Netflix is rolling out playback speed controls on Android

Ever wish you could speed up or slow down video playback on Netflix? On Android, now you can.

Netflix is rolling out the ability to watch videos at 0.5x, 0.75x, 1.25x, or 1.5x speeds on Android. Now you can binge-watch your favorite shows faster than ever. Playback speed controls are available on Android for both streamed and downloaded content and will be tested on iOS and browsers in the future. This feature will not be tested on built-in TV apps, though.

Playback speed controls were apparently something Netflix users have requested for years, according to Netflix’s Keela Robison, Vice President of product innovation. “Tests show that consumers value the flexibility [playback speed controls] provides whether it’s rewatching their favorite scene or slowing things down because they’re watching with subtitles or have hearing difficulties,” Robison said. The National Association of the Deaf and the National Federation of the Blind applauded Netflix for introducing this feature, with both organizations adding that playback speed controls can help those with auditory and/or visual difficulties.

While the new playback speed controls might be a boon for users, some in Hollywood are apparently unhappy with the new feature. As The Verge points out, when Netflix previously confirmed they were testing this feature last year, directors Brad Bird and Judd Apatow spoke out against it. Apatow in particular said that “distributors don’t get to change the way the content is presented.” These creators argue that playback speed controls disrupt how they intend viewers to consume their content. Many creators currently rail against motion smoothing features on home televisions for largely the same reason.

Netflix said it is aware of the concerns from Hollywood creators and has worked to quell their anger. For one, Netflix said it will correct the pitch in audio at faster and slower playback speeds, so content doesn’t sound warped. The company also purposely limited the available playback speeds and requires users to manually change the playback speed for every video they watch.

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Huawei to Revolutionize Commerce with New Live E-commerce Platform

As the world changes, people are changing the way they shop. New solutions are needed to present new and effective ways for consumers to interact with online stores. This is where Huawei’s Live E-commerce service comes in. The new e-commerce solution is designed to help merchants boost their traffic while lowering costs. Live streaming brings new opportunities driven by e-commerce transformation. Online retailers will be able to easily implement this solution, which is based on Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) to enhance live commerce capabilities.

Live E-commerce to be Officially Announce on Huawei Developer Day

To announce the launch of Live E-commerce, Huawei will be using their Huawei Developer Day #HDD event which is streamed online. This event will have the primary focus of showing online retailers, businesses, and developers how they can use HMS to profit off of the constantly-evolving online retail landscape. This event will demonstrate how Huawei is making live commerce easier, faster, and more immersive than ever. The key to this is the combination of the HMS compatibility kits. These allow developers to create a single e-commerce solution. The combination of Live E-commerce and HMS gives Huawei the technological advantage over other platforms in this field. Online retailers will now be able to produce a truly intelligent live commerce experience. HMS Core kits provide e-commerce platforms with easier control, more efficient operation, and more immersive scenario-based live stream experience.

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Huawei Developer Day

The Huawei Developer Webinar | Connect LIVEs with E-commerce
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE EVENT LIVE

August 6th, 2020

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The HDD event is totally free for developers to attend. It is hosted online in the form of livestreams that features speakers from partnering companies like LiveMe, Kumu and others. Developers that attend the event will have the opportunity to learn about the different ways that Huawei can help them increase their traffic. Using the powerful tools designed for online platforms, you’ll learn how to create a richer and more advanced live streaming experience. Huawei’s innovative technology enhances e-commerce capabilities, assisting vendors, and developers to realize business gains.

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“With more consumers and vendors converting to live commerce streaming to sell and buy products, e-commerce is continuing its rapid growth and represent an increasingly large section of the global retail industry. A key priority for Huawei is supporting the expanding number of developers around the world in this field, which is why our next HDD is dedicated entirely to e-commerce and online retailers. HDD is an invaluable opportunity for developers and retailers of all sizes and sectors to get a head start on competitors and learn how our new and enhanced HMS-based solution can greatly enhance their live commerce capabilities.”

Peter Gauden - Head of WEU EcoSystem Marketing at Huawei Consumer Business Group

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The HDD event will be very beneficial to anyone looking to learn about the increasingly interactive market of online retail. The livestreamed event will be one hour long and will feature interaction from the audience, in the form of live comments. This event is part of Huawei’s commitment to creating a better experience for developers, which includes an all-scenario smart ecosystem.

