Vivaldi plays YouTube videos in a slow machine

[memo]

Hi all,

I just discovered something by chance and I thougt to share it with you all. if you have an old laptop or pc with one core you may run a lot of problems and lags trying to play youtube in the browser. Here is a nice trick, you need to install Vivaldi then open you tube website, then click on the trend Icon so you do not go through the nonsense of the home page.

then drag this web page to the far left column , the same column that has the bookmarks, you will find that the same webpage opened on a sidebar window no you can search and play some videos to test and I guess you will be satisfied with the results. you can as well adjust it to the width of your choice.

why would it work nicely on the sidebar and not on the main window, you may ask? because the sidebar window uses the mobile version f the site which is waaay lighter than the normal main window.

of course that is not a replacement for the popular smtube or smplayer, but recentrly smplayer doesnot work with smtube and just waiting for the update. until then u can still enjoy youtube while working on something else on the main window.

enjoy ur weekend !
cheers,
memo

[enrique]

Thanks memo. I never had try Vivaldi, I guess is time to look at it.

[Moose On The Loose]

Hi all,

I just discovered something by chance and I thougt to share it with you all.

Not to down rate your comment.
Others: Go read it

But
I have a 600MHz EEEPC with a version based from 528 on it and Seamonkey installed. It plays videos from youtube perfectly well.
It is the "graphics card" that appears to matter the most. Some slow machines will do fine and others won't.

Puppy makes an old slow machine very usable. On better hardware it is "spooky fast"

[enrique]

...It is the "graphics card" that appears to matter the most...

I am not sure if it is the most but it is definitely one of the highest.

But you can not forget HDD file size. It is not the same a 20 MB low quality video we used to see to know going in to the 500MB range on some long videos. That without counting the adds.

Then believe me the same file is move several times inside the PC; download to RAM, then move to Swap, to Disk to finally read again and be played!! That file size played a big roll on memory/CPU usage. And that has nothing to do with rendering. True if no Hardware is available then CPU has to do Software rendering witch makes thing then impossible.

[norgo]

@memo

good news, smtube is working again
latest version 20.6.0 is now using yt-dl code

note:
because lack of hardware decoding support, a browser is never a good solution for video watching

here a little comparison between vivaldi browser and smtube mpv (hw decoding is working)
both are playing the same youtube video 1080p 25fps h264

[Mike Walsh]

Just to clarify memo's statement, where he says to "drag the web-page across to the side-panel", you want to drag the actual tab across to the side-panel. This creates what Vivaldi calls a "web-panel", and it does indeed use the 'mobile' version of any page you put there.....

Hope that makes it clearer to anyone wishing to try this. I'll be seeing what happens on ye anciente Dell tomorrow, just for the hell of it...though I have a feeling it'll still be asking a lot of a P4.


Mike.

[memo]

@ Moose On The Loose

I am interested to know how you use such old system. Do you use it as your main system or just a nice addition?

@ Mike Walsh

Thanks for the extra needed clarification.

@ norgo

good news, smtube is working again

Thanks for the update info!

@ enrique

sure the internet becomes more demanding everyday, itis like the browser becomes a system inside a system.

[Mike Walsh]

Well, I copied my 32-bit Vivaldi-portable in its entirety to a USB 3.0 stick, and plugged it in, and ran it from there. As expected, it was indeed quite a demanding task for the old Dell! I have DPup 'Stretch' on there, as well as Slacko 5.6.0. Vivaldi-portable runs OK here, though of course it does take a lot longer to start up and "settle down" than on my new HP tower (where it's up-and-running in a matter of seconds).

Takes nearly 3 minutes on the Dell.

However, employing memo's 'trick' did in fact give me a YouTube playback with very little buffering; first time I've ever been able to say that about modern YouTube on the old girl....

Thanks for the "tip", memo. Worth remembering, I must admit.

------------------------

As for Moose's set-up, you'll like as not find out it runs better than you might think, because he's using a 'date-sympathetic' Puppy for his hardware. In other words, software that would have been current at the time the hardware itself was on the market...

My Slacko 560 runs best with Palemoon, but that's going "out-the-window" in November; if I'm going to use it at all after that, it'll have to be with an 'older', out-of-date browser. And that's a bummer. But what can you do? The best browser that ever ran on there was QtWeb.....which hasn't been developed now for something like 6 or 7 years. Shame, really.

(*shrug*)


Mike.

[greengeek]

Hi memo - what version of Vivaldi are you using please? I am trying this technique with version 1.9.818 but see nothing happen when I try to drag the tab to the left control bar.
cheers!

EDIT: Got it! It does not work if I drag the tab across but instead I can click the little "+" sign in the left hand control bar and it lets me choose the tab that i want. (Seems to call it a "webpanel". EDIT - as Mike already pointed out above))

Excellent tip! I can have a vid playing in tiny form while I continue to use the rest of the screen for other browsing. Nice one!

Do you guys see any form of search function withing the skinny webpanel that opens up? I don't see one and it means I still need to do my YT search in the main tab before choosing that tab from the left control bar.

EDIT 2: Sorted!
I did not initially spot the magnifying glass icon. I was looking for a text based search field instead. Silly me.

EDIT 3: If you right click the video you get a "cast" function. Anyone ever used this? Any idea of the method or the supported media?

What a great feature! Thanks memo!

[LNSmith]

o o o
ooooooo Does YouTube work on 15yo hardware?
Have been running youtube videos continuously since 3AM. Now 8AM. Now read the specs for this notebook below. Yes, Y-T loads the Pentium 'M' CPU well (90 .. 100%) but I do other work while browser & youtube ran in the background. I'm doing this as an experiment - here, on the notebook y-t runs more slowly (noticeably) than on a 3GHz P4 BUT! at the moment the P4 freezes every day (sometimes more often). Suspect a problem with setup for 'da Pup'. Will not comment further on the diffs between the two installations; the Pentium M/YT on the laptop does not freeze (but the problem is NOT the Pentium 4 CPU)! The swap, save and periphal devices are important parts of a working system.

With 'da Pup' old boxes just keep rolling along.

Leslie
(in Australia where it's winter and just great!)



o o o
O O O MY SYSTEM
Pup-SysInfo Hardware Report (Summary), Sat 11 Jul 2020

Current Time: 08:18:55
System Uptime: 1d 3h 27m
Load Average: 1.63 1.71 2.05
Processes: 171 total, 1 running

▶—— BASE SYSTEM ——◀

PC Manufacturer: Dell Computer Corporation
Product Name: Inspiron 8600
OS = 'da Pup' uPupBB32; Browser = Light.

Motherboard Vendor: Dell Computer Corporation
BIOS Vendor: Dell Computer Corporation
Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.40GHz
Current Speed of Core 0:1400 MHz Core Count: 1

Personal Storage File:
Name: /upupbbsave-86.2fs
Total Size: 1024 MB
Free Space: 545 MB
Location: partition sda2

Memory Allocation:
Total RAM: 2013 MB
Used RAM: 1744 MB
Free RAM: 269 MB
Buffers: 185 MB
Cached: 655 MB
Total Swap: 199 MB
Free Swap: 195 MB

[LNSmith]

Read my previous posting about running on an older laptop.
Then think how much hardware you need to run Windows.
Puppy is great in every way!!