DownloadHandlerTexture blurry in 2022, but fine in 2021

Unity Engine
1

Hello, I have a raw image that I’m setting the texture of by fetching a youtube thumbnail URL.
This has been working flawlessly in Unity 2021.3, but I recently upgraded to 2022.3.24 and the exact same code produces an extremely blurry image.

The thumbnail URL in question is https://img.youtube.com/vi/hEQ5ATc3w94/0.jpg

var handler = new DownloadHandlerTexture();
var thumbnailRequest = UnityWebRequest.Get(thumbnailUrl);
thumbnailRequest.downloadHandler = handler;

yield return thumbnailRequest.SendWebRequest();

if (thumbnailRequest.result == UnityWebRequest.Result.Success)
{
    image.texture = handler.texture;
}
else
{
    Debug.LogWarning($"Unable to fetch thumbnail: {thumbnailRequest.error}");
}

Here’s what it looks like in Unity 2021 vs 2022
9767454--1399365--willem_2021.PNG 9767454--1399368--willem_2022.PNG

2

Kind of looks like the initial state of a progressive jpg:

1280×720 141 KB

If the jpg is progressive, try saving it with progressive disabled.

Or check if the handler provides any way to scale up to full resolution. Perhaps it even requires calling the request multiple times for the same file to get the more higher resolution versions? Just guessing here.

3

That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard about progressive jpgs before. What do you mean by saving with progressive disabled? I don’t see that as a property on the web request or handler. You can’t send a UnityWebRequest multiple times. It throws an exception if you do.

My main question is why the behavior changed between Unity 2021 and 2022? As I said, literally the same code works fine in 2021, but doesn’t work in 2022.

4

It may be because Unity may have changed how progressive jpgs are handled. That’s just a hunch.

Saving without progressive refers to saving the actual .jpg file that you created or exported. Typically you get the option to save as progressive jpg or not.

In any case, try opening that url in your browser to check if the browser displays the full resolution. Also try an online web request tool to see if the returned jpg is indeed the full resolution version when “requested” via API. Just to exclude that the issue isn’t outside of Unity.

5

My hunch is that they caused this problem with the change here:

I tried updating to 2022.3 at the end of last year and this problem was observable.