Reviews for Ultrawidify
Ultrawidify by Tamius Han
Response by Tamius Han
Developer response
posted 7 years ago> A simple edge/blackborder detection would have done the job easily.
There's no such thing as "simple edge/blackborder detection." I've started the entire autodetection approach with a "simple" approach first, and it quickly became obvious that simple doesn't cut it. There's simply too much false positives. But we'll come back to auto-detection later.
> After reloading website on Youtube works for some minutes and adjusts (sometimes not correctly) content with huge delay (>10seconds at least).
Technical limitations. Youtube starts playing video before the page has finished loading. Extensions (to my knowledge) only start running when webpage has been fully loaded.
In addition to that, there's two more problems that can cause additional delays:
* there's edge cases which cause autodetection script to do nothing, because video doesn't contain enough data to determine the aspect ratio
* aspect ratio detection only runs once per second due to technical limitations of Javascript's memory management. I'm not kidding.
> But too often the plugin failed to recognize any content
Too often, the popup seems to lie.
> Auto detection is fully broken, takes a lot of ressources doing nothing. Constantly switches itself off.
Autodetection takes a lot of resources because it's written in javascript. Autodetection is written with javascript because javascript is the only¹ option that runs in-browser. Javascript is also utter garbage for this purpose.
To date, ridiculously great amounts of time were spent trying to improve resource usage (especially RAM usage, which gets really bad if you run autodetection script more than two times a second), and the answer has consistently been 'pound sand' and 'cry is free'.
EDIT: Apparently the bug where autodetection shuts itself on between videos is back. However, there's a new feature that turns off automatic detection when it detects things are taking too much time, so I'll leave this bit here.
When automatic detection runs on slower hardware, everything takes longer. Javascript is single-threaded and blocking, meaning that as long as autodetection script runs, the rest of the browser is going to wait and do nothing. This causes noticeable lag/stutter (on my other test machine), which is why a decision was made: if autodetection consistently takes too long to complete, we'll turn it off. After all, having no autodetection (with ability to manually set aspect ratio) beats laggy video.
Too long is 15 milliseconds, which seems like a reasonable number for various reasons.
Consistently means 'over 15 milliseconds for more than 5 seconds in a row.'
> 3) If the site has more than one video (e.g. Steam Store) the plugin fails to recognize any second, third, further video and is not able to stretch these.
Known issue. There's no easy solution as each approach to pages with multiple videos has some drawbacks. At the end of the day, though, things take time, and priorities are Youtube > Netflix > Amazon Prime (currently not officually supported) > everything else (also no official support), though.
There's a reason extension is disabled elsewhere by default. We've had that experiment once and it was a bit too ambitious.
EDIT: whoopsie, it seems that the bug with autodetection not starting on video change is back. Sorry about those earlier assumptions.
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¹Okay webasm is an unexplored venue. It's going to stay unexplored for a while. WebGL is another thing that sounds like something possibility worth exploring if I had time to explore the possibilites. Both would be a ton of work requiring a ton of time, and time is something that's a bit hard to come by with a full time job.
There's no such thing as "simple edge/blackborder detection." I've started the entire autodetection approach with a "simple" approach first, and it quickly became obvious that simple doesn't cut it. There's simply too much false positives. But we'll come back to auto-detection later.
> After reloading website on Youtube works for some minutes and adjusts (sometimes not correctly) content with huge delay (>10seconds at least).
Technical limitations. Youtube starts playing video before the page has finished loading. Extensions (to my knowledge) only start running when webpage has been fully loaded.
In addition to that, there's two more problems that can cause additional delays:
* there's edge cases which cause autodetection script to do nothing, because video doesn't contain enough data to determine the aspect ratio
* aspect ratio detection only runs once per second due to technical limitations of Javascript's memory management. I'm not kidding.
> But too often the plugin failed to recognize any content
Too often, the popup seems to lie.
> Auto detection is fully broken, takes a lot of ressources doing nothing. Constantly switches itself off.
Autodetection takes a lot of resources because it's written in javascript. Autodetection is written with javascript because javascript is the only¹ option that runs in-browser. Javascript is also utter garbage for this purpose.
To date, ridiculously great amounts of time were spent trying to improve resource usage (especially RAM usage, which gets really bad if you run autodetection script more than two times a second), and the answer has consistently been 'pound sand' and 'cry is free'.
EDIT: Apparently the bug where autodetection shuts itself on between videos is back. However, there's a new feature that turns off automatic detection when it detects things are taking too much time, so I'll leave this bit here.
