Video / Audio quality: Set it and forget it!!

[twhiting9275]

Getting really tired of Anystream constantly changing the video quality on videos here. Seriously. Just let the customer set the video to the highest quality available and stop asking! This is just ridiculous. Or at the VERY least, stop changing the quality selection!

Amazon, Hulu, HBO, they all do it, repeatedly. Doesn't matter the provider, it's just beyond annoying at this point. Provide the customer with a way to select the highest quality video, automatically. Or just stop the changing. Not that hard

 

[Ch3vr0n]

And what are you going to do if you 'set' it to 1080p with 7.1 surround and that combination isn't available. Only 720p with 5.1? Complain it won't download?

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

 

[PeterS]

Getting really tired of Anystream constantly changing the video quality on videos here. Seriously. Just let the customer set the video to the highest quality available and stop asking! This is just ridiculous. Or at the VERY least, stop changing the quality selection!

Amazon, Hulu, HBO, they all do it, repeatedly. Doesn't matter the provider, it's just beyond annoying at this point. Provide the customer with a way to select the highest quality video, automatically. Or just stop the changing. Not that hard

I would not sign that blanket.

I don't want the 1920x1080 resolution at all. In my opinion, storage requirements and quality gains do not match.
I want the 1280x720 resolution if possible.

Every user has their own ideas. Programming that shouldn't be that easy.

 

[RedFox 1]

I would not sign that blanket.

I don't want the 1920x1080 resolution at all. In my opinion, storage requirements and quality gains do not match.
I want the 1280x720 resolution if possible.

Every user has their own ideas. Programming that shouldn't be that easy.

I agree with you. If possible you should be able to enjoy whatever res you want. Let's see what happens, we have the best developers in the world, they will try their best. Thanks.

 

[DeepSpace]

You are right, it is very annoying. I only had it this week and had to redownload the entire season (the audio bug is known and the thread pointet me into this direction, so I noticed that AS chose the lower audio in batch).
A button where I can simply tell AS to always use the highest resolution and audio quality would be really helpful.

For users who only want to get 720p or stereo, that this can be used as well to tell AS that it should never select anything over 720p (etc). If one video is only 540p, then it is not more than 720p and AS will chose that. But no automatic learning. A setting.

For batch, there should be an advanced dialog to set what happens for other episodes. If I set one episode to be 720p instead of 1080p, there should be a checkbox "Also use it for the following episodes", so AS does not revert back to 1080p or in my case to the lower sound. And if I always want to have the best, AS will choose the highest, no matter if it is 720p or 1080p.
For some cases it might be helpful to let AS ask the user, but this can also be a checkbox. "Should AS ask if the resolution or audio changes in one of the next episodes?". So every user can use it or not, if someone does not want to have AS stop in the middle.

And what are you going to do if you 'set' it to 1080p with 7.1 surround and that combination isn't available.

How can I set AS to download something without having it in the download configuration dialog? If you refer to the global setting, than as I said. AS will use that as a maximum setting and will simply chose the next lower option, in your example 720p and 5.1.

 

[cartman0208]

I'd like to add one more use-case
For dual-audio you currently need to download a video twice, then extract and remux the audiostream.
I do the first download with my preferred resolution (not always the highest available) and the second one with the lowest quality available...

 

[PeterS]

...
For users who only want to get 720p or stereo, that this can be used as well to tell AS that it should never select anything over 720p (etc). If one video is only 540p, then it is not more than 720p and AS will chose that. But no automatic learning. A setting.

For batch, there should be an advanced dialog to set what happens for other episodes. If I set one episode to be 720p instead of 1080p, there should be a checkbox "Also use it for the following episodes", so AS does not revert back to 1080p or in my case to the lower sound. And if I always want to have the best, AS will choose the highest, no matter if it is 720p or 1080p.
...

I think that's a good idea.
I may be wrong, but I think this should be relatively easy to program.

 

[DeepSpace]

the second one with the lowest quality available...

I also did that for D+ a few weeks ago, and it that case you could use another checkbox, instead of always use the highest quality you could have always use the lowest quality. But in this case you should be able to set it video only, since you want a good audio.

 

[coopervid]

I also did that for D+ a few weeks ago, and it that case you could use another checkbox, instead of always use the highest quality you could have always use the lowest quality. But in this case you should be able to set it video only, since you want a good audio.

I think you misunderstood. My guess is that he wants a video file with two audio tracks, e.g. English and German. He needs to download the movie twice. Once just with the best picture, then once with the other language when picture quality doesn't matter. Then he muxes both languages together with the best picture to one file.

 

[cartman0208]

I think you misunderstood. My guess is that he wants a video file with two audio tracks, e.g. English and German. He needs to download the movie twice. Once just with the best picture, then once with the other language when picture quality doesn't matter. Then he muxes both languages together with the best picture to one file.

Correct.
I thought "dual-audio" implied that

 

[DeepSpace]

I think you misunderstood. My guess is that he wants a video file with two audio tracks, e.g. English and German. He needs to download the movie twice. Once just with the best picture, then once with the other language when picture quality doesn't matter. Then he muxes both languages together with the best picture to one file.

No, I know what me mean. What part you think is not clear?
I want to say that for dual audio one should be able to set video to always be the lowest quality (like my checkbox for highest quality) so AS won't revert to 1080p on ep2 if you only want to get 360p. But in that case it only should apply to video since the second audio track should be good.

 

[twhiting9275]

And what are you going to do if you 'set' it to 1080p with 7.1 surround and that combination isn't available. Only 720p with 5.1? Complain it won't download?

