Forum Discussion
Video Quality Default Setting
I'm a video creator at my org. So, I'm generally viewing things through a hybrid, technical+creative lens. As we begin to share internal videos via Stream (SP), I'm regularly noticing that the video quality playback settings are set to "Auto." Often, that leads to the video playing entirely in a low resolution, where it's mostly pixelated; even the thumbnail image previews with the same low resolution. I understand there are various contributing factors here, but I also discovered that users can toggle the video settings to "1080p." Still, it always defaults back to "auto." I'm wondering if there is a way to lock that setting to 1080p for all users within our organization, because it's not realistic to communicate such a setting change to all users.
- Still awaiting a real comment from Microsoft on this issue. It is very clearly not an individual user problem, and plainly an attempt by Microsoft to save pennies, at the expense of usability.
Bumping this. The issue appears to be - at least from what I'm seeing - is that even though the sticky option is 'Auto' and there is no changing that, no matter how high your bandwidth speeds are, the video player will only ever play at 720p or less. I don't see why when i'm running at 20 MB/s speeds (which I currently am), the player shouldn't default to playing at 1080p. The Stream video player will never automatically display at HD, which seems dumb for a video player. Again, I know Microsoft is trying to save money here, and Stream probably isn't at the top of their priorities when it comes to products, but this is a video player and doesn't compare to tools like Vimeo. There's a big difference in impact that we're missing an organization because our videos don't display at their best resolution.
- I am experiencing the same problem with Microsoft Streams - every time videos are blurry because the Auto mode is on, and the video is streamed with 240p.
We ended up using Google Drive instead for storing and sharing videos. With overall Microsoft Sharepoint experience, we are leaning stronger and stronger with exiting this tool.- These are the same 2 videos stored both on Microsoft Onedrive and Google Drive:
https://radsoftpl.sharepoint.com/:v:/s/Growth/EU6wjP-Or3JAvk8fFVb-53cBO_6KpIPJgjPbMF88-4SxXg?e=EOFAFf
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iYXKbFFEsdGPRXLTrCQC3QrBDSez-5N7/view?usp=drive_link
Microsoft's one is automatically shown with 240p, and Google's one is shown with 1080p.
- Bumping this post. I tried to make the switch to Microsoft Stream, but it is just a bad user experience to have it default to horrible quality every time. At best, you're inconveniencing viewers by forcing them to change the resolution every time. But many people will just look at the video and think, "this looks horrible," and move on. It makes the service unusable.
To be clear, I am hardlined into a gigabit internet connection. My connection is more than fast enough to stream 8k videos, yet Microsoft Stream videos default to 240p EVERY TIME.
This "auto" feature seems like more of a way to save money on data rather than trying to provide a good experience for viewers.
ArmindCMicrosoft
Hi M1Storyteller! I'm from the playback team. Currently, we do not offer a way for admins to set a default video quality for all users within their organization. This is mainly because the type of streaming protocol we use to play content performs best when we allow the player to pick and switch video quality based on a user's available bandwidth. In 'Auto' mode, the player automatically chooses the highest quality video for users with sufficient bandwidth. For users experiencing low bandwidth, possibly due to network issues or other bandwidth-consuming activities on their device, the player will opt for a lower quality stream to ensure smooth playback.
We also don't make quality selection 'sticky' for users because getting a fresh bandwidth reading before every session allows us to make performance optimization decisions with the latest information. As you noted, individual users are able to override this behavior on a per-session basis by manually selecting the highest quality. I hope this clarifies our approach!
I would like for our team to investigate the quality issue for your organization further. Using the "Report an Issue" feature in the Stream Web App (select the "Help" panel right of the player), could you submit a report with the following text: "#lowqualityplaybackjan2024"? We can then pull some debug data from your feedback item and investigate. Thank you!Has there been any movement on this? I have gigabit internet, it is definitely plenty fast enough to run at a higher resolution, however auto is not auto. It never switches. I have to manually switch it, every time.
- Just submitted. Thanks for the detailed reply.
- Would also like an answer to this. Our videos are by default extraordinarily poor quality, which reflects poorly on us and Microsoft.
- ArmindC
Hi BCRED! Just like the above, I would like for our team to investigate the quality issue for your organization further. Using the "Report an Issue" feature in the Stream Web App (select the "Help" panel right of the player), could you submit a report with the following text: "#lowqualityplaybackjan2024"? We can then pull some debug data from your feedback item and investigate. Thank you!
- Marc MrozI’ve passed this on to our playback team asking them to weigh in.
- Any update? This is still occurring, and now certain users are asking us why our videos don't "look good."
Just use OBS studio, freeware and opensource instead, and then upload the video to stream. ;)
