[Bug] Default quality setting does not work

[ThatIsAPseudo]

Behavior of the program
My default quality setting is set to 240p with Dash player, but videos keep loading in 720/1080p.

Expected behavior
The videos play in 240p

To Reproduce

1. Go to 'Settings'
2. Select '240p' in the 'Default Quality' dropdown list
3. Play any video
4. Notice that quality is 1080p

Desktop :

• OS: macOS
• OS Version: Big Sur Beta 9 (20A5384c)
• FreeTube version: 0.8.0

[arrowgent]

v 0.8.0

linux x64

720p selected as default
same issue, video will select 1080p automatically

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

It still persists in the current version of FreeTube.
Win 10
1909

[neurodiverseEsoteric]

It's the opposite for me...it feels like the player is locked on 'auto' mode

[sysdbugfactory]

Same issue here, default is ignored and freetube plays video in the highest possible setting making the computer hot, slow and the video stuttering.

Using v0.11.2 Beta under manjaro linux

[ThatIsAPseudo]

Note : With Legacy player, video plays by default at 360p, not the highest value that is 720p

[miloslavnosek]

It's the opposite for me...it feels like the player is locked on 'auto' mode

Same here. I'd prefer some buffering over player randomly switching to 240p all the time to present me with unwatchable blurry video no matter how many times I click on HD resolutions. I have a default quality set to 1080p, and it makes no difference whatsoever.

[tugcanolgun]

It's the opposite for me...it feels like the player is locked on 'auto' mode

This is a problem for me too. Sometimes the video switches to 240p no matter what I do. It makes some videos unwatchable.

[Spectrum75]

Same issue here too, it goes way up to 1080p even though have set 360p in settings. Any fix?

[EvilGremlin]

Same, quiality setting doesn't work at all. I expect immediate change of format when i say so, and for it to stay at same setting despite connection speed etc.

[nils-van-zuijlen]

Same, videos playing as in auto (144p for me) in Dash formats, seems to work in Legacy formats (I get higher resolutions, and buffering)

Linux, AUR package
FreeTube 0.12

[PrestonN]

Hey all. I know that this has been problematic for a while. I'd like to try to explain a little bit about what's going on.

Legacy formats handle streams much differently than DASH. By this, I mean that legacy formats have physically different URLs for each quality and it's very easy to set a quality level and have it stay there. There isn't any logic for "auto" quality either so that doesn't cause a problem.

DASH formats handle everything with a single URL stream, so the logic of changing quality is vastly different. Up to this point, we've been using an officially recommended module from video.js to handle this quality change. As a lot of you have noticed, this hasn't been working very well. The module also hasn't been updated in several years so that means it's unlikely to get any fixes done to it.

I've just pushed a custom solution to the nightly builds that uses my own logic for handling the quality changes for everything. Please give this a download and let me know how well this works versus the live release.

Some things I've noticed with this change. Video.js doesn't like it when the quality gets changed back and forth very fast, so it'll delay your quality change if you do this. Changing your quality may take a second or two to change, but this seems to have fixed the auto changing problem from my initial testing. Looking forward to hear everyone's thoughts on this change.

[fabianski7]

it's working fine for me.
the only problem so far is this

[fabianski7]

Also: I don't remember how it was before, but I can't change the quality of the lives

[EvilGremlin]

@PrestonN ImprovedTube manage to do resolution right, maybe peek at their sources?

[EvilGremlin]

@PrestonN Your fix seems to be working, but whenb switching back and forth it plays a lot more of cached low-quality than it should. Like delay is based on bytes, not time.

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

Reopening because #3278 did only partially address this issue

[nils-van-zuijlen]

Not stale, still happened to me yesterday by just refreshing the interface (Ctrl+R).

[efb4f5ff-1298-471a-8973-3d47447115dc]

Reopening because #3278 did only partially address this issue

My bad, this is fixed.

In recent versions (I use a relatively new commit (1 or 2 weeks old)), some things seem to be working better:

1. Dash as default setting: Default setting is respected and highest available quality option (<=chosen maximum) is used.

2. Legacy as default setting: Default setting is respected and highest available quality option (<=chosen maximum)  is used.

But when I use Dash as default and a video only provides lets say 360p and I want something higher, then I would expect FreeTube to automatically fall back to legacy format and choose e.g. 720p, if available. Even when I manually switch to legacy format, I would expect the highest option (<=chosen maximum) to be used, but instead it always uses 360p and I have to manually click on 720p.

@toby63 could u open a feature request for this