All of this is part of the support and resources that Huawei dedicates to developers that use HMS and host their apps on the AppGallery. Huawei’s fully open Chip-Device-Cloud capabilities enable the best app experience while promoting innovation. If you are a developer and want to learn how to succeed in this market, make sure you tune-in to the Huawei Developers Day event on August 6th, 2020.

This post is sponsored and written in part by HUAWEI. Our sponsors help us pay for the many costs associated with running XDA, including server costs, full time developers, news writers, and much more. While you might see sponsored content (which will always be labeled as such) alongside Portal content, the Portal team is in no way responsible for these posts. Sponsored content, advertising and XDA Depot are managed by a separate team entirely. XDA will never compromise its journalistic integrity by accepting money to write favorably about a company, or alter our opinions or views in any way. Our opinion cannot be bought.

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YouTube to axe community contributions for closed captions and subtitles

Google on Friday announced YouTube’s Community Contributions feature, which allows viewers to add closed captioning and subtitles to videos, will be discontinued on September 28, 2020. The company cites two reasons behind the discontinuation of the feature: It’s not being widely used and is a regular source of spam and abuse.

According to Google, community contributions were featured in “less than 0.001% of channels” in the past month, covering than 0.2% of watch time. Creators are, for the most part, relying on alternative captioning tools for their videos.

As The Verge points out, deaf and hard-of-hearing creators will be most affected by the feature’s removal. Several “VTubers”, or Virtual YouTubers, will also be affected, as well as content creators with significant foreign language audiences. Some content creators have already voiced their concerns, pleading with Google to create a better community contributions system rather than axing it entirely.

It’s a fine line to walk for Google. Captions and subtitles are crucial for accessibility—not just to reach deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, but to reach viewers who speak different languages. While the community contributions feature is being canceled, captions and subtitles will still be available in YouTube videos. Creators can continue to manually add captions, while YouTube has technology that automatically adds captions to every video. The automatically generated captions are generally not as accurate as user-contributed captions, but they can be improved over time as Google continues to train its speech recognition and language translation technologies.

Even though Google said YouTube’s Community Contributions feature is rarely used, the company acknowledged the difficulty this decision might cause for some creators. As a consolation, Google said it would cover the cost of a 6-month subscription to Amara.org, a service that captions, subtitles, and translates videos.

If you currently have contributions saved as drafts, they’ll be available to publish until September 28. All contributions that have already been published will remain, and creators can manage them as they see fit.

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Google and Pure Digital almost partnered for Flip Video camera

Back before Google acquired (and then sold) Motorola, and back before Google had developed its first Pixel-branded smartphone, the search giant nearly released a Flip Video camera in partnership with Pure Digital at the dawn of the YouTube era.

According to internal emails obtained by the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust sub-committee (via The Verge), Google Video product manager Peter Chane attempted to convince colleagues to partner with Pure Digital, the owner of Flip Video, for a consumer video camera.

In a 2006 email, Chane highlights the popularity of Pure Digital and argues how important personal video cameras would be for a community-driven site such as Google Video. The emails laid out Chane’s argument and his urgency to get a deal done before Yahoo and YouTube did something similar. At the time, YouTube was still a competitor to Google Video.

We already know that Google never made a deal to release a Google-branded Flip Video camera, but there were conversations about the possibility. What ultimately happened was, at the suggestion of Google Video director Jennifer Feikin, Google opted to pursue an acquisition of YouTube instead, and the rest is history.

“I think perhaps a better route to take would be quickly figure out the strategy of how to work with both types of content in the ideal ways, and then to acquire YouTube,” Feikin said in an email.

Feikin said she admired YouTube’s UI and active community. By acquiring YouTube, Google could then use its considerable resources to scale the service and bring it to a wider audience. Some colleagues were apparently skeptical about acquiring YouTube, but Google ultimately made a deal all the way back in 2006.

Today, Google is one of the most popular websites on the internet, while Pure Digital and its Flip Video cameras are no more, thanks in part to the rise of smartphones. In hindsight, it was good business sense from Google, but it still would have been interesting to see a Google-branded Flip Video camera.

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Learn Linux Inside Out With 110 Hours of Training for Just $69

We often don’t realize it, but Linux plays a huge part in daily life. Every time you search with Google and check Facebook, your device is working with Linux servers. Using an Android phone? That is based on Linux, too. If you would like to know this system better, the Complete 2020 Learn Linux Bundle can help. This huge learning library offers 12 courses and 110 hours of training for only $69 at the XDA Developers Depot.

