1y ago

We're going in the wrong direction

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YouTube is the worst with this, because they've even gone so far as to convert older videos under 1 minute to shorts. They weren't uploaded as shorts, but now congratulations you can't scrub through the video or share a timestamped link anymore.
- I think there's client sided stuff to do to solve that still, I'm 90% sure on my pc shorts open as normal videos due to an add-on I added a long time ago (the most popular for modding the look and feel of it, someone definitely can add it because I'm out of the house)
  EDIT: Someone who deleted their comment (saw the notification that stayed) got it right, it was Enhancer for YouTube. It's the bees' knees, very recommended for everything (except adblock, for that get uBlock origin)
  
  I think it's called YouTube shorts block
  
  Yeah don't have the name now but at least for Firefox there is an addon that just plays them as normal videos.
  
  Hello, it's me, the one deleting their comment :))
  I thought I'd be able to reply to that other comment of yours but it didn't seem to work so I'll just paste it here:
  Oh interesting, I pretty much instantly deleted my comment again because I remembered seeing that the shorts thing in the enhancer was only experimental and assumed it didn't work well yet.
  Can't find this comment of yours in the thread now ~~but I can reply from the inbox :))~~
  
  Youtube Enhancer is my bet. There are others but that's the most popular. Also removes ads but I'm not sure that works anymore. uBlock and GreaseMonkey with the git script is the way to go for ads, just as a public service announcement.
- Has anyone noticed YouTube’s video compression has become much worse lately?
  I tried watching a video I’ve seen before and I felt like I stepped back into 2007 again. That same video wasn’t like that last year.
  
  Sometimes YouTube will bump you down to like 720p while still showing the quality as 1080p
  
  I'm on gigabit fibre, so not sure why they would do that.I have noticed that though.
  What I've noticed is the resolution isn't necessarily lower, but the amount of detail and texture is lower
  
  They do that to save bandwidth and money. It's not your bandwidth they are trying to save, it's theirs because streaming so many videos to so many people costs money. So they are trying to be sneaky and use lower quality settings as often as possible to reduce cost.
  
  I wonder what the total of data transmission is for an average day on YouTube. It's got to be in the petabytes.
  
  I suspect that they can detect ad blockers in more cases than they try to block them. They could do that to "divert" the ad blocker/ad blocker blocker arms race. Assuming you're blocking ads. If not, then it's a moot point.
  
  I'm in IT and I find it annoying to have to update my scripts and such every time they push new anti-adblock measures. A friend of mine who is perfectly tech savvy has not bothered updating his and is getting ads on everything now.
  Just imagine the number of people who are completely clueless or are just so ~~brainwashed~~ used to ads that they don't even care- I'd be surprised to find functioning ad blocking on over 15% or so on videos served on YouTube. Maybe 20% because that's kind of the economic cut-off point for when it starts hurting and they do anything about it on Google's part.
  
  Take this with a grain of salt because it's what some guy on the internet (me) "remembers reading something about, once", but adblock rates on the general internet, were around 3% or something similar (can't be bothered, please look it up yourself)
  Therefore, I really wouldn't hope for such an insane number as 15% on YouTube.
  We are not the primary users. Your uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces are. The shopkeeper in the corner store. Your teacher. Your 50 year old doctor.
  
  I felt 15% was exaggerated, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised by your estimate at all either.
  
  I've noticed that they also sometimes change the speed of a video. Always a slight change but an annoying amount
  
  Yes. Auto is essentially the "720p or less but we're gonna lie and say it's 1080p still" option now. I'm constantly having to manually choose my resolution to get the full bitrate.
  
  YouTube Enhancer for the win. Or Revanced if you're on Android.
  
  It really makes their tests for the higher bit rate "1080p Premium" quality just seem like reducing the current 1080p and locking out the one we already had.
  
  Are they actually doing that?
  
  There was that whole controversy about the Wish trailers because of Youtube compression...
- If you pause the video you can scrub by dragging the end of the bar. It's terrible UX but it's technically possible
  
  OMG! I didn't know that! Thank you! I've been having to watch videos again from the start when I accidentally navigate away.
  Granted it's a short time frame but still.
  
  You don't have to pause for this. I can just scroll from the thin red bottom bar
  
  The thin red line.
- You can scrub shorts on mobile (might have to pause it first), but not desktop for some reason...
- It's annoying, but you can covert the garbage at the end of like the youtube.com/shorts/afaftxsdds to youtube.com/watch?v=afaftxsdds and it'll behave and be able to be interacted with like a normal video.
  
  Anyone wanna make a firefox plugin or something for this?
  
  I'd be very surprised if there aren't a bunch already. Have you looked? This behavior doesn't apply to any of my usecases so I wouldn't know.
  
  Just /v/ in place of /shorts/ works
  
  Considering you just have to change a word I wonder why did they implement the features that people want and lock it behind a word change. What am I saying thinking more about this is just making the mistake of assuming morons don't exist.
- Firefox, right click, show video controls
- They fucking what!?
  Anyway, the "Enhancer for YouTube" addon has an option to force a normal player for the shorts.
  
  Now that you mention it I sometimes forget I have YouTube enhancer until I stop and remember oh wait YouTube isn't normally monochromatic blue. Man I had too much fun redesigning my YouTube css.
- Wait, even videos that aren't in the vertical aspect ratio? I've got an 18 second video posted to Youtube and I'm going to be quite put out if they crop it and shart it out as a "short."
- Revanced + disable shorts components
- The timestamp no, but the scrub works. I think on TikTok creators could disable that, not sure if YouTube offer that.
  And the timestamp thing yeah... Although for so short videos to me is not that annoying. But yeah sucks.
  In any case can you share an example of this converted videos? I have never seen it.

200 comments