When automatic detection runs on slower hardware, everything takes longer. Javascript is single-threaded and blocking, meaning that as long as autodetection script runs, the rest of the browser is going to wait and do nothing. This causes noticeable lag/stutter (on my other test machine), which is why a decision was made: if autodetection consistently takes too long to complete, we'll turn it off. After all, having no autodetection (with ability to manually set aspect ratio) beats laggy video.
Too long is 15 milliseconds, which seems like a reasonable number for various reasons.
Consistently means 'over 15 milliseconds for more than 5 seconds in a row.'
> 3) If the site has more than one video (e.g. Steam Store) the plugin fails to recognize any second, third, further video and is not able to stretch these.
Known issue. There's no easy solution as each approach to pages with multiple videos has some drawbacks. At the end of the day, though, things take time, and priorities are Youtube > Netflix > Amazon Prime (currently not officually supported) > everything else (also no official support), though.
There's a reason extension is disabled elsewhere by default. We've had that experiment once and it was a bit too ambitious.
EDIT: whoopsie, it seems that the bug with autodetection not starting on video change is back. Sorry about those earlier assumptions.
---------
¹Okay webasm is an unexplored venue. It's going to stay unexplored for a while. WebGL is another thing that sounds like something possibility worth exploring if I had time to explore the possibilites. Both would be a ton of work requiring a ton of time, and time is something that's a bit hard to come by with a full time job.
116 reviews
- Rated 5 out of 5by pesto12345, 10 days ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by Firefox user 18869949, 3 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18825558, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by must0, 5 months ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by vandim, 7 months agoWorked great until recently. After watching videos for a while (not using fullscreen) the whole window turns grey and the audio keeps playing but the tab becomes completely unresponsive and can only be fixed by closing the browser
- Rated 5 out of 5by Tiger II, 7 months agoWorks perfectly, using it to stretch youtube videos to 16:9 in fullscreen (no cropping), because some videos have black bars on the left and right sides when in fullscreen, but Ultrawidify fixes that automatically, all you have to do is go into settings and select 16:9 stretch hybrid.
- Rated 1 out of 5by wando, 9 months agoLags out on some videos, making them unable to be normally watched.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18430449, a year agoPLS BRING THIS TO OPERA GX, we need it sooooo bad
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18389140, a year agoFixed my twitch and youtube, saved my marriage, cured my stomach ache and drove my kids to lacrosse practice every day. Not a single add on does that, but if you believe in yourself and in Tamius, it is possible. Dont let your memes be dreams!
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 14797343, a year ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Robbie Khan, a year ago
- Rated 3 out of 5by Firefox user 14302851, 2 years agoFunktioniert zwar, aber flackert bzw. ist langsam wenn man in Fullscreen geht und zurück. Die ganzen Optionen sind für mich auch schwer zu erklären.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Braix, 2 years agoWorks well. Ironically, I'm using it to stretch 4:3 to widescreen so it looks correct on my crt (adapter shenanigans)
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18158200, 2 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Osang, 2 years agoI constantly watch web streaming, whether they are of individuals or movies. With the help of this add-on, the black bar issue was resolved. I'd want to thank the developer.
- Rated 1 out of 5by dumbo, 2 years ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Luca, 2 years agoKeeps bugging lately and videos are stuck on the sides or corner of the screen. Older versions were far far better but not downloadable anymore
- Rated 5 out of 5by Artyom, 2 years ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by Firefox user 12900474, 2 years agoworks similar to madvr's black bars cropping, mpv player's autocrop script is better to cut black bars because it uses less pc resources, this extension for some reason only cuts the top and bottom black bars the side bars don't crop, screen 1366x768 youtube
- Rated 5 out of 5by Melor, 2 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by CookieButter, 3 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by kk, 3 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Bernhard, 3 years agoGreat addon, but only for technophile users. Again and again the addon has to be readjusted on different levels. Usually, the addon works without major readjustments across all major streaming services. Sometimes, often with DisneyPlus or PrimeVideo, I have to readjust certain settings via "Site Settings" (Enable/Persist) and "Advanced Setting" (Limit Zoom) so that I can restore a 21:9 image via VideoSettings. After a lot of trial and error with the settings at the beginning, I can now almost always change the picture to 21:9 without any loss. Knowing this, the addon is indispensable for 21:9 fans. Thanks to the developer!
- Rated 5 out of 5by h4zmat, 3 years agoPerfect for my use case. Most other ultrawide video addons don't have an option for 18:9 and this has that and more.