runtime selection of YT video stream

[RJVB]

If memory serves me well from an earlier issue, QMPlay2 now actually downloads multiple audio and video streams for YT videos that have them, and then selects the best quality pair that corresponds to the user's settings. In practice I think that's always the Opus audio that is usually served with the VP9 video.

If these streams are being downloaded anyway, wouldn't it be possible to list them in the info panel and streams menus, so that we can make runtime adjustments to our preconfigured choice?
I for instance still don't have hardware-accelerated VP9 playback, usually prefer it over H264 for the visibly better quality but I don't really need that when listening to a concert where I won't be watching the video most of the time. In that case I'd prefer to let the GPU do the work and free the CPU up for other things. Not to mention cutting down on fan noise ;)

I know I can switch the video off completely but turning it back on usually restarts playback from the beginning so I only use that feature when I'm certain I won't be wanting to watch the video at all.

[zaps166]

I for instance still don't have hardware-accelerated VP9 playback, usually prefer it over H264 for the visibly better quality

You can use AV1 codec now 🙂

In that case I'd prefer to let the GPU do the work and free the CPU up for other things. Not to mention cutting down on fan noise ;)

Press O key (Playback->Enable video) to disable video at all - the video is not downloaded (if stream allows it - on YouTube mostly possible) also it doesn't decode - CPU (decoder) and GPU (decoder and/or display) are doing nothing with video.

[RJVB]

On Tuesday November 28 2023 15:40:39 Błażej Szczygieł wrote: Press `O` key (`Playback`->`Enable video`) to disable video at all - the video is not downloaded (if stream allows it - on YouTube mostly possible) also it doesn't decode - CPU (decoder) and GPU (decoder and/or display) are doing nothing with video.

I'm aware of that, and that's fine if I am certain that I am not interested in the video. The problem is that re-enabling video tends to restart the playback. Not certain under what circumstances but it may be for longer videos that don't get downloaded completely. Or for those videos where you can and do disable the video stream download... Think long concerts where all of a sudden you want to see what you're hearing ;)

[zaps166]

I'm aware of this issue. It's not that easy, because it doesn't download, demux, decode data, so if you enable video at any moment, it needs to buffer it first, demux and decode since nearest key-frame - it'll never be instant, but I can try to improve it a bit. Currently QMPlay2 clears all buffers if you enable video 😄

[RJVB]

It's not that easy

I bet! I must be easier to provide a selection of the available streams because the user-facing part of that already exists. And then you could add a "no stream" option that suppresses the playing but not the download ;)