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JWplayer always plays adaptive HLS in HD

Hi,

Can somebody explain me, why JWplayer plays always the HD stream of a HLS adaptive stream in HTML5? (Of course only if the available bandwidth is sufficient)
Here is an example on jwplayer's site: https://www.jwplayer.com/blog/hls-in-html5/
"Big Buck Bunny" is played in 720p, but in that embed size it should play 360p version.
I'm watching it on Windows 7 in Chrome and Firefox too.

This is the case with my stream too. It is always played in HD.
I have premium subcription and contacted support more then 6 weeks ago, but I don't get a competent answer from there, so I gave up.

Please somebody explain me this.
Is it a bug or a feature. If it's a feature, why?

Thank you.

7 Community Answers

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Alex

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Hi there,

When the player is rendered in HTML5, we only use the available bandwidth to determine which quality is played. The size of the player embed is not taken into consideration.

Thank you.

Up Down

p...

User  
0 rated :

Hi Alex,

thank you very much for this information.
But I don't realy understand this.
Do you think it is a good idea to play for exampe a fullHD stream, when it is embed in a website with 240 pixel height container?
I think it is waste of bandwidth. It was working great with JWPlayes's flash player, but I want to get rid of Flash
I tried VideoJS in HTML5 and it plays the correct resolution. And Youtube works fine too. Only JWplayer behaves like this in HTML5.
Why?

Thank you

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Alex

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

I will pass along your feedback to our engineers but I do believe a best practice for embedding video in a 240px high container would be to embed a MP4, as there would be no need to have a stream that could adapt its quality.

Thank you.

Up Down

p...

User  
0 rated :

Alex, it is my fault, that I forgot to write that my stream is a LIVE HLS adaptive stream. So mp4 is not an option for me.
I think that if my adaptive live stream has a 240p stream version, than it should be played in a 240 pixel height container, not the fullHD version.
Right?

Up Down

Alex

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

As I’ve said, I will pass along your feedback to our Product and Engineering teams.

In the meantime, if the the 240px high container is the only place you are embedding this stream, you could potentially remove the higher qualities from the stream.

You can also potentially call .getQualityLevels() for your stream, find the index for the quality you want the player to play and then write JavaScript to force the player to start with that quality like this:

playerInstance.on("levels", function() {
  playerInstance.setCurrentQuality(x);
});

where ‘x’ is the index of the quality levels array of the quality you would like to be displayed.

Thank you.

Up Down

p...

User  
0 rated :

Thank you Alex, but I think it should be done by the player automatically as the previous JWplayer versions did this in Flash.
I hope the engieneers will correct this.
I'm a software developer too, so I have a bit insight. I think that measuring available bandwidth is a much harder task, than just check the player size and choose the right resolution to play.
Anyway thx for your fast response.

Up Down

Alex

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

No problem.

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