause as long as there is high keyboard & mouse speed. Also auto-pause&-unpause after X minutes of HID inactivity while viewport is small or PiP (not full screen or theater)