FAFI v1.5.9

FAFI v1.5.9

New: A/B before/after compare — see what FAFI actually does, live.

A/B compare

Press V (or right-click → Picture → A/B compare) for a split screen: the left
half is the plain original, the right half is the full FAFI treatment (interpolation +
filters + upscale + any display filter). Drag the divider to sweep across the picture.
Great for judging the effect — or showing it off.

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SHA-256 of the assets (also in SHA256SUMS.txt):

083e509924ebae0c6561efb8a86c04d2f42922c7e3429f55e0e777d1835c779f  FAFI-Setup.exe
d8e4d772d26cd8006ef0ad0bc82eb191b53c68677d1ae2f42506d74cbbbea606  rife-ncnn-vulkan-20221029-windows.zip

Verify on Windows: Get-FileHash .\FAFI-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

💛 FAFI is free — if it makes your videos smoother, you can support development:
PayPal paypal.me/FAMarco

FAFI v1.5.8

FAFI v1.5.8

Adds a strength control for the new display filters.

Display filter strength

Once a display filter (CRT / curved CRT / Trinitron / LCD) is on, a new
Display strength entry appears under right-click → Picture with
Subtle / Medium / Strong / Max — from a gentle hint of scanlines/mask to a full
retro look. Remembered like the rest of your settings.

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SHA-256 of the assets (also in SHA256SUMS.txt):

7fd1fe1ebb549c318afeda976bd3d69d77bb3e46ca4111de72ba8d499339ea7e  FAFI-Setup.exe
d8e4d772d26cd8006ef0ad0bc82eb191b53c68677d1ae2f42506d74cbbbea606  rife-ncnn-vulkan-20221029-windows.zip

Verify on Windows: Get-FileHash .\FAFI-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

💛 FAFI is free — if it makes your videos smoother, you can support development:
PayPal paypal.me/FAMarco

FAFI v1.5.7

FAFI v1.5.7

New: retro display filters — give your video that old-screen look.

Display filters

An optional post-filter over the picture, in right-click → Picture → Display filter:

• CRT — scanlines + RGB phosphor shadow mask
• Curved CRT — tube curvature + corner vignette
• Trinitron — vertical aperture-grille stripes
• LCD / TFT — sharp RGB subpixel grid

Off by default, remembered when set. It composites over the finished, upscaled image and
looks best with 4K render (K) on, where the mask stays crisp. Purely a creative effect —
your source is untouched.

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SHA-256 of the assets (also in SHA256SUMS.txt):

679c658247c2e1b72d4929ee509f2a18d8f44ce664068607b5b73f6e7d0f091b  FAFI-Setup.exe
d8e4d772d26cd8006ef0ad0bc82eb191b53c68677d1ae2f42506d74cbbbea606  rife-ncnn-vulkan-20221029-windows.zip

Verify on Windows: Get-FileHash .\FAFI-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

💛 FAFI is free — if it makes your videos smoother, you can support development:
PayPal paypal.me/FAMarco

FAFI v1.5.6

FAFI v1.5.6

Fixes and a lighter render, from a full pass over the code.

Fixes

• Auto-subtitles are back for YouTube. They were silently skipped on the default
  download-while-playing route — platform subtitles are fetched again.
• No more short freeze when opening a stream. The "is this live?" check no longer
  blocks the window; the UI stays responsive while a URL is being prepared.
• A momentary hiccup no longer ends playback. A transient decode-buffer failure now
  retries instead of stopping the video.

Under the hood

• Lighter GPU load: the 4K render path clears once instead of every frame, and the
  neural (RIFE) engine no longer builds an image pyramid it never uses — a little more
  headroom, especially on older GPUs.
• Faster stream start: the video title is read from the successful lookup instead of a
  second, redundant network call.

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SHA-256 of the assets (also in SHA256SUMS.txt):

0729597bf099141fba5575080343f53439ea868f6a330aa15fd93621c9830c16  FAFI-Setup.exe
d8e4d772d26cd8006ef0ad0bc82eb191b53c68677d1ae2f42506d74cbbbea606  rife-ncnn-vulkan-20221029-windows.zip

Verify on Windows: Get-FileHash .\FAFI-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

💛 FAFI is free — if it makes your videos smoother, you can support development:
PayPal paypal.me/FAMarco

FAFI v1.5.5

FAFI v1.5.5

A quieter, harder-to-tamper-with build — and no more console window during export.

Fixes & hardening

• No console window during export. Exporting used to flash a cmd window for the whole
  render. The export now pipes to ffmpeg through a hidden process — nothing pops up.
• Tougher against reverse-engineering. Strings that revealed the internals are now
  encrypted in the binary, plus anti-debugging tripwires. Purely internal; nothing changes
  for you as a user.

