Display instantaneous download speed instead of average speed

[UtkrishtDhankar]

• I've verified and I assure that I'm running youtube-dl 2016.05.16
• At least skimmed through README and most notably FAQ and BUGS sections
• Searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones

What is the purpose of your issue?

• Bug report (encountered problems with youtube-dl)
• Site support request (request for adding support for a new site)
• Feature request (request for a new functionality)
• Question
• Other

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I have an incredibly unstable internet connection. My download speed will often fluctuate from being in the low kbps decades to the 5-10 mbps range. From what I've been able to see from my cursory search of the codebase, youtube-dl calculates speed as an average over the whole download process:

from https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/f9b1529af8aec98bffd42edb5be15e1ada791a20/youtube_dl/downloader/common.py

@staticmethod
    def calc_speed(start, now, bytes):
        dif = now - start
        if bytes == 0 or dif < 0.001:  # One millisecond
            return None
        return float(bytes) / dif

Perhaps you should add a method to return the speed over the past few seconds rather than the whole download, so that wierd internet slowdowns don't show me wildly different average speed than the current speed.

[leokhachatorians]

+1

[grumpstar]

@leokhachatorians yah that would be cool, I'm going to switch back to a digital subscriber line.

[danfiscus]

I would actually prefer the average, because my internet is absolute garbage and it will spike really high for a second or so then drop off almost entirely. It cycles like this, so I like the average download speed over instantaneous because it gives me a better idea of what my overall speed is. I understand lots of people would find instantaneous speed useful, and maybe myself included if I were to switch ISPs, but I would prefer it be an option rather than having the average speed removed completely.

[mpenkov]

Is anybody working on this? If not, I'll have a look.