Internet (Web)

Enjoying Beta 3 very much. I can defiantly see the progress made. Overall I could probably use it as a daily system as my needs are not very complicated. My problem is with web surfing. Like a lot of people I spend a lot of time on the internet. While a lot of progress has been made in Haiku on that front I still find myself with issues. I am hoping there may be a way to mitigate some of them. If not then I will try again with Beta 4.

Web Positive - My biggest issue here is with Youtube. All videos play in very low res and clicking on the gear icon to change the resolution only results in the menu popping up for like a 1/2 second and then vanishing. As far as I can find, there really isn’t a way for me to get WebPositive to play anything above 360p.

Otter Browser - This one has been suggested throughout this board as a good alternative to WebPositive. Overall I do find it to do better. But still have issues with Youtube. It does seem to play video in a higher res but again I can’t seem to get it to change resolutions. Also, playback of Youtube videos is very, very choppy and not a good experience.

OTH - Playing any video from a local file works wonderfully. Highres, Lowres, in the middle res, it all is good.

I do know there is some tool to download youtube videos to watch them. but, I have no desire to download every video I want to watch.

If anyone has any suggestions on how I can work through these issues, that would be great. If not, then I will retire Beta 3 until Beta 4 and hope that the things are better then.

Donald

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You can use qmplay2 to search youtube and play videos from it.

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AFAIK VLC can play youtube videos too. No way to search tho.

I was able to use qmplay2 and it works just fine. Video playback is smooth. Not really the youtube experience I am looking for… but ok for the moment. I will probably play around with Beta 3 for a few more days before I wipe the HD and reinstall Linux. Then I’ll wait for Beta 4 and see how that does.

Thanks

Donald

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I guess the good news is that Haiku itself can play the videos fine, so likely the issue lies somewhere in our WebKit code. Which maybe is something obvious and not that helpful. But to me it means that fixing the issue is easier because it doesn’t mean ALL video playing has to be fixed (which is a lot of work), just aspects of our WebKit code.

Anyhow thanks for trying out Haiku, we will definitely keep working on the browser…

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Ya, I noticed that. All the videos I had actual files for played just fine. I was a bit confused as to why it was not working in the webrowser. But that is a job for the devs. Other than the web I found most anything else I use most of the time. So, Haiku is very close to being something I can really use. So, so close. Here’s to Beta 4!! :sunglasses:

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Maybe I’m a bit too late to answer this but have you tried Invidious to watch Youtube content?
It’s likely Googles proprietary bullshit that tries to hide the media URL and prevents downloads that wastes a lot of computing power and makes video playback a disaster,and not the WebKit code.
Invidious uses a standard HTML5 media element so it’s easy for the browser to render and loads very fast.
The big invidio.us server was shut down months ago but there are dozens of community instances which you can try,select one here: https://redirect.invidious.io

No. It’s the WebKit code. I know because I wrote it. Or rather, I hacked it up in two hours, hoping that it would get things started and other people would then help improve it. It has stayed largely untouched since. It can only play videos from start to finish (no seeking). It downloads the whole video to RAM before starting to play. It keeps it in RAM while playing. It copies the decoded video data to 3 or 4 places before it gets to the display, with possibly multiple stages of scaling up and down.

Also, the Google code is not there to hide the URL and prevent downloads. It’s there mostly to allow switching dynamically between different video quality options, and adjust automatically depending on the available bandwidth.

There is a lot of unneeded Google code around the video (trackers spying every mouse move in the usual Google way), but even removing that won’t help with the fact that the super hacky code I wrote to get videos running needs to be replaced by some real implementation.

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I didn’t know any details of the HaikuWebKit implementation but as I never read complaints about any other video site,I assumed that it’s a similar problem as Here's Why YouTube Is So Slow on Firefox — And How to Fix It | Fortune - and sure,the big tracking scripts you mention make it even worse.
Anyways,the details on how videos work in WebPositive don’t sound that nice and could probably be optimized :thinking:

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It’s not just Google either - a number of news sites (that use their own streaming platform, etc) have3 a similar problem. I’m thnakful that @pulkomandy got the basics going - are there others with WebKit/video experience who can pitch in to tighten things up? A lot of weight to press on one person’s shoulders (I’d love to, but unfortunately I’m not a programmer - simple MS and Amiga BASIC, and maybge some ultra beginners’ Perl and Apple Script is about the boundary of my aptitude)

I plan to put in work on WebKit and WebPositive when I get a chance. I did the original port though it has been many years (a decade) and I am quite out of date. But I know how important it is to everyone and it is very important to me. I think there is a lot of easy things to fix if someone can put in the time. As you say we can’t put it all on PulkoMandy.

The reason I have not been doing much Haiku work lately is a bit about time but mostly about space. We had another child last year and to make room for her I had to move my home office to a more cramped location where I have not had enough room for a Haiku development system. But I hope to resolve that soon.

Plus I have things for Haiku, Inc that keep me busy. But I really want to help out on this. It has been frustrating and I tend to not talk about this because I don’t want to make promises I cannot keep.

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