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SHA-256 of the assets (also in SHA256SUMS.txt):

dfde0a04709d2ff409ea5d3fdce4b6ff63a879ec97ffc3439270113648e0c6b5  FAFI-Setup.exe
d8e4d772d26cd8006ef0ad0bc82eb191b53c68677d1ae2f42506d74cbbbea606  rife-ncnn-vulkan-20221029-windows.zip

Verify on Windows: Get-FileHash .\FAFI-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

💛 FAFI is free — if it makes your videos smoother, you can support development:
PayPal paypal.me/FAMarco

FAFI v1.5.4

FAFI v1.5.4

YouTube that keeps playing — the player now owns its session, and long videos no longer freeze mid-play.

Streaming robustness

• Player-owned YouTube session. FAFI keeps its own local cookie jar
  (%LOCALAPPDATA%\FAFI\cookies.txt): imported once from your signed-in browser, then
  maintained by the player itself — YouTube keeps working with the browser closed (or none
  installed at all). A stale session is re-imported automatically, and a hand-exported
  Netscape cookies.txt dropped at that path works too. The cookies go to YouTube only and
  never leave your machine; opt out with FAFI_YTDLP_BROWSER=0 or by deleting the file.
• Fix: long videos froze after ~40 seconds. YouTube now hard-rejects (403) plain video
  streams past ~40 MB — v1.5.3 and older stall on longer videos. FAFI detects the pattern
  and switches the source to segmented HLS (up to 1080p60) at the current position;
  exports retry over the same route.

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SHA-256 of the assets (also in SHA256SUMS.txt):

c0358ec046cbae9c8aadee0cb629ae3accd1e039c77cf9ba4de5de58f1391984  FAFI-Setup.exe
d8e4d772d26cd8006ef0ad0bc82eb191b53c68677d1ae2f42506d74cbbbea606  rife-ncnn-vulkan-20221029-windows.zip

Verify on Windows: Get-FileHash .\FAFI-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

💛 FAFI is free — if it makes your videos smoother, you can support development:
PayPal paypal.me/FAMarco

FAFI v1.5.3

FAFI v1.5.3

Your subtitles now make it into exports — as a real track or burned into the image.

Subtitles in exports

• New option under right-click → File → Export subtitles: as track (default),
  burned in, or off — applied whenever a subtitle is active when you export.
• As track: the subtitles you see — including your live timing correction
  (Ctrl+, / Ctrl+.) — are muxed into the MP4 as a proper mov_text track, so they
  stay toggleable in any player.
• Burned in: the same subtitles rendered permanently into the image; external
  .ass files keep their full styling.
• Works with every subtitle source: auto-fetched platform subtitles, manually loaded
  files (.srt/.ass/.ssa/.vtt), and embedded text tracks. (Embedded ASS tracks
  cannot be extracted and are skipped with a log note.)
• Headless exports: FAFI_EXPORT_SUBS=0|1|2.

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SHA-256 of the assets (also in SHA256SUMS.txt):

3b58a0d976512a2751a8667df2c5a7c52c60b791f6e58a30738d5bab3abb2096  FAFI-Setup.exe
d8e4d772d26cd8006ef0ad0bc82eb191b53c68677d1ae2f42506d74cbbbea606  rife-ncnn-vulkan-20221029-windows.zip

Verify on Windows: Get-FileHash .\FAFI-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

💛 FAFI is free — if it makes your videos smoother, you can support development:
PayPal paypal.me/FAMarco

FAFI v1.5.2

FAFI v1.5.2

Rock-solid streaming under YouTube's tightened bot checks — and a player you can
always close.

Always closable

• The close button now works in every state: while buffering, while resolving a
  stream, and on the error screen (an invisible confirm dialog used to block it there —
  Task Manager time). Quitting no longer waits for in-flight yt-dlp work either; the
  player exits within moments, whatever it was doing.
• The quit confirmation only appears when it protects something: a running video.
  Idle, loading and error screens close immediately.

Streaming that survives YouTube's bot check

YouTube has begun 403ing direct stream-URL fetches, audio-only formats and bursty
downloads for IPs it distrusts. FAFI now routes around all of it:

• All media transfers go through yt-dlp with your browser cookies and the most
  tolerated player client; blocked audio falls back to a muxed track automatically.
• Downloads killed mid-file resume at the exact byte offset with fresh URLs (up to
  20 attempts), rate-limited to stay under the burst radar — still ~25x realtime.
• Downloader logs land in %TEMP%\FAFI-prog-*.log for easy diagnosis.

Sane seeking while the download runs

• Jumps into not-yet-downloaded regions used to derail playback (frozen frames, A/V
  chaos). They now bounce back seamlessly — playback continues uninterrupted with
  a short notice. The buffered region grows ~25x realtime; once the download finishes
  (typically well under a minute), every jump is local and instant.
• Quality switching re-buffers cleanly mid-video.

Small things

• The URL field (U) remembers the last entered URL across restarts.
• FAFI's README now says clearly what FAFI is: a local-first, offline player —
  no ads, no account, no telemetry. Streaming is the convenience extra on top.

