How can I know which video version is which resolution?

[Paweł]

When a video is available for download and there are different resolutions, a few versions appear in the extension menu with the same name. There is no indication which version is which resolution, so I have to just guess and click, hoping that it's the resolution that I want. Is there a way to know which versions of the video those names refer to?

[jcv...@gmail.com]

Resolutions and sizes are displayed when we get it, if they are not available it's just we don't have them.

jerome

[Adtc]

Hi Jerome, is it possible to guesstimate the resolution from the thumbnail of the video, or by downloading a tiny bit of the video data then analyzing it? (If you're already downloading the video to generate thumbnail, you can see the resolution from it, right?)

Viewing the resolution would be so helpful. Sometimes I get somewhere between 2 to 5 streams listed because the video player decided to switch resolutions* and I get confused which one I should download. I end up having to download each stream until I find the correct one with the resolution I need.

* This is on a site which cannot for whatever reason remember the resolution I chose to fixate on in the last video. It remembers speed and volume, but not the resolution. Annoying and highly disrespectful of users with limited mobile data allocation!

BTW, did you ever get the money from PayPal? Wow, you should sue them for theft! The money belongs to you. What if Bank of America closed your account with millions of dollars and said "Sorry, the money belongs to us now"?

[Adtc]

Another idea: I'm not sure in what order the found videos are being listed, but if they can be displayed in chronological order with the latest video on top, at least I can force the player to the resolution I want, then choose the first stream shown in your app. Maybe, IDK.

[Wild Willy]

It's like Jerome said. Sometimes a web site furnishes the information, sometimes it doesn't. This
is what we have to suffer with because there is no international standard for how web sites present
their multimedia content to users. However, there might be a way you can figure some of this out.
If the site uses m3u8 manifest files, you can find the URL of the master manifest & then pass that
URL as input to ffprobe. Executing ffprobe as I suggest may or may not work depending on the way
the web site has implemented site security. You can find the necessary URL using the Firefox
Network Monitor, available through menus via Tools -> Browser Tools -> Web Developer Tools or
simply F12, then filter on m3u8. You may need to reload the page to get it to show the master
manifest again, assuming the site uses manifests. In general, VDH displays variants in descending
quality of video resolution. But that's when the web site offers the information. By offering, I
mean the information is in the master manifest. Not all sites use master manifests, and since
there's no standard, there's no way to be certain the master manifest, if it exists, will contain
the information. So the suggestion I'm offering here might or might not work. What's ffprobe?
Google it. You can try this & see if it helps at all.

I have suggested to Michel that he use ffprobe within VDH to gather the relevant information. That
could help in this case. Possibly. Maybe not. It depends on how the web site works. But I don't
know if he is implementing my suggestion. I'm just another user, like you, so I have no inside
knowledge.

[Adtc]

This looks absolutely possible! The site I'm looking at, they do have the .m3u8 file as a masterManifest. I can see it when I use the "Hit Details" option in VDH. The contents look like this (guid removed for privacy):

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:3
#EXT-X-ALLOW-CACHE:YES
#EXT-X-PLAYLIST-TYPE:VOD
#EXT-X-VERSION:3
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:1
#EXTINF:3.000,
/<<guid>>.m3u8/seg-1-v1-a1.ts
#EXTINF:3.000,
/<<guid>>.m3u8/seg-2-v1-a1.ts
...
#EXTINF:2.790,
/<<guid>>.m3u8/seg-48-v1-a1.ts
#EXT-X-ENDLIST

Looks like the video is divided into 48 segments for this particular file. If I download the first segment (a 388KB file), I get a 3 second clip of the beginning of the video, which when played in VLC gives me the resolution information. It seems that it's also readable by Windows File Explorer as an MP4 file, able to show thumbnails and video/audio details:

Perhaps this can be implemented as a secondary method of detection if the information is unavailable in the current primary method. If it's resource-heavy, it could be disabled by default and made available to those who want to enable it manually.

[Adtc]

I've been successfully using the above technique to detect the hit with the correct resolution.

1. Open the menu of each hit and click Details.
2. Copy the masterManifest URL (the m3u8 file).
3. Open this URL in browser and download the file.
4. Open the file in a text editor, and get the path to the first segment.
5. Amend the URL in the browser to navigate to the first segment URL (in the same domain).
6. Download the ".ts" file from this URL.
7. Check the file properties to determine resolution (or try playing it in VLC).
   

Since the "ts" filename is always the same, I take a shortcut to avoid steps 3 through 5: I just copy the GUID of the m3u8 file in step 2 and overwrite the old GUID in the last URL I had in step 5. Moreover for step 7, I've configured the detail view in Explorer to immediately display the resolution as soon as the file is downloaded. Much faster, but still tedious.

It shouldn't be difficult to automate this in VDH. 🙂 (But I don't know if this is a standard you can expect anywhere with m3u8, or it's site-specific.)

[Wild Willy]

I admire your determination. But that is not a master manifest. That is a stream manifest. It
contains the URLs of all the chunks that constitute the stream. The master manifest is at a higher
level. I know you found the URL for each video by looking at information on the hit provided by
VDH. But apparently, the URL you're finding is not the master manifest, no matter how it's labeled
by VDH. A master manifest would be one that contains the URLs of the various available stream
manifests, one of which would be the one you've found. The reliable way to get it is as I
described above: use the Network Monitor in Firefox. I've attached an image of how you would do it
for tonight's free opera stream at the Metropolitan Opera. In the image I've highlighted a few
important things you should look for. You then pass the URL of the master manifest into ffprobe &
it will tell you the available resolutions. You don't need to download any fragmentary bits of a
stream & look at it yourself. Tools exist for doing this for you. It would serve your purpose
much better to find ffprobe & learn about it.

[Adtc]

That's a crying shame. Thank you for your reply! For now I don't need to explore that immediately. Hopefully this discussion could become useful to someone else or my future self 🙂