Properly designed software doesn't require a user to continually change something. That's just ridiculous.
If you want the added hassle of having to manually double check software and make sure it's doing it's job right, great, but that's not properly designed software
At the very minimum there needs to be an option so that specific popup window auto-selects the highest quality available, and remembers it. Same with HEVC and audio. Same exact thing. Sometimes it remembers, sometimes it doesn't. Just add an option to set it and forget it, so that the user doesn't have to keep double checking that the software is doing it's job
The point is, the software is not doing it''s job properly here, and this needs to be fixed
Audio/Video/Compression qualities change. It's not that hard to detect said change and automatically select said quality (based on user choice, of course). An option , save the user from having to double check that the software is working right

 

[KevinS72]

I personally would not want to have the software limited by choosing my video and audio without some kind of confirmation dialog like we currently have when adding a movie/episode. On one hand you have people that want the highest quality possible no matter what presented by the provider. For them not having a confirmation box may be preferred. Someone else may want up to a specific resolution, which may not be the best available for each selection, but then maybe also wants the best audio. And those that want additional audio tracks want the lowest video resolution/quality but the best audio (or a sub-selection) but only for the additional audio tracks. So you would be checking preference boxes each time you wanted to go from primary video and audio to adding alternate audio tracks, or fiddling with the selections in the confirmation box each time anyway. There will always need to be some rules the software uses because the source options available for each movie/show from the providers are inconsistent. And what each customer wants is inconsistent lol.

Other than some bugs that are being worked on regarding the new batch download feature, the software already tries to use whatever video/audio selection you choose for the first episode and is probably trying to pick the best options available "up to" what you chose on the first selection (except when bugs creep in). Maybe the saved registry key values are corrupt if that is not happening. Unfortunately the learned/last used values may not be what you want for each provider or even when choosing a movie vs. TV show which requires changing the previously used values.

I think AS+ is a great tool and the Dev's have done a great job at squashing bugs quickly and adjusting the software when they can based on our feedback. Like most software there are almost always enhancements that can be made to either make the software more robust and/or improve usability. Even with some bugs with batch downloading it is still a big quality of like improvement even though it makes it much easier to burn through tokens, hehe. ;-)

Some people want a single audio track and the best quality. Others may want 720p for TV shows and 1080p for movies. Hopefully the Dev's will have time to think about ways to give more controls around video/audio quality 'preferences' for each provider and maybe type of selection when they have time. Maybe some form of that additional control will come with the additional audio track support, maybe not. Whatever comes next, I look forward to seeing the continued improvements. Keep up the good work Dev's. You are appreciated by me any most others!

 

[Ch3vr0n]

Normal current behavior is that AnyStream autoselects and remembers the last used audio/video settings. Yes, ideally setting a preferred audio/video quality would be better but as i said, what if the desired choice simply isn't available. What then? A fallback setting? which would require the ability to set a main and backup audio/video quality. What if it's available on 1 provider but not another? What then, what if neither the main nor backup choice are available, what then? A tertiary choice or abort/prevent download?

It's not an easy choice to make, let alone implement.

 

[ChuckH]

Normal current behavior is that AnyStream autoselects and remembers the last used audio/video settings. Yes, ideally setting a preferred audio/video quality would be better but as i said, what if the desired choice simply isn't available. What then? A fallback setting? which would require the ability to set a main and backup audio/video quality. What if it's available on 1 provider but not another? What then, what if neither the main nor backup choice are available, what then? A tertiary choice or abort/prevent download?

It's not an easy choice to make, let alone implement.

Not every movie is available at the same resolutions on the services. I noticed that many of the older movies are only available at lower resolutions. For example, the movie "Life" is available on NF with a maximum resolution of 960 x 540. Newer movies are available with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. I haven't experimented to confirm this, but I think what is happening is that if you download the movie with the maximum lower resolution first, it is defaulting to the lower resolution for the next movie you select. I noticed that a Youtube downloader I use does the same thing.

 

[Ch3vr0n]

Thats the whole point of that post yes, not every quality combination is available across all providers. so setting a desired config won't be easy to do

 

[0Cool]

Personally, if I were to change anything, I would make those dropboxes into lists, so that I don't have to click the dropdown each time to be sure that I have the proper settings already selected. They could easily steal space from the subtitles section, which in my experience is almost always 90% wasted space, outside of D+.

(That said, multiple audio would be very useful as well in my view.)

 

[Ub3rNo0b3r]

Just to note, OP's issue has been a problem in the past. I am not sure if the issue is gone on my end due to the program being changed, or if the applied manual fix has persisted. The issue I and other experienced was downloads defaulting to odd values in both video size and language selections. The fix was (I believe, I have horrible memory) finding a file or registry entry that listed those values in a preference order, and either re-ordering them, or deleting the errant entries. It was far more of an issue at the time partially due to having to select downloads one at a time. I particularly recall Disney and Hulu trying to force Deutch on me.

 

[Pegasus]

Just to note, OP's issue has been a problem in the past. I am not sure if the issue is gone on my end due to the program being changed, or if the applied manual fix has persisted. The issue I and other experienced was downloads defaulting to odd values in both video size and language selections. The fix was (I believe, I have horrible memory) finding a file or registry entry that listed those values in a preference order, and either re-ordering them, or deleting the errant entries. It was far more of an issue at the time partially due to having to select downloads one at a time. I particularly recall Disney and Hulu trying to force Deutch on me.

Yes, AS sometimes picks very weird streams. I thought AS always picks the best available streams, but that does not seem to be the case. Especially with old shows AS sometimes picks something like 576x432 instead of a higher available resolution. I'm already used to checking available resolutions every time I see something less than 1080

 

[ChuckH]

Would it be a major programming issue to make the highest quality available the default?