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SHA-256 of the assets (also in SHA256SUMS.txt):

bc86e48e4657bcae1b1e929069a350d9cbb1f1e1b13b194e9b8dc1ae80beb7e6  FAFI-Setup.exe
d8e4d772d26cd8006ef0ad0bc82eb191b53c68677d1ae2f42506d74cbbbea606  rife-ncnn-vulkan-20221029-windows.zip

Verify on Windows: Get-FileHash .\FAFI-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

💛 FAFI is free — if it makes your videos smoother, you can support development:
PayPal paypal.me/FAMarco

FAFI v1.5.1

FAFI v1.5.1

YouTube playback works again, and seeking in streams finally behaves like YouTube.

YouTube: bot check defeated

YouTube started demanding "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" from busy IPs — every
resolve and download failed, whatever the player client. FAFI now hands yt-dlp the
cookies of your own browser (Firefox preferred — including the Microsoft-Store
install — otherwise your system default browser). No setup needed; if the cookie store
is unreadable, FAFI automatically retries without cookies, so nothing gets worse.
Override with FAFI_YTDLP_BROWSER=<browser> or disable with FAFI_YTDLP_BROWSER=0.

Seeking in streams, YouTube-style

• Jumping past the downloaded part of a smooth-mode session no longer freezes the
  image for minutes: the session switches to live streaming at the target position
  (range requests reach any offset in moments). Further seeks stay instant.
• If the video has to wait for data after a seek, the audio now freezes with the
  image and both resume together, exactly in sync — no more sound running ahead of a
  frozen frame, no A/V gap afterwards.
• Streams no longer remember resume positions (local files still do): re-entering
  a URL used to resume-seek into a fresh download with no data there yet — black
  screen, silent audio. Streams now always start clean at 0.

Small comforts

• The URL field (U) pre-fills with the last entered URL — Enter replays it,
  typing or Ctrl+V replaces it.
• Stale auto-fetched subtitles from a previous video can no longer appear on the
  wrong video.

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SHA-256 of the assets (also in SHA256SUMS.txt):

12117356a6db63ce020e418fffbc711ec60e4e07292916f5dac633cbe2e87e84  FAFI-Setup.exe
d8e4d772d26cd8006ef0ad0bc82eb191b53c68677d1ae2f42506d74cbbbea606  rife-ncnn-vulkan-20221029-windows.zip

Verify on Windows: Get-FileHash .\FAFI-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

💛 FAFI is free — if it makes your videos smoother, you can support development:
PayPal paypal.me/FAMarco

FAFI v1.5

FAFI v1.5

Subtitles that take care of themselves, a RIFE setup without the treasure hunt, and an
installer that finally asks where you want it.

Subtitles, everywhere

• Network streams fetch the platform's subtitles automatically (via yt-dlp, in your
  preferred language plus English) — they appear in the subtitle menu on their own and
  are enabled to match your language preference, with an on-screen notice.
• Local videos: add your own downloaded subtitle files via right-click → Subtitles →
  Load subtitle file… — or simply drag & drop a .srt / .ass / .ssa / .vtt
  onto the window (dropping a video plays it).
• Subtitle timing, live: if the subs run early or late, nudge them with
  Ctrl+, / Ctrl+. (±0.1 s) or the new timing rows in the Subtitles menu — the
  menu stays open, the current offset is shown, one click resets it.

RIFE without the treasure hunt

• Right-click → Interpolation → Open models folder opens exactly the right place;
  drop the rife-v4.6 folder in and press E — the model is picked up without a
  restart. The installer pre-creates the folder with a short how-to.
• Clear on-screen messages when RIFE isn't available (model missing / still loading /
  init failed) instead of silently staying on MEMC.
• Fallback mirror: this release attaches the unmodified upstream
  rife-ncnn-vulkan-20221029-windows.zip (MIT license, LICENSE file inside the archive) in case
  the upstream page is ever unavailable. FAFI does not install it automatically — copying
  a model into models\ remains your manual step, subject to the model's own terms.

Installer: your choice

• Just for me (as before — no admin rights, %LOCALAPPDATA%) or All users
  (C:\Program Files, asks for admin via UAC). The uninstaller handles both.

Honest numbers & snappier UI

• The F overlay now tells the truth: with interpolation you see the produced rate
  (82 fps (video 30)), without it the rate your eye actually gets
  (video 30 fps (display 82)) — no more identical numbers in both modes.
• The UI fades in/out about twice as fast, hides after 0.7 s idle, and disappears
  immediately when the mouse leaves the player window.

Legal / attribution

• Complete third-party attribution shipped with the app (now including the libass /
  FreeType / HarfBuzz / FriBidi subtitle stack and all support libraries) plus an LGPL
  source-availability offer. Details in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.

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SHA-256 of the assets (also in SHA256SUMS.txt):

f4b34cf52718c154cf2594da717c7b21d10bb3e2de3482a555936ab248d21609  FAFI-Setup.exe
d8e4d772d26cd8006ef0ad0bc82eb191b53c68677d1ae2f42506d74cbbbea606  rife-ncnn-vulkan-20221029-windows.zip

Verify on Windows: Get-FileHash .\FAFI-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

💛 FAFI is free — if it makes your videos smoother, you can support development:
PayPal paypal.me/FAMarco