Subject: Re: [Usher Talk] Re: Quality of web downloads

From: Rob Griffiths <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:07:18 -0800

On Jan 19, 2011, at 9:06 AM, Garrison Burger wrote:

> I am a member (that video is actually my video), but it is a basic
> membership.

The problem here is that that download link appears only if you're logged in, and it might also be available only to you, if you uploaded it. In the short term, we won't be able to do anything with this -- Usher will have to be modified to allow logging in to the various services. That's on our list, but it's not a simple feature addition.

regards,
-rob.

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From: Garrison Burger <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 09:06:06 -0800 (PST)

-G

On Jan 18, 1:29 pm, Rob Griffiths <[email-masked]> wrote:
> On Jan 17, 2011, at 11:37 AM, Garrison Burger wrote:
>
> > the standard version. For example, this video:http://vimeo.com/5071087.
> > Some videos, like the one above, have a download url for the
> > originally uploaded video directly on the page.
> >http://i52.tinypic.com/29g032t.png
> > Perhaps you could check for this?
>
> Are you a Vimeo member, and if you are, is it a basic membership or a premium membership? The Vimeo code in Usher should work for unregistered users, but perhaps it's different for registered users.
>
> -rob.

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From: Rob Griffiths <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 13:29:57 -0800

On Jan 17, 2011, at 11:37 AM, Garrison Burger wrote:

> the standard version. For example, this video: http://vimeo.com/5071087.

-rob.

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From: Rob Griffiths <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 11:48:19 -0800

On Jan 17, 2011, at 11:37 AM, Garrison Burger wrote:

> However, Vimeo still seems to be failing to grab anything other than

We'll see what we can do (no promises, but the sample URL helps, thanks). 

> Also, whenever I try to download a Vimeo video, this message pops up.
> http://i52.tinypic.com/2ew13iw.png
> Clicking on either okay or settings just closes the window and
> downloads the video. Any idea how to resolve this?

Yep!

<http://www.manytricks.com/support/index.php?act=article&code=view&id=25>

regards,
-rob.

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From: Garrison Burger <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 11:37:54 -0800 (PST)

On Jan 7, 5:47 am, Rob Griffiths <[email-masked]> wrote:

> We've made improvements in both Vimeo and YouTube, and we'll be distributing an update next week. It still may not work 100% of the time, but it should grab the higher-
> resolution versions much more reliably. If it doesn't, and you find URLs that it fails on, please post them to the list and we'll see what other changes we can make.

Youtube seems to work great now both with the web plugin and in Usher.

-Garrison

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From: Rob Griffiths <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2011 05:47:11 -0800

On Jan 6, 2011, at 10:01 AM, Garrison Burger wrote:

> version. I don't know how you tell Usher to download the videos but
> perhaps appending &hd=1 would be a quick fix.

We've made improvements in both Vimeo and YouTube, and we'll be distributing an update next week. It still may not work 100% of the time, but it should grab the higher-resolution versions much more reliably. If it doesn't, and you find URLs that it fails on, please post them to the list and we'll see what other changes we can make.

regards,
-rob.

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From: Garrison Burger <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 10:01:46 -0800 (PST)

I know in the past you could append &fmt=22 and &fmt=37 to the end of
a youtube url to watch the 720p and 1080p versions, respectively. It
looks like that isn't working anymore, but &hd=1 does play the 720p
version. I don't know how you tell Usher to download the videos but
perhaps appending &hd=1 would be a quick fix.

There is also an official playback quality javascript API I found
here: http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/js_api_reference.html#Playback_quality

-Garrison

On Jan 5, 4:16 pm, Rob Griffiths <[email-masked]> wrote:
> On Jan 5, 2011, at 4:01 PM, Garrison Burger wrote:
>
> > loaded. It would be nice to have an option to automatically download
> > the highest quality both when using the plugin and in Usher itself.
> > Also, Vimeo always downloads the lowest quality no matter what, even
> > if the HD version is playing in the browser and you use the plugin to
> > download.
>
> We'll take a look and see if there's a reliable way to identify the high quality versions and download them directly within Usher.
>
> Thanks for the heads-up;
> -rob.

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From: Rob Griffiths <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2011 16:16:46 -0800

Thanks for the heads-up;
-rob.

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From: Garrison Burger <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2011 16:01:52 -0800 (PST)

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From: Garrison Burger <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2011 15:58:45 -0800 (PST)

I noticed when downloading Youtube videos, that by default the lowest
quality of video is downloaded. When browsing in Usher I don't see any
way to select the quality that is downloaded. When using the browser
plugin whichever quality is currently playing in the browser gets
loaded. It would be nice to have an option to automatically download
the highest quality both when using the plugin and in Usher itself.

-Garrison