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FastStream

Tired of having videos buffer with slow internet speeds? Frustrated by a website's lack of accessibility features? This extension will replace videos on websites with a video player designed for your convenience. Say goodbye to buffering and hello to a more accessible video experience!

  1. Automatic fragmentation and parallel requests for up to 6x faster download speeds. Watch videos without interruptions by predownloading the video in the background.
  2. Advanced subtitling features include: customizable subtitle appearance, built-in OpenSubtitles support to find subtitles on the internet, and an intuitive subtitle syncing tool to adjust subtitle timings on the fly.
  3. Adjustable audio dynamics (equalizer, compressor, mixer, volume booster), and video settings (brightness, contrast, hue, LMS daltonization for color blindness) for your unique audiovisual preferences.
  4. 20+ remappable keybinds and accessible tool buttons for easy control of the player.
  5. Available in multiple languages! Translated into Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and Malay by the FastStream community. Support for more languages is coming soon!

The player currently supports:

  • MP4 videos (.mp4)
  • HLS streams (.m3u8)
  • DASH streams (.mpd)
  • Youtube (download not supported on Chrome unless manually installed due to Web Store policy)

To use the player, simply:

  1. Go to any website you want with a video and toggle the extension on. Any video it detects will be automatically replaced with the FastStream player.
  2. Alternatively, you can also simply click on or navigate to a stream manifest file (m3u8/mpd) to begin playing.
  3. Navigate to a new tab and press the extension icon to go to the player. Play sources detected on other tabs through the Sources Browser. You can also drag and drop video files from your computer.

Notes:

  • Livestreams are not supported. They will not be supported in the near future.
  • This player will not function with DRM protected content. This is intended. Please be mindful of how you use this tool. FastStream should not be used to infringe copyright.
  • This player is still a work-in-progress. Please report any bugs to the Github issue tracker here: https://github.com/Andrews54757/FastStream/issues
  • For your privacy, this extension does not collect telemetry. Nor does it require additional resources from the internet to function. It will work fully offline. Feel free to browse the codebase on Github.
  • We take accessibility concerns seriously. If you need accommodations not available in the latest version, please contact us and we will work on it ASAP. Also, please feel free to submit feature requests or suggestions on the Github issue tracker!
  • The default maximum size for pre-buffering is 5GB. This can be changed in the settings page. Please be mindful of your computer's storage space when changing this setting. Browsers will offload data in the RAM to the SSD if the video is too large. Frequently pre-buffering large videos can reduce the lifespan of your SSD.

Demo

See the player in action without installing the extension! Tested on Chrome and Firefox. Note: Some features (OpenSubtitles/header override) are not available without installation.

Web Version + Big Buck Bunny

Browser compatibility

Tested using Chrome and Firefox. Other chromium based browsers (such as Edge) will also likely work.

Please note that there are no plans to make FastStream mobile compatible any time soon. Developing FastStream for Chrome and Firefox for the desktop is already an exhausting endeavor. Supporting mobile on top of all that is too much work for a mere college-student programming hobbyist like me. That said, if you find a way to make it work on more browsers or devices, please feel free to share and make a pull request!

Installation For Chrome and Firefox

You can find the extension on the Chrome extension store

It is also available for Firefox

Manual Installation For Chrome

The Chrome extension store policies do not allow extensions that can download videos from Youtube (anti-trust anybody?). As a result, FastStream cannot save Youtube videos if installed from the official store. To get restricted features, please do the following steps:

  1. Go to chrome://extensions
  2. Turn on developer mode
  3. Drag and drop the chrome directory of this repository

THERE IS NO BUILT-IN AUTOMATIC UPDATE SYSTEM. If you go this route, please make sure to check back often for updates because I will often fix bugs as I encounter them. FastStream will remind you in the settings page, but you will have to update it manually.

Manual Installation For Firefox

The extension is, by default, configured to work on Chrome. You can either use a prebuilt version from the Releases page or build the extension yourself using the build instructions below.

You can then install the extension temporarily on Firefox Developer Edition by going to about:debugging. Unfortunately, you will have to re-install after each restart because firefox doesn't allow you to permenantly install unsigned extensions.

THERE IS NO BUILT-IN AUTOMATIC UPDATE SYSTEM. See above.

Build Instructions

In order to create bundles for Chrome and Firefox, you need to build FastStream by following these steps:

  1. Install NodeJS and NPM
  2. Run npm install --only=dev to install dev dependencies
  3. Run npm run build
  4. Firefox bundle is available in the built directory

Files with dist in the name are for Chrome & Firefox's stores. Files with libre are for manual installation. The dist versions will have reduced featuresets to comply with store policies.

Credits

Many thanks to the contributors of this project.

Developers

  • Andrews54757: Lead developer
  • ChromiaCat: Update notify icon (PR #142)

Translators

  • Dael (dael_io): Fixed Spanish translations
  • reindex-ot: Japanese translations
  • elfriob: Russian translations
  • Justryuz: Malay translations

Open Source Libraries

  • hls.js: Used for HLS playback
  • dash.js: Used for DASH playback
  • mp4box.js: Used for automatic fragmentation of mp4 files
  • youtube.js: Used for Youtube playback
  • vtt.js: Used for parsing VTT subtitles
  • jswebm: Used for demuxing webm files
  • And some more! Check the chrome/player/modules directory for more information.

Funding & Donation Policy

FastStream does not accept donations for the project as a whole. Please see the wiki for more details.

Technical Details

Please see the wiki for more information on the technical details!

Disclaimer

While it may be possible for FastStream to save videos from any website as long as there is no DRM, that doesn't mean you have the legal right to do so if you don't own the content. Please be mindful of how you use this tool. FastStream should not be used to infringe copyright.