Change Playback Speed

[Neipas09]

Auto and 720p is a joke.
Give us all video resolution options up to 4k.

Also, add playback speed options.
Watching podcasts at 1x is killing me.

[iBicha]

Thanks for the suggestion. I understand the need for higher quality, especially on TV where quality is noticeable.

Both a quality selector and playback speed are in the roadmap #6 (under Video player controls)

As for 4K, I'm still trying to iron out the details (I explain some of this here #216 (comment))

[garagetrader]

Would love the playback speed feature also.

[iBicha]

A small update about video playback speed: I did some testing a while ago, and it was somewhat possible to adjust playback speed.
Roku has since disabled this undocumented feature for reasons unknown to me.
I have asked Roku engineers (along with other app developers who also would like to offer this feature in their apps) to restore and support this feature, and still waiting for a response.
PS: if you're wondering "how come the official YouTube app can change speed then" - YouTube gets special treatment with access to the Roku NDK (Native Development Kit) which has more control over things. Only a select few big corporations have access to the NDK.

[PlasmaticRiver]

A small update about video playback speed: I did some testing a while ago, and it was somewhat possible to adjust playback speed. Roku has since disabled this undocumented feature for reasons unknown to me. I have asked Roku engineers (along with other app developers who also would like to offer this feature in their apps) to restore and support this feature, and still waiting for a response. PS: if you're wondering "how come the official YouTube app can change speed then" - YouTube gets special treatment with access to the Roku NDK (Native Development Kit) which has more control over things. Only a select few big corporations have access to the NDK.

Thanks for working on this, it's much appreciated. I was thrilled to learn about your app from Reddit as I have a Roku Stick in an old dumb TV that I can't be bothered to buy a Fire Stick or Android TV stick for to put in STN.

This app is a great alternative for Roku devices although playback speed control is really necessary if you're watching long videos of people talking and want to finish watching them faster.

In the meantime, there's an app for iOS and Android called Web Video Caster which has a receiver app on Roku. It's basically a web browser that's specifically geared towards ripping a video stream out of any webpage and throwing it on many types of devices (Cast, DLNA, Fire TV, Roku, etc).

I've been using it for a while to stream YT vids from the mobile site straight to my Roku before I found your app. Since the videos can be routed through the phone before they are casted, you can adjust the playback speed that way, so it's a workaround for the time being until you figure out how to get this feature implemented.

[iBicha]

@PlasmaticRiver thanks, can you confirm Web Video Caster can play videos at a higher speed on a Roku device specifically? I do not see such option, even with routing the video through the phone.
As for the quality, Web Video Caster can detect the 720p streams, while Playlet can go up to 1080p.
So far I do not see this app having any advantage - and it is also plagued with ads unless you pay.

[PlasmaticRiver]

@PlasmaticRiver thanks, can you confirm Web Video Caster can play videos at a higher speed on a Roku device specifically? I do not see such option, even with routing the video through the phone. As for the quality, Web Video Caster can detect the 720p streams, while Playlet can go up to 1080p. So far I do not see this app having any advantage - and it is also plagued with ads unless you pay.

I can confirm, see my attached photo for reference.
I should have specified however that the playback controls only appear when casting from WVC to Roku using the AirPlay protocol, rather than the native Roku one. I don't know if that info helps you at all, but it does work for me. Playback speed is limited to 2x however.

As for WVC "not detecting" higher than 720p, this is inaccurate as I'll explain. I believe WVC is capable of throwing even a 4K file to a compatible receiver. It is simply the matter of Google not allowing mp4 streams higher than 720p to be served to third parties, hence it looked like 720p was the maximum it could get out of mobile YT.

However, this limitation can easily be circumvented.
Simply hit the vertical ellipsis in WVC in the top right and select Safari all the way at the bottom of the list for "User Agent/Desktop Mode" (and set as default if you wanna keep these changes). You must select a new YT video or search for the video again using the YT search bar in order for the new user agent to "take", a simple refresh doesn't work for me. Once this is done, you can select either a 1080p or "adaptive" HLS m3u8 stream to cast to the Roku or any other device using whatever protocol, although I've heard some protocols work better if you select the "route thru phone" option.

As for ads, I didn't notice them being all that bad in the free tier on iOS when I just did testing. I paid $6 for the premium tier on Android years ago since I found it so useful, but the premium license is also part of Play Pass on Android if you have that.

So yeah, for the moment WVC's big advantages are that you can sign into your actual YT account and cast 1080p to Roku with no ads using the method I mentioned, and you can increase the playback speed to 2x if you chose AirPlay as the protocol. That being said, it likely only works well for WVC on iOS as trying to use AirPlay on Android is notoriously finicky. Hope this helped.

[iBicha]

I tried using your approach from Android and iOS, and to both a TV and a 4k streaming stick.
The stick would not play any speed (I see the options) but and the TV did work with a different speed after many attempts, but for some reason was only playing audio, not video, no matter what options I chose.
Well at least now we know the full picture: some devices are capable of playing at different speeds.
Roku people says not all devices can read at different speeds, and that's why it is an unsupported features, and they disabled it for all apps (but Airplay here I guess is not technically an app). The latest info from Roku is

At this time, a fix is being released for the playbackSpeed, but this does not guarantee continued support.

So this might or might not land in Roku 13. We will wait and see.

As for WVC "not detecting" higher than 720p, this is inaccurate as I'll explain. I believe WVC is capable of throwing even a 4K file to a compatible receiver. It is simply the matter of Google not allowing mp4 streams higher than 720p to be served to third parties, hence it looked like 720p was the maximum it could get out of mobile YT.

This is not correct - you can download 4k videos using other tools, but they will not be muxed (aka the audio and video are at a separate file) this is why the max will be a 720p mp4 file. Playlet works around this by generating a DASH manifest that includes both audio and video files that a Roku can play, that's how it can reach 1080p. But, if you are on an iPhone, youtube does serve an HLS file that can go up to 1080p.

So yeah, for the moment WVC's big advantages are that you can sign into your actual YT account and cast 1080p to Roku with no ads using the method I mentioned, and you can increase the playback speed to 2x if you chose AirPlay as the protocol. That being said, it likely only works well for WVC on iOS as trying to use AirPlay on Android is notoriously finicky. Hope this helped.

If this works for anyone, fine by me. I found myself frustrated waiting for the ad and/or trying to pause the ad in the browser, and for some reason half the time the video wouldn't cast (it usually works in other modes, but AirPlay is not being consistent)

Finally I want to split this issue into two parts because each is a big topic on it's own: playback speed - video quality
I'll keep this issue for playback speed, and move the conversation about quality to #345

[xa4hf8]

Roku has since disabled this undocumented feature for reasons unknown to me.

It appears that this feature might depend on hardware platform and video resolution, but there is no public documentation that explicitly indicates what modes are supported on which hardware. However, I did find some information that might be relevant here:

The YouTube player employs an undocumented playbackSpeed property of Video nodes ;
Speed control has been tested successfully on the model 4800

List of supported features & specifications by model

Variable speed playback may be selectively enabled based on hardware platform

Reducing video playback resolution might enable variable speed control on old devices