Release 0.5.X Discussion

[PrestonN]

Hey everyone. Release 0.5.0 is here which means a new discussion. This issue is open so that anyone who wants to is free to talk about the new release. The new release included some small but very needed usability fixes as well as other small features.

What's Next?

In these discussions, I like to make a brief statement on what's next for FreeTube so that everyone knows what to look out for.

There has been an initiative led by @ivan1548 to rewrite a majority of FreeTube to incorporate Vue.js better than the current implementation. I will be working with him to get his work merged over to the main project. These changes are important to ensure stability and to make future features easier to implement.

Once this has been done we will be back on track to work towards a stable release. A proper 1080p implementation will be the biggest obstacle before stable but besides that there shouldn't be too much left to get done. Hopefully we should be 1 or 2 more releases before we hit the big 1.0!

At the end of these posts, I enjoy asking a question in order to start the discussion. Today I'd like to ask, what do you think of the new website? Have you found any issues with it? Is there more you'd like to see included in the site? Let me know what your thoughts are.

Take care!

[linuxgirl22]

https://freetubeapp.io/ looks brilliant! ... very well illustrated/great colours and fonts, plus unmistakably clear information so people know exactly what it does. I can't think of anything it needs ... everything anyone could need to understand or link to is there.

[Algram]

Anywhere we could help regarding the 1080p feature? This is the only thing holding me (and probably many other users) back on using FreeTube.

[PrestonN]

I wanted to make sure that I had all the correct information before I answered this.

1080p should be coming soon. Invidious provides a manifest file that allows 1080p+ playback for videos that will stream directly from YouTube's servers. This allows FreeTube to take advantage of this file without having to worry about any bandwidth issues being applied to Invidious.

In order to support this file, FreeTube will need a new video player. It will likely be a player similar to what Invidious uses, but the requirements are that it has to support manifest DASH files, allows CSS customization, and must be open source. The player that Invidious uses (which I believe is Video.js) checks all of the boxes for this and will likely be used in the near future. I will be experimenting with this very soon so that I can deliver I polished solution for everyone. This will take some time but it should be well worth the wait.

The other thing is that I'd like to get this rewrite done first before too many additions. The rewrite has already been started and any additions to the current code base will cause delays and we'll have to back track in order to get it finished. Once this has been done, I will be starting on 1080p right away.

[132ikl]

I would like to request a queue feature to be able to easily select then watch a bunch of videos in a row from subscriptions, for example. If you want I can make this its own issue.

[PrestonN]

@132ikl An issue has been created at #248 about this. I hope to get it implemented at some point.

The next release is still a ways off, but I'd like to give an update on progress.

1080p+ is ready and will be included in the next release. I have implemented the MediaElement video player in order to do this. The player will have the same functionality as the current player alongside to ability to picking your preferred quality up to 4k.

All formats that are played through MediaElement will be using the DASH format to combine video files. Throughout my testing, there appears to be some small syncing issues when having a slow internet connection. To combat this, I'd like to keep the current video formats available as they are much easier to play and can't go out of sync since they are all one file. To do this, the current player will be rebranded as the "Legacy Player" and can be swapped back and forth with the DASH player at any time.

Having the new player allows other things such as cleaning up the interface since a lot of player functionality is merged within the player itself now. The ability to hover over the timeline to see thumbnails of the video will be included as well.

I'm very excited to get this out there for everyone. There are some features outside of 1080p support that I'd like to include in this update so those will be worked on before v0.6.0 is released. I'm hard at work getting everything done but you should all receive a notification through FreeTube when the next release is available.

[lljr]

Would it be possible to add the channel's playlists? Some channels have their videos separated into playlists, which is very helpful when going through tutorial series. It has been mentioned already in #195.

[PrestonN]

It's still planned, I simply haven't had the time to get to it just yet. I'm hoping to redo how the channel view currently looks and I'll be including channel playlists alongside that.

[PrestonN]

I feel like this is important enough to put here. I have a new blog post out that gives an update on things as well as some more social platforms for FreeTube to have a presence on. I have a release date for the next FreeTube version and there's a lot included so I'm very excited to get it out for everyone. If anyone would like to test before the update comes out please let me know. I'm bound to have missed something with this update just because of the large amount of changes that have occurred with this update.

[linuxgirl22]

Thank you for all your work, and it sounds great to keep Matrix as the main focus, but to have a couple of branches growing out from it that can feed back to there.

[lljr]

@PrestonN Thank you for your work. I appreciate it much.

I have a question: could get a settings option Proxy videos? like in Invidious? sometimes I cannot load videos and apparently it is due to this: iv-org/invidious#524

[ghost]

#167
#265

Would be great if these could be handled!

[PrestonN]

Closing this thread as a new release has come out. Join the discussion over at #274

@rickndmorty I will make a response in the respective threads.