I've run a little round robin/bracketed tournament website through the Google sheets JSON API once. It was a really easy way to have an interface for the organizers to update scores and players.
I don't think this is quite right. If you serve an mp4 with H.264 video statically on any basic webserver it will just work in browser through plain HTTP, without need need for MPEG-DASH/HLS. Every widely used mediaplayer/browser just downloads the nearest chunk (keyframe point) behind the time that was seeked to can resume the playback from there. This point is found through an index stored in a container format. For basically every video format these days (say, at least as new as H.264), regular settings make this only a few more seconds of video to download and decode before the seeked point and basically happens instantly for normal online consumption. In H.264 forward prediction (through two-pass encoding) will playback fine too.
I think what you're saying applies more to a setting where the video is being streamed live, so that you cannot access the start of the file to get keyframe metadata. In that case HLS and MPEG-DASH help.
I'm in the same boat. There are different metrics to judge the quality of an upscale (peak signal to noise ratio comes to mind), but it's obvious they are limited in that they can't capture perceptual quality very closely. While it's obvious the filter is much sharper than even NGU sharp, it also seems to come with a weird gradient effect and some artifacting. Another thing I find is that sharper filters like NGU sharp don't upscale as well as other upscaling options on frames with edges that aren't supposed to be sharp, probably because in some sense they try to hard ink in parts that aren't supposed to be so. This can happen either because the source is composited to be blurry for artistic effect, or because the source is low quality. I admittedly have not tried Anime4K, but I imagine Anime4K will have a similar effect.
Of course, in the end, it's an entirely subjective thing. Personally I hold off using on using NGU sharp and use NGU Anti-Alias instead for the above reasons.
EDIT: this is addressed in the readme:
I think the results are worse!
-Surely some people like sharper edges, some like softer ones. Do try it yourself on a few anime before reaching a definite conclusion. People tend to prefer sharper edges. Also, seeing the comparisons on a 1080p screen is not representative of the final results on a 4K screen, the pixel density and sharpness of the final image is simply not comparable.
EDIT: I just tried this filter on a 4k monitor. To honest I don't think is very good. To me it reminds me of the bad parts of sharpeners turned up to the max. All the edges turn into a weird, sometimes jagged, smear, and originally blurry but detailed backgrounds just become a weird mess. I really don't think even people who like sharpness will prefer this filter for general viewing, and I find the chart given in the preprint (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bloc97/Anime4K/master/resu...) extremely dubious.
While from my own experience I don't see myself using DO again (see my previous posts, I had a similar experience except I didn't complain externally), the points in future measures look like they'll go a long way.
This is probably going to get buried in the replies, but I had a similar experience with DigitalOcean about a year ago with my account getting permanently locked with very little explanation and no way of getting it back. It's still locked to this day. I was just a student using my Github student package credit, but I was pretty appalled by the service from DO and vowed never to buy from them.
Unfortunately, my ticket no longer appears under closed tickets. I was still able to dig up my original ticket message and all the responses their support made to me through my email though. Here they are:
Between the replies I asked about what I could do to verify my account. As you can see, they didn't even give me a single chance to do so. They told me to hang on twice then just permanently closed it up. I'm not sure how I even got flagged. All I did was turn on a droplet and delete it. I checked the audit logs, and there was nothing suspicious there either. It was just me logging in and out.
I thought about making a deal about it on Twitter, but I didn't bother because I don't have any followers and it wasn't a huge loss to me either. Maybe it's the only way?
The emails from their "Trust and Safety" team are extremely tone-deaf...
"We've locked you out, no explanation"
"Sorry for any inconvenience"
Seriously? That last line is like a slap in the face.
No one should talk to a customer like that in this situation, if only because (a) if this is real abuse, you don't need to be "fake nice" and (b) if it's a false-positive, you've just come across as extremely smug when you're in the wrong.
