Certain videos switching language tracks without user interaction...

[attaboyBrad]

A particular Gerald Undone channel video (https://youtu.be/4OcP9XPb2kI) keeps changing languages mid-stream and I can't figure out how to change it back. It plays with the default English on Youtube web. Occasionally if I scrub it will restart playing in English for a second or two in Unwatched but then it changes itself back to Spanish without any interaction on my part.

I see on this thread that multiple audio tracks are a new feature, so maybe it's an issue with how the channel set their own audio tracks.

Here's a screen recording demonstrating the issue.

Having now watched the video... it was a pretty useless video. Maybe Unwatched was trying to spare me those minutes wasted.

[attaboyBrad]

Same thing is happening in this video from another channel, so it's not a one-off issue or channel specific.

The setting to switch audio tracks in the attached screenshot shows up in Safari and Chrome, but not in Unwatched.

When I click "view on Youtube" to open the video on Youtube within Unwatched, the video plays in the default language even though it doesn't show that setting in the player menu, but switches back to the alternate language when I go back to the in-app player in Unwatched.

EDIT: Here's another video doing it. Seems like it must be every video that has this feature available. Doesn't seem to be happening on iPad, so it must be something about the web player as it gets pulled into Unwatched on Mac. Weirdly, this video doesn't show the alternative language options when I open it under "View on Youtube" on Mac, but it did on iPad. In both cases, it plays in English when "Viewed on Youtube" within Unwatched whether it shows the alternative options or not.

Tried restarting and updating from Testflight. Was running 1.5.0 (174) on all platforms for all tests.

[attaboyBrad]

This seems likely to be relevant...

https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/10/youtubes-new-auto-dubbing-feature-is-now-available-for-knowledge-focused-content/

"YouTube announced on Tuesday that its auto-dubbing feature, which allows creators to generate translated audio tracks for their videos, is now rolling out to hundreds of thousands more channels."

[fer0n]

Thanks so much for the detailed description and screen recordings :)

Definitely odd. Did I understand that correctly, the issue is exclusively happening on macOS and only inside the player?

I'm using the YouTube embedded player and for some reason YouTube doesn't appreciate having the embedded player blown up in size on macOS. Pip doesn't work, native fullscreen doesn't work, and neither does the quality selection (it was also stuck on 480p).

I tried a few things to work around this, but the best I was able to achieve was having a higher quality (but broken selection) combined with an "hide Unwatched controls"- fullscreen. So I fear there won't be a lot I can do about this, but I'll take a look at it.

[attaboyBrad]

Correct on "only MacOS and only inside the player". I tried and failed to reproduce the issue on iPadOS.

[attaboyBrad]

No idea if this is the same issue, but you might also look into whether or not speeds above 2.0 are working on your end on MacOS. No idea if you'll be able to fix it, but since it involves the Unwatched UI I suppose you'd want to pull those speed options for MacOS if you can't. Those speeds seem to work fine on iPad, so maybe it's also to do with whatever modifications you made to the embedded player for MacOS.

Screen recording below.

ScreenCap.2024-12-11.Unwatched.Unwatched.000559.mp4

[tisba]

This issue is pretty wild, in one video it was switching from German to Spanish and in the next one it was Russian (I think) from the beginning. I first thought the youtube channel was highjacked!

[attaboyBrad]

I saw that the Vinegar Safari extension was recently updated to 'ignore the AI generated audio tracks when selecting the default audio track', so it would seem there is some way to do it--but they're replacing the player so that might be a completely different problem.

[fer0n]

I saw the vinegar update as well, not entirely sure what they're doing.

I've played around with this for a bit and the only way I've found so far to avoid this without introducing other issues like the quality being limited to 360p is to run it as a native Mac version, which would be quite a bit of effort to do. I'll see if I can come up with something else.

[attaboyBrad]

I noticed this morning on build 180 that a few videos started off with the wrong language but switched back to the correct language after a second or two. Not sure if it's a change you made or a change Youtube made, but the issue may be resolved--I'll mark it closed in another day or two if I can't reproduce it again.

[fer0n]

I haven't changed anything that would address this, it's probably related to YouTube. The only realistic option I've found so far is to make a native Mac version to replace the "Made for iPad" version, but that would probably be quite the task.

[fer0n]

@attaboyBrad has the issue reappeared for you?

[attaboyBrad]

Yes. Still happens on the same channels noted previously as of today's latest update.

Edit: it also happens on the 'Royal Armouries' channel. I've been working around this issue on Mac by long pressing on the title to view the afflicted videos in Youtube, but I noticed just now that those are all strictly limited to 360p, which you mentioned as the only way you could figure out to avoid the issue in the embedded player.

[fer0n]

Thanks for the update.

Native Mac version seems to be the only way to get around this, then.

Don't know how much effort it would take, and Mac is around 4% usage share so it's not the highest priority, especially since there's still tons of other stuff to do. I can't promise if or when I'll get to it, but I'll consider it.

[attaboyBrad]

Might it be possible to use a native player as an option instead of the embedded Youtube player? Something like however Vinegar or Untrap (or Vidimote?) replaces the Youtube video player with a native player when run as a Safari extension. Maybe have that as a toggle option on the player screen or in settings? I realize that would might have issues with Sponsorblock chapters or marking as watched in history or something--just sort of spitballing on things that might be a hack solution in lieu of the likely unjustifiable development of a Native Mac version.

Maybe a direct "open in default browser and mark watched in app" button? Right now what I do on MacOS whenever the language swapping happens (since the long press in-app viewer is limited to 360p) is right click, copy url, and open that in safari.

[fer0n]

I'm assuming it doesn't matter if you're breaking YouTube's ToS when you're not using the YouTube API, which is probably the case for all of these. Unwatched is using the API for a few things, so I'm not too eager to break the ToS. Maybe it'd still be fine, but I'd rather not find out if I can avoid it.

[attaboyBrad]

Not expecting any response here, just adding info in cases it's useful down the road. This is all on Version 1.5.2 (187). Haven't seen the 'watch video in browser' update yet, but will keep an eye out.

I found an example of a single channel where one video plays in English and another uses AI dubbing. I previously understood that this was a feature that was enabled by channel, but this observations suggests otherwise.

Here's the one that played on Unwatched Mac in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx6FVDfxCzc

Here's the one that played with AI dubbing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC1mVe7isIA

Maybe that A/B will provide some hints about the root of the issue.

Finally, here's a video that starts playing with AI dubbing, but switches back to the original audiotrack after a few seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHwT6VaAkrc

I had previously only seen videos start in the original audiotrack and switch to AI dubbing.

Nothing jumped out at me in the 'stats for nerds' for any of these, but I'm not particularly familiar with looking at that.