[Bug] firefox media cache setting is not applied anymore

[rezad1393]

Describe the bug

I have noticed that invidious does not respect cache setting of firefox anymore.

I have set media.cache_readahead_limit to 120 seconds but invidious still caches 30 second.

this was not the case in the past.

Steps to Reproduce

set firefox media cache size to 2 minutes
open a video in invidious.
let it cache.

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Additional context

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[TheFrenchGhosty]

I personally do not see this as an issue, forcing a small caching means the load on public instances is lower, we shouldn't let clients decide how much to cache because this could be abused.

I'll let other team member chip in though.

[rezad1393]

invidious used to respect firefox cache settintg and now it has decided to ignore it.
this means users can no longer set their own cache setting.

we should let clients decide how much to cache

I don't understand what you mean by this other than clients being users (instead of instances ) which is my issue.

[Fijxu]

The thing is, when you are using DASH, the video player (VideoJS) is the one that manages how much video should be buffere and I believe the cache that is set by the browser only works on medium quality, which would be like a "normal" video download, respecting your cache settings, but that doesn't happen for DASH. (And I believe Invidious companion fails to proxy medium quality, no idea why!)

should let clients decide how much to cache

I don't understand what you mean by this other than clients being users (instead of instances ) which is my issue.

I also didn't understand this, what did you mean here @TheFrenchGhosty?

[rezad1393]

I used dash and I think the video WAS cached but maybe I remember wrong.

[TheFrenchGhosty]

@rezad1393

I don't understand what you mean by this other than clients being users (instead of instances ) which is my issue.

Sorry, typo:

"we shouldn't let clients decide how much to cache because this could be abused."

[rezad1393]

the video player (VideoJS) is the one that manages how much video should be buffere

I have seen this video player being mentioned in issues a lot .
can't invidious use it AND patch it also? does it have to use it purely or is patching it hard?

[rezad1393]

"we shouldn't let clients decide how much to cache because this could be abused."

you can put limits on the user choices but removing it completely is not great.
for example minimum 30 second and max 2 minutes.
for example my internet in not great and flatline stable so using longer cache make my viewing experience better than shorter cache.

btw firefox also uses threshold setting which helps with load on video servers.

[TheFrenchGhosty]

@rezad1393 There's plan to move away from VideoJS and it's been in the work for... years.

But it's a lot more complicated because we have various "custom" stuff on top.

[TheFrenchGhosty]

for example my internet in not great and flatline stable so using longer cache make my viewing experience better than shorter cache.

Yeah, that's why I'm not fully against it, some people would greatly benefits from it being longer (especially since Invidious is made to work on old web browser, which means slower computers, which usually means slower internet speed)... so yeah, I'll let other team members decide

[Fijxu]

can't invidious use it AND patch it also? does it have to use it purely or is patching it hard?

I mean, Invidious uses VideoJS if you are wondering, but I understand what you mean, you can increase caching but that's on the developer and instance maintainer side of things, you can't control that (well you actually can if you make some script that you can use with Tampermonkey to force VideoJS to cache more data). I have actually added an option for that on my Invidious fork, but that is from the developer and instance maintainer side of course, as a user, you don't have a preference to tweak that value.

https://git.nadeko.net/Fijxu/invidious/src/commit/fab438f9d515972365ffdf69f97a50458b03b487/config/config.example.yml#L1373

[TheFrenchGhosty]

@Fijxu Might be worth upstreaming that feature? Letting admins decide how much to cache is a good start (especially for people on slow connection hosting their own instances, they could just set the limit really high)

[Fijxu]

@Fijxu Might be worth upstreaming that feature? Letting admins decide how much to cache is a good start (especially for people on slow connection hosting their own instances, they could just set the limit really high)

If you ask me, I'm fine with upstreaming that to let instance owners choose how many seconds should be buffered on DASH, I'll wait for @unixfox response about this to do it.