As you may have gathered by now, Linux is a very powerful and versatile platform. For this reason, expert developers are always in demand, earning up to $111,000 a year according to Payscale. In addition, Linux skills are valuable in many other technical careers.

This bundle provides a comprehensive education in Linux. Through hands-on tutorials, you learn how to power almost any project using the open-source operating system.

You start by learning how to navigate the graphical user interface, before diving into the shell. Once you have some command-line skills under your belt, you discover how to deploy Linux in the cloud, set up enterprise systems, and run Linux servers.

The bundle also provides extensive training on networking and cybersecurity, including full prep for the CompTIA Linux+ exam.

You would normally expect to pay over $3,500 for these courses, but you can get them now for only $69 with this deal.

 

The Complete 2020 Learn Linux Bundle – $69

See Deal

Prices subject to change 

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Motorola One Zoom and Moto G8 Plus get Android 10 soak test updates in Brazil

Different smartphone OEMs go by their own schedule when it comes to Android updates. Motorola, for example, prefers to conduct limited invitation-based public beta testing (commonly referred to as “soak testing”) before the actual release of a major Android version update through the stable channel. The final beta firmware is often mature enough to be considered as the stable build, which means the soak testing phase is a pretty good indicator of the arrival of the stable update. Now, the Motorola One Zoom (also known as the Motorola One Pro) and the Moto G8 Plus have started receiving such soak test builds of Android 10.

Motorola One Zoom XDA Forums || Moto G8 Plus XDA Forums

Motorola One Zoom

Despite the “One” tag, the Motorola One Zoom (codename “parker”) is not a part of the Android One initiative. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 675-powered phone was announced at IFA 2019 with Android Pie onboard. The Android 10 soak test for this device is currently running in Brazil, where the company has pushed several beta builds so far. The version number of the latest soak test build is QPH30.29-Q3-28-13 and it comes with the July 2020 security patches.

Moto G8 Plus

The Moto G8 Plus (codename “doha”) packs in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 SoC along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The phone runs a close-to-stock version of Android Pie out of the box, while the soak testing of Android 10 is underway in Brazil. Those enrolled their device to Motorola’s Feedback Network (MFN) have received multiple beta builds as of yet, with the latest one featuring July 2020 security patches.

Thanks to Reddit user u/karanpatils for the screenshot!

It is worth noting that the soak test beta builds sometimes contain critical bugs. Therefore, we would recommend you to stay away from sideloading these beta builds on your daily driver. Once all the known issues are being ironed out, Motorola will push the stable update to all users, including the beta testers.

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Samsung rolls out the August 2020 security update to the Galaxy Note 10 series

Just a day ago, Samsung started rolling out an update for the Exynos variants of the Galaxy S10 series in some regions. The update included August 2020 security patches for the Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+, and Galaxy S10e, along with a new bootloader (v8) for the devices. Even though the update is yet to make its way to most Galaxy S10 users, Samsung has now started rolling out a similar update for the Exynos-powered Galaxy Note 10 devices.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10 XDA Forums || Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ XDA Forums

The latest update for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 series (software version N975FXXS6CTGA/N975FOXM6CTGA) measures in at 168.86MB and it includes the August 2020 security patches. Much like the OTA update for the Galaxy S10 series, the update also brings a new bootloader (v6) for the Galaxy Note 10 series, which means that end-users will no longer be able to downgrade to older builds once they install this update.

Thanks to XDA Senior Member jaylence for the screenshot

As with all previous updates from Samsung, the latest OTA update is currently rolling out to a few users and it’s expected to reach all Galaxy Note 10 series devices in the coming days. In case you don’t wish to wait for the OTA update, you can use a community developed tool called Frija to download the updated firmware for your device from Samsung’s repository. The required parameters can be found in the screenshot below.

Thanks to XDA Senior Member henklbr for the screenshot

Once you have downloaded the decrypted firmware package created by Frija, you can flash it on your device using Odin. You can follow the instructions given in this post if you aren’t familiar with upgrading your Samsung device’s firmware with Odin. Do note that the aforementioned update is only for the international Exynos 9825-powered Galaxy Note 10 devices and it isn’t compatible with the Snapdragon 855-powered variants of the Galaxy Note 